Things Get Better
This is one of the things that I really have been on lately. In fact, I was discussing it with someone this morning.
I think it was in relation to the reignited discussion of fluoridation in public water.
There might be some negative health effects from fluoridated water. I don’t know. I do know that public water supply fluoridation was something implemented during the twentieth century to fight tooth decay.
The measure served a good public health purpose in the 1950s and 1960s. If you lost your teeth, your only option was dentures.
While the number of TV ads for various pharmaceuticals has gone through the roof in the past twenty years, I’d like to see a line graph overlayed with the decline in the number of ads for denture cleaners and bonding agents.
Why?
The price has come down significantly. I do have a dental implant. It was a necessity due to problems from not having my wisdom teeth removed soon enough.
While the actual surgery to have the implant installed wasn’t fun, it’s been there for almost twenty years without a problem.
today, you can find someone who’ll do basically a full set of teeth for really not a lot of money. If one of the ceramic or composite teeth attached to the implant is damaged, you just replace the false tooth.
That sort of improvement was completely unthinkable not terribly long ago.
But, no, we’ve gotta keep putting fluoride in the water to, you know, keep ceramic teeth from decaying.
Things Get Better.
There’s so many aspects of life that are immeasurably better than they were not a long time ago.
Science builds atop what’s been discovered in the past. Things that once were very expensive become cheap due to ubiquity.
While medical advancements are the first thing that come to mind, it’s true in so many other areas of life.
In the vast majority of instances, the regulations from the past can just go by the wayside. And people won’t be worse off.
Part of this was prompted by thinking about watching the snowfall on the hill behind the Clinical Research Unit at Georgetown in, um, 2019? I was enjoying the warm radiator against my thighs as I waited to make sure the Tysabri infusion I’d just gotten wasn’t going to kill me.
The warmth of the radiator brought back memories of my childhood in Germany.
But you wouldn’t build a building with giant boilers to feed radiators for heating anymore. Hot water is dispensed fairly quickly from devices that only heat what’s needed. Indoor climes are regulated by small, efficient devices requiring a lot less fuel than the old boilers did.
I also probably wouldn’t build a house with a septic system if I could avoid it. Public sewers have had an incredible effect on public health.
Things Get Better.