Orthomolecular medicine

enable easy communication with the children's parents. The parents,on receiptof the information, could then arrange for any necessary treatment with the family dentist. Lawson et a1. in 1978 reported on the information obtained from these screening examinations during the period 1961-1974. They clearly stated: "These surveys do not represent a random selection from all children within this community, and the summary data cannot be usedfor detailed studies" (myemphasis). Although it is not readily obvious from the aboveletter, the correspondent's soleexplanation for the decline in dental caries is the increased use of the toothbrush by the young.This is speltout in Sutton's reference 5, which is not a scientific paper but a letter to the New Zealand Medical Journal. Our 1984paper showedsuch a hypothesis to be baseless: here, studies were cited which showed that, amongst the young, brushing teeth without a fluoride toothpaste had little or no effecton dental caries. It was pointed out that this was probably due to the inability of a toothbrush to remove plaque completely from the prime sites of caries development. Finally, readers wishing to examinesummaries of the voluminous literatureattesting to the decay-reducing properties of fluoride would be well advised to consult standard texts such as those listedbelow.':' Graham G. Craig,MDS Department of Preventive Dentistry The University of Sydney NSW2010 I. Stewart RE, Barber TK, Troutman KC, Wei SHY, eds. Pediatric dentistry. St Louis: Mosby, 1982 (Chapter 45). 2. Stallard RE, ed. A textbook of preventive dentistry, 2ndedn.Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders, 1982 (Chapters 9 and 10).