Medicine: O.K. for Fluorides

The Supreme Court of the State of Washington last week rejected, 5-4, the argument that fluoridation of a public water supply is unconstitutional. The court turned down Taxpayer Arthur A. Kaul's plea that he had been compelled against his will to drink fluoridated water. Said the majority opinion: "Liberty implies absence of arbitrary restraint. It does not necessarily imply immunity from reasonable regulations imposed in the interests of the community."

Judge Matthew Hill demurred. "What the residents of Chehalis would not be compelled to do one by one," he said in a dissenting opinion, "it is now sought to compel them to do en masse . . . This smacks more of the police state than of the police power."