(FORTUNE Magazine) – As constant readers have possibly noticed, a major article of faith in this corner is that all government programs fail. They all have deleterious side effects that outweigh the direct benefits, if any. Although encumbered by a certain unattractive pessimism, the doctrine is one we hate to abandon. It has repeatedly delivered the goods. Its predictive power has been awesome. This brings us uneasily to a certain government program recently in the news. What are we to make of the success of the water fluoridation program? Initiated and endlessly encouraged by the U.S. Public Health Service and many local agencies, the program has dramatically reduced dental caries, just as its proponents predicted four decades ago. (It's the anniversary of those beginnings that triggered the news stories.) The cost of the fluoridation program has been trivial, the benefits enormous. Fifty years ago, 90% of American kids had some form of tooth decay. Today the country is close to eliminating decay. True, there remains an argument about the magnitude of the program's success. (Some data show that areas of the country without fluoridation also ^ had substantial gains against caries.) In addition, a few chemists worry that elevated fluoride levels might increase the rates of certain cancers and birth defects. Finally, the government plainly did screw up in one way: by persisting, well into the Seventies, in subsidizing dental education to forestall a shortage of practitioners. In the event, the subsidies combined with the decline of caries leave the U.S. now oversupplied with dentists.

Still, it is hard to argue that the fluoridation program itself has been a failure. So we propose to be a bit less categorical about the futility of government programs. Unless, of course, those chemists worrying about cancer turn out to be right. But we judge that probably too much to hope for.