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Comment by sliverstorm | Hacker News Reader

I wonder... This would basically put most dentists out of business. We'd still need some dentists and oral surgeons and orthodontists, but not nearly as many.

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Most dentists would welcome it. Routine fillings aren't huge money-makers for them (which is why they focus so much on cosmetic dentistry these days). There are a lot of tooth/mouth related diseases beyond simple decay... they'll be fine.

On the other hand it might be hard to convince patients to come back every 6 months if decay were less of a problem. That seems to be when they talk to patients about about cosmetic and other more expensive procedures.

bullshit

While you aren't stating your opinion on the issue, the possibility of a particular field losing jobs due to some advancement in technology is almost never a valid reason for restricting that technology. Even if tooth decay happened to no longer be a service dentists needed to provide, the market would adjust the pay and number of dentists accordingly to match the new market.

This might suck for dentists over near future, but people would be much better having to no longer worry about tooth decay. Besides, gum disease is a probably a much bigger issue for people's dental health anyway, and that would be just as big a problem after this technology was released.

I agree, and sliverstorm's comment doesn't sound like he disagrees, either.

In Australia we have free health care but not dental. Dental is often an exceptional case in most healthcare plans as well. It would be nice to not have to worry about that any longer.

I'd be interested to know what proportion of dentistry is due to decay, particularly with the advent of chlorinated water. You'd possibly still need checkups for gum diseases.

Denmark same thing and dental care here is expensive. It can easily put any medium income family back a 8K just to get a bridge done.

You can fly to Repuplic of Moldova, it will be cheaper even considering airplane tickets.

But not 8K for a high- or low-income family?

Did you mean flouridated instead of chlorinated water? I've never heard of chlorine affecting tooth decay; it's normally added to water supplies to control germs. Flouride on the other hand is routinely added expressly for this purpose, although whether it is either effective or wise to do so is the subject of many bitter and divisive debates in communities.

Yeah I did, thanks for picking that one up.

It's more likely that higher rates of tooth decay started when humans began grinding grains finely enough to make such things as refined flour, and refined sugars. The paleolithic diet did not include such things, which easily become food for bacteria that lives in the mouth and causes tooth decay.

Do you have any data on how many teeth they found per mouth in remains of paleolithic people?

There is a classic work of Weston A. Price "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration" exactly on the topic, except that he studied the living people - tribes all over the world, who still do not eat processed foods etc.

http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200251h.html

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2010/10/18/130654483/starchy...

Much like the advent of the antibiotic era put most doctors out of business?

The same argument would apply to optometrists with the advent of laser eye surgery. It would be interesting to see if it has made a dent in their incomes, and if contact lens sales are down, for example.

I don't know what it takes to go from being an eye doctor to doing laser eye surgery, but it seems to me like there's a pretty clear skills development path there. I'd be interested to know if that's a feasible career move and, if so, how many have already made it.

When I had LASIK done 8 years ago, it was by an ophthalmologist, an MD specializing in the eye, not by the optometrist who prescribed glasses and contact lenses.

Optometrists would probably have to go back to school, become MDs, specialize, and then go for additional training in laser eye surgery.

Cue the "Think of the dentists!" defense?

I'm still worried about the cottage industry loomists that are being driven out of business by these great big watermill looms.

Won't somebody think of the chandlers!

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