I have had the misfortune to have gone to dentists who engaged
in fraud, or who used me as a guinea pig to experiment upon in
trying out the latest dental fads.

When I was about 12 years old, my father's dentist, Dr. E, claimed the
white spot on an upper incisor was "basketweave decay," which
had to be drilled out and filled with a porcelain filling. This
dentist was an old-timer who did not use novocain. So this
procedure was like the dental torture scene in the movie "Marathon
Man." I also heard other kids talking about having
basketweave decay.

And Dr. E, of course, blamed me for the basketweave
decay. It was my fault I got it because I allegedly didn't brush my
teeth enough. That's the great thing about the dental profession,
isn't it? It's always so easy to blame their victims. And, my father, being brainwashed to accept uncritically the opinions of the medical profession, did not question Dr. E's blaming me.

Years later I had to have the filling replaced. This dentist, Dr. C,
had never heard of basketweave decay. He said the white spots
were hypercalcification, and some people's teeth just formed
that way. So I have an unnecessary filling weakening the tooth.

Basketweave decay must have been a dental fad. Oh wait, that's
right, dentists don't have fads, just us stupid peon consumers do, with
things like vitamins and natural foods.

When I was about 16, I went to another dentist, Dr. H. This one wanted
to remove my wisdom teeth, which had not yet erupted. You could see
the dollar signs in his eyes when he talked about wisdom teeth. Fortunately
my mother said no to this procedure. The wisdom teeth have never
bothered me.

This dentist also wanted to replace the silver fillings I had in the
four lower molars with a white plastic material. This jerk assumed
I was a stereotypical teenage airhead who would jump at the chance to
have natural looking, white teeth. I didn't care about that then, and
still do not now. But he won my mother over by claiming the
existing fillings had a lot of decay around them and needed to be
replaced. So I had that done.

But, the plastic material does not hold up as well as amalgam
fillings. They wore down within about four years, placing
abnormal forces on the front teeth, causing them to have some mobility.
When I had these plastic fillings replaced, another dentist, Dr. P, found
that the silver filling in one tooth had not been completely
removed. "I can't believe somebody put a filling over a filling" is what he said.
I guess that's how badly decayed they were, that Dr. H didn't
even have to drill all the silver out. In other words, Dr. H
was a liar and a fraud.

Now in middle age these molars have been weakened so much by the unnecessary work that they are cracking and breaking apart.

At least in my youth the orthodontics craze had not yet progressed to
the point where all kids are supposed to get braces. But now braces
are even being pushed on adults. I saw an orthodontist's ad which
claimed that 80% of the population could benefit from orthodontics.
That's nothing, 100% of all orthodontists benefit from brace$.

Too bad there isn't some way of putting these fraudsters out of
business.