By Mark Hartley
A couple of things happened this morning. First of all, I watched an interview of a popular television actor I had never heard of. He seemed like a nice young man, a good role model for his young viewers. But it reminded me once again of how television targets its audiences to appeal to advertisers.
Two things bother me about this. I think the first gripe is certainly shared by all Baby Boomers, and it deals with this assumption that there's something out there that we wouldn't buy. If there's one thing a Baby Boomer can be counted on to do, it's spend money. Secondly, almost every Baby Boomer can recall a time when it was abnormal to have more than one television in a house. Three generations — grandparents, parents, and kids — would gather around the single television to watch a program. I don't remember anyone complaining vehemently about the programming, even though there were only three choices: CBS, NBC, or ABC. These days, not only is it a situation of where kids wouldn't be caught dead watching a program that parents like, spouses wouldn't be caught dead watching what the other one watches.
Personally, I think there's something wrong with that. I'm all for choices, but when our choices never seem to intersect with who should be the most important people in our lives ... hmmm.
The second thing that happened was when I arrived at work and read The Bolen Report, an e-newsletter prepared by a consumer advocate named Tim Bolen. Bolen's advocacy, though, is restricted to the health-care professions. I'm not 100 percent certain (since the articles are not written with a straight journalistic format), but it seems like, according to the newsletter, that the American Medical Association and pharmaceutical companies are killing us off. However, "alternative medicine," which many dental professionals will at least consider, is an underdog in Bolen's world that holds many answers to the future of health care.
A lot of choices are out there for us to seize upon in our quest to remain healthy and to live longer.
What caught my attention in The Bolen Report was a sentence in an editorial titled, "The Last Days of the Quackbusters." Quackbusters are the bad guys. They apparently spend their days trying to stop anyone who doesn't fit within the giant paradigm of "traditional medicine."
Bolen writes, "[Quack's] original meaning, from Europe, comes from the term quacksalver, which was used to describe dentists who were dumb enough to use mercury (a poison) as fillings for teeth."
Before I wander too far away from The Bolen Report, it's probably important to get a sense of why he would say that about dentists. For example, he later writes, "So called alternative medicine is actually the health choice of planet earth. It is a combination of every good health idea invented by mankind, in every country and culture on this planet."
Well, that's great, I'm all for choices. But, whoa, Bubba, let's back it up there.
The current official definition of quack as a medical term, according to MedicineNet.com, is a "practitioner who suggests the use of substances or devices for the prevention or treatment of disease that are known to be ineffective." A second meaning is, "A person who pretends to be able to diagnose or heal people, but is unqualified and incompetent."
I seriously doubt that there's many dental professionals who want to be associated with either definition.
Quacksalver actually is an obsolete Dutch term that combines two words that means a "boaster who applies a salve."
Who knows? Maybe the first quacksalver was a Dutch barber who had an ointment that was claimed to have worked fabulously well on aching teeth too.
But actually it was the British who documented the prevalence of quackery, and that must be where we have to begin our references to the origin of the word, since we don't have anything else. The British Empire had the foresight in the 1800s to actually count "1,300 different proprietary medicines, the majority of which can be described as quack cures."
You can read the latter quote as part of a fascinating story about quack medicine at encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com.
Dentists are not mentioned once in the evolution of quacks. What I found particularly interesting was The Free Dictionary.com's description of quackery today: "Quackery can be found in any culture and in every medical tradition. Quackery is found today in advertisements for 'miracle cures' and 'faith healing,' as well as the other claims, generally considered ridiculous by the medical community, made on behalf of, for example, natural remedies sold in health food stores, or certain diet and fitness regimes."
And be sure to read this comment too: "People with no formal medical education often try to bypass professional medicine by self-prescribing over-the-counter remedies for problems that may need professional treatment. Most people with an e-mail account have experienced the marketing tactics of spamming — the current trend for miraculous penis enlargement, weight-loss remedies and unprescribed medicines of dubious quality sold on the Internet are perhaps the most common current form of quackery. ... In the field of natural medicine, many practitioners prescribe natural remedies, which they sell at a profit. This common practice could be viewed as a conflict of interest. Natural medical practitioners also run the risk of prescribing pills because patients ask for them, or out of faddish popularity. A potential conflict always exists in the healthcare professions between the desire to make money, and the desire to help patients."
This definition, of course, makes us realize what is good about "evidence-based dentistry." No one is denying choices in health; we just need to see the evidence. And if the evidence indicates that there are only two or three choices, just like what television viewers from almost 50 years ago had, what's wrong with that?
Mark Hartley is the editor of RDH magazine
