Posted on 12/04/2012 9:41:47 PM PST by nickcarraway
Dr. Jay Friedman relishes his role as dental outcast. Like a pesky younger brother who enjoys watching his siblings squirm, the 86-year-old dentist and public health advocate has for decades been poking and prodding at the oral health community over his personal obsession: wisdom teeth.
Friedman has argued for more than 30 years that removing a young person's healthy wisdom teeth -- called "third molars" by professionals -- is an unnecessary and irresponsible practice. While many dentists and oral surgeons have dismissed him as a traitor and a zealot, in 2007, people in the public health arena began to listen.
That's when Friedman published an article in the American Journal of Public Health claiming at least two-thirds of the millions of wisdom teeth extracted each year at a cost of billions of dollars were removed for no good reason. In pointed terms, Friedman accused his colleagues of ignoring the lack of evidence supporting the need for such surgery in order to line their own pockets.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
58 years and I have all of mine. Better than all my other molars and my dentist constantly wants to remove one. No, I say it still works.
Well, I had two coming in horizontal, and two coming in at 45 degree angles. Had no room in my jaw for a third set, they’d have been pushing my other teeth forward and that would have been a mess.
Guy is a crackpot.
Had my Wisdom Teeth not been cut out I would have the smile of a typical Englishman.
I knew it!!!!!
I didn’t need to klick it bit did.
Several friends use that joke in various forms.
Anti denteye?
I figured if my wisdom teeth behaved themselves, they could stay. Decades have passed and so far, so good.
Does Jimmy like posting?
My last day in the Navy I was checking out at various departments and when I got to the dentist I told him I had one more wisdom tooth that needed to be pulled. And believe me, it needed to be pulled. I wanted him to pull it so I wouldn’t have to pay a civilian dentist down the road. Well, the novacain didn’t work. For some reason it simply had no effect on me. I told him to pull it anyway. He had to break in two to get it out. And believe me, before he was halfway through I regretted my decision but it was too late to stop. Not something I’d do again.
I had mine out and suddenly became a liberal.
He said, "Let me take a look, crack ... snap."
What did you do?! "I pulled it; let me get the other one, crack - pop." I went back to duty with no rigmarole.
I kept the two uppers and the only thing I have noted through the many years is that they hang halfway over the lower molars. No dentist has ever wanted to pull them.
I had no appreciation for Jewish humor until I lived on the East Coast for 4 years and it seemed 1/2 my friends were Jewish.
Before that I never got Seinfeld. Now I watch reruns and theyze always heelarryus.
Soup Nazi, two face, Elaine’s dancing( which I mimic when my lame and danced distressed friends attempt to dance) are just too damn funny.
Right now I’m watching the Ken Burns documentary of WWII.
I don’t u understand how the world could have done that....
Our response was necessary ....
Watching how American of Japanese descent were rounded up and interred.
Disgusting...
Is there a connection between the collective loss of wisdom teeth and our collective loss of wisdom ?
Mine came in angled to destroy my cheeks, and are a memory.
I had an extra set of wisdom teeth that never came thru my gums. They used to get infected about every 6 months and I finally had a enough of it in my 20’s and had them removed. Haven’t had any infections since them.
A) a maverick genius
or
B) a dangerous whackjob
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