Why dental associations promote fluoridation? Pt4
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It might seem that the motives of some other professional associations in supporting fluoridation cannot be explained by this line of reasoning.
I, obviously, do not know the answer, but all those associations, no doubt, found their own reasons for doing what they are doing.
Even if other professions cannot really hope to turn their pro-fluoridation posturing into this holier-than-thou flash-card, just like dentists seem to be doing so well, maybe they are content to get at least something from it?
It is quite clear that some professions would have more business selling "therapeutic procedures", services and goods to those who got some serious illness earlier than the genetically predetermined age for those health disorders.
At the top of this list is, of course, the medical profession.
If fluoridation causes a statistical elevation of the incidence of certain diseases in the populace, requiring medical diagnosis and treatment, then doctors stand to make money from that.
But, obviously, in order to have allies in promoting fluoridation, they would have to induce those parties to partake in the bonanza of the elevated statistical incidence of certain diseases and medical conditions.
If someone's health had been undermined sufficiently to rely on medical supervision and medical procedures, drug therapy, special diets, various medical gadgets, special equipment in house to help them go about their daily routine, then that person had become a veritable milking cow for many professions!
Various professions may also be supporting each other in protecting their self-regulating status, as well as helping some previously government-regulated professions to become self-regulated.
Those who already have a self-regulating status, no doubt, realize that this is not something cast in stone, they have to defend it.
Any way you put it, it is rather bizarre that a profession would be allowed to regulate itself. After all, any profession consists of members who perform a certain service for a fee.
This is not some association of manufactureres which develop various Internet or computer communication protocols or various formats of digital pictures or movies.
Those do not deal with public directly and the public at large does not really care which protocol or a picture format they devise next.
But the members of a dental association work directly with public. They also work for their own benefit.
Obviously, they perform a very valuable public service in a process, but still, one cannot deny that buying dental treatment is a contractual relationship, which is also an adversarial process.
At least it should be so for those, who do not want to be pushed around.
A phone company also performs valuable public service, and so do car mechanics, police, banks, credit-card companies, savings and lending institutions, fire-fighters, but we do not allow them to be self-regulated, even though nobody knows their business better than them.
And yet dentists, as well as doctors, have managed to get self-regulating status for themselves!
The official posturing of the brass of the self-regulating professions is, of course, such that this status means more responsibility, a call to a higher level of duty and public service and stuff like that.
But the simple reality is that a self-regulating status for a profession is quite literally a gold mine, since it allows them to set the rules of the game, to determine how they conduct business.
Before I introduce a few examples to support my line of reasoning, I would like to repeat that I did not study the legal statutes, which are relevant to this, I speak only from personal experience.
Example 1
In the Canadian Province of Ontario you can go to a specialist only through a referral from a family doctor.
The official rationale for this rule is to make sure that people do not "overload" the health-care services.
But, considering that a dermatologist would also not see you without a referral, this can also be seen as a way to secure more business for the profession.
After all, why do I need a referral from a family doctor to remove a skin tag or a wart?
Once you have been referred to a specialist, no additional referrals are required, as long as you see that specialist at least once a year.
If you allowed more than a year to pass without seeing "your" specialist, then you would again need a referral from a family doctor.
Again, I would imagine it is possible to come up with the official rationale for these rules, which only deal with the need to prevent "overloading" of available services.
But we can also see all this referral business it as a good way to generate more business.
And, as one can well imagine, a self-regulating profession has more means at its disposal to set the rules of how they conduct business, while making it all appear at the surface that it is all in public interest.
Example 2
When I was doing my nursing practice in hospital, I had a patient who had calcium carbonate prescribed as a supplement.
She was a menopausal woman.
As a result of that prescription, her stomach acidity went up.
And apparently it was serious enough to make her doctor prescribe antacid medication on top of that.
It so happened that I suggested to her to talk to her doctor and to question the wisdom of having to consume calcium supplement in the form of a carbonate, which is known to elevate stomach acidity.
There are much safer supplements, which do not have this adverse effect.
I reflected that in my nursing notes, only to discover that it precipitated an entire chain reaction, with the teacher writing bad feedback regarding my "inappropriate interference" into the area which was not my responsibility, and which could also have an effect of undermining patient's trust in the system.
She even reported that to the second in command of the Nursing Faculty.
The whole matter was, no doubt, very serious according to her!
The second-in-command wrote me a letter, in which a warning was issued that "failure to play the team" may have serious consequences for my chances to pass the semester!
Those are her exact words! I have that letter in my possession!
One can certainly argue about this case from any point of view, but if I were a patient of that doctor, I would seriously question his professional integrity, if he tried to pull such a trick on me.
What kind of a treatment is that, which required another "fix" to deal with the adverse effect, especially considering the fact that many other calcium supplements, which do not have this effect, are widely available and they are not expensive!
If something like this would be done by any other trade or a profession, one could go after the perpetrator - Better Business Bureau, consumer protection agency - private or government, even a court of law.
But, as one can well imagine, it is not so easy with a self-regulating profession!
My other site (www.surviveHospital.com) has an entire page with various examples of fraudulent practices perpetrated by medical doctors (opens in a new window)
Some of those examples were taken from papers, the others were communicated to me through personal contacts.
As one can well imagine, the medical profession uses various tactics in squeezing the government or the patients for more money.
One such tactics is performing procedures of questionable value, including the outright useless procedures.
This brings revenues to the practice, while the patients are not getting any benefits from those procedures.
This could seem like an outrageous and irresponsible statement, and I certainly hope this does not reflect the practices of all doctors, but, any way you put it, all those examples on the aforementioned page had either been reported in the media or have been communicated to me by the sources I trust.
Some of those I have experienced personally.
The picture below shows a growth I had on my eyelid in 1999.
As one can well imagine, I was very worried.
But the doctor, whom I went to see with this, did not bother to treat it, instead he administered eyedrops, which made my pupils relax and thus unable to contract, and after that he started examining my retina.
And when I demanded to know why did he waste my appointment to perform a procedure, which I clearly did not need, that crook said he would look at that growth next time.
Needless to say, the rest of my day was ruined, I was barely able to see, everything was blurred, and tears were pouring non-stop.
I did not even bring sunglasses with me, as I did not expect anything like that!
As far as that growth was concerned, I was not going to wait for the next appointment and I went to see another doctor the next day, only to be told that we have to start with eyedrops!
This case is described on my other site
This business of performing useless procedures is apparently taken into the next level by the more "enterprising" doctors.
I was told by one acquaintance, whose wife works as a receptionist in the office of an ear and nose specialist, who, as was alleged, was, on occasion, deliberately allowing the patients' condition to deteriorate, so that he could then use the more expensive, more elaborate, more invasive procedures to "fix" the problem.
You can read more about this, as well as find more examples of fraud, on the aforementioned page from my other site.
It would be no problem to "straighten out" an "enterprising" tradesman from any other profession, who performed some useless, not to mention outright fraudulent "procedures", as a part of his contract with you.
You can always count on the media to help, on consumer advocacy groups, the government consumer protection agency, the court of law, but not so fast with self-regulating professions!
And even though the perpetrators who belong to self-regulating professions can still be called to account, the process is far more difficult and far less certain.
I read in a newspaper (Toronto Star, March 17, 2007, p.A26) about one gynecologist, who works for one of the hospitals in the greater Toronto area, who has a higher rate than "average" of cutting through wrong organs.
A woman comes for a simple stress incontinence operation and leaves with a stoma.
It was a very big article, and among other things, it was mentioned that the reality of taking doctors to court is such that people are often forced to abandon solid malpractice cases simply because they have no money to keep paying the legal fees. And as a result they end up settling for peanuts.
Another tactics in bringing more money for a profession is to introduce new medical treatment procedures, which allegedly alleviate this or that condition.
When I had my gums prickled by a dental probe at three dollars per prickle, it was probably one of those procedures.
Dentists in the Canadian Province of Ontario do not seem to need any approval from the Provincial Dental Association for the procedures they perform, at least that the conclusion one can make from the letter I received from that Association.
And even though a government plan under the General Welfare or the Family Benefits would only pay for a certain list of the approved procedures, and so would a private dental Plan, the patient is still expected to cover for the rest of the procedures out of his pocket.
But medical doctors bill the government for all the procedures they perform, that is why it is reasonable to assume that every procedure they perform, has to be approved.
The approval for the more common procedures could well be rubber-stamped by the government on the recommendation of the medical association.
Let's consider an example when the researchers had come up with what they claim a new procedure to treat sleep disorders, which can alleviate the suffering for hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of people!
This example is somewhat illustrative and it is also very much real.
A scandal around the practices of one "sleep disorder clinic" had even spilled into the papers several years ago.
So here is my hypothetical scenario:
The results of the research are at first reported in conference proceedings and in medical periodicals.
After that the medical association would probably step in and start pressuring the government to include this treatment in the list of the procedures, for which doctors can bill the Ministry of Health.
As one can well imagine, this is a not a solid science, unlike civil engineering, for example.
There is certainly no "voodoo stuff" in the building code!
But things like "sleep disorder treatment" are clearly in a different category!
To any normal person the whole problem is probably laughable - get a job, learn to get up at 5 in the morning five days a week, learn to survive on five hours of sleep, like most people do, and you would quickly forget about any "sleep disorders"!
But the government, obviously, cannot adopt the same attitude!
And so the process of evaluating the procedure is set in motion.
The parties also work out the "compensation package" for the doctors who are willing to "master the intricacies of that procedure" and to start offering it through their practice.
On the surface of it, the whole negotiating process probably looks no different, as compared to when a phone company submits a request to the government for a fee increase for some of their services.
Or when the smaller phone companies pressure the government to deregulate the business and to allow them to also install equipment, to sell services and thus to compete with the company, which had originally laid out all the phone wires and cables in this or that city.
But in reality, the things there are likely to be very much different.
A phone company is not self-regulating. Whatever claims they make can be verified by the engineers, who either work for the government or who have been retained from the outside to provide the technical expertise to the government.
But not so simple when you deal with the medical profession, especially considering the fact, that they are self-regulating!
There is simply no realistic way to assess the claims regarding this or that "revolutionary" treatment, especially when it comes to such "fuzzy" stuff, as "sleep disorder treatment", or some new very expensive drug therapy which gives only a marginal, even though statistically evident improvement.
The results have been reported on a conference, in the periodical medical press, who could possibly say anything against?
The members of the medical profession have banded into an association to advance their interests, even though according to their declared statements, they are selflessly serving the public.
And here they want a yet another treatment to be approved, so that their practicing members can start billing the government for this treatment.
According to their "official" position, this would alleviate the suffering for the people.
But, since it costs time and effort to perform this treatment, practitioners must be adequately compensated.
On one hand, there is a clear motive for a personal gain for every practitioner.
On the other hand there is the need to make it all appear as a valuable contribution to the public welfare.
Where do you draw the line?
How do you make the people at large, as well as those who make the decisions, to buy the idea that your proposal is entirely in public interests?
How about some altruistic posturing to the effect that members of the profession put the public health above everything else, even their incomes!
Could this strategy have anything to do with the support of fluoridation by the dental and medical associations in US and Canada?
Coming back to self-regulating status for a profession, it is obvious that it means a considerable distance from public scrutiny, since the profession can conduct internal disciplinary hearings, which, of course, allows to control the damaging exposure to the minimum.
The declared intentions acquire much more weight and importance, as compared to those professions which do not have this status.
The brass of dental associations, those who set the policy and make public pronouncements, obviously, realize that this status can, theoretically, be challenged.
Imagine there is a malpractice suit, which had resulted in a sizable judgement or a settlement in favor of a plaintiff, then another one, then another.
At some point the public would start asking - why these people are allowed to regulate themselves?
Is it really in the public interest?
But if they help some other professions to also obtain a self-regulating status, then that club would get bigger, with everything that comes with it.
And in a process of supporting each other, they may exchange other favors.
For example, asking the brass of that other profession to also throw their support behind a very important public health measure, which is fluoridation.
You cannot deny that overall it is a very risky game.
If enough people would learn the truth about this fluoridation racket, the consequences for the perpetrators would be hard to imagine!
But, unfortunately, the reality is such that the majority of people are not in the habit of forming their own opinions, they would rather allow the media to help them "think right".
Could it be that with a clientele like that some parties think that this is far too tempting not take the advantage of?