CONTROL OF DENTISTS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 227, 25 September 1930, Page 6

CONTROL OF DENTISTS.

No doubt there is quite a good case to =be made outf for the proposal of the Minister of Health to place dentists under the control of a dental council. One part of the Bill, however, makes grave injustice possible, and for that reason it should be very carefully scrutinised. The Council has poAver "to purge the dental register and control the profession in cases of grave impropriety or infamous conduct in a professional sense." "Infamous conduct" in this sense may not be infamous in the ordinary sense of the world at all. In England a doctor was struck off the register for "infamous conduct" because he gave an anaesthetic for Mr. Herbert Barker, the famous bone-setter, who was an unqualified man in the medical sense of the term. The infamy lay not with the doctor, but with the General Medical Council, and irony was added to it when the King honoured Mr. Barker with a knighthood. The risk of anything like this happening with this Dental Council should be eliminated or minimised; What is or is not "infamous conduct" should be defined in the Bill. It would be monstrous if a dentist could, be deprived of his means of livelihood because he committed what was no more than a breach of etiquette. For this reason, also, there should be at least one layman on the Council.