THE PRESS WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 24, 1988. Better sense in Dental Bill

Press, 24 August 1988, Page 20

THE PRESS WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 24, 1988. Better sense in Dental Bill

Useful changes have been made to the Dental Bill that is intended to bring more competition to the practice of dentistry. The Government has backed away from its first intention of opening the doors to anyone at all with a pair of pliers and an urge to play dentist. It took much doing, but the Government was finally persuaded to spare the public from the quackery and mischief that would have resulted from the initial proposal. The original bill was greatly rewritten by the Select Committee that heard submissions on it. Now, only those people who have demonstrated their competence and accountability will be allowed to practise as dentists. The Minister of Health, Mr Caygill, has confirmed that the Government accepts this change. This removes the most hazardous aspect of the Government’s plans for deregulating dentistry. It was not likely that the Government wanted to encourage or legalise bad or dangerous practices; but, in its fervour to force the spirit of competition on dentists, the Government came perilously close to doing just that. Mr Caygill now takes the view that competition among dentists — and consequently cheaper treatment for patients — can be achieved by removing the restrictions on advertising that bind dentists at present. Cut-price dentistry there may be, but at least it will be provided only by trained and accredited dentists. Mr Caygill might find, however, that the public desire for cutprice dentistry is not as great as he imagines. No doubt dentists could offer cheap

treatment today; but how many people would want the cheap results that go with it? In their opposition to the recipe for open slather that the Government first suggested, dentists attracted occasional criticism for acting purely out of self-interest. The judgment was overly harsh. Perhaps some

dentists do desire a closed shop, but equally as many probably dreaded the thought of the botched-up mistreatments that they would be called on to put right after mountebanks had done their best and worst. The inevitable price of removing restrictions on charlatans and quackery in any field of medicine, not just , dentistry, is a greater risk of mismanagement and of failure. This means more pain and suffering for the victim and more cost, not all of which is always borne by the victim alone. Often enough, remedying the harm wrought by charlatans, or over-confident nonprofessionals, becomes a charge on us all through the public health system. In other health fields it is already easy for people who are desperate, dissatisfied, suspicious of conventional practice, or simply willing dupes of humbug, to find alternative treatments for real or imagined ills. The treatments range from the mystic to the pseudo-scientific. People should not be prevented from resorting to practices on the fringes of medicine if they so wish, as long as those practices are not downright harmful or likely to engage the rest of the community in costly rehabilitation. When it comes to invasive surgery such as that required in the repair of much dental disease, however, the public should be assured of the competence of practitioners who know what they are doing, who follow procedures tested or approved of by others in the profession, and who can deal with emergencies when things go wrong.

Wisely — and fortunately for the public — the Government has come to the same conclusion. The revised Dental Bill should restore the protection for the public that its forerunner would have abolished. The bill, the public purse, and the public’s dental care will be all the better for it.