THE DENTAL PROFESSION.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19260, 26 August 1924, Page 6

THE DENTAL PROFESSION.

We referred last week to the bold attempt which is being made by and on behalf of unqualified dental mechanics with a view to securing their admission as registered practitioners without the obligation of conforming to the prescribed tests. Parliament has already aided the backdoor ambitions of this class of supplicants with, as we think, undue and loose generosity. The dissatisfied mechanics seem to be able to exercise a degree of influence quite out of proportion to the validity of their claims. By pertinacity and fallacious appeal to sympathy, not by reasoned argument, they have managed to gain the ear of a large section of Parliament and of more than one Government. Twenty years ago, when the main Dentists Bill was introduced, a considerable number of men were practising illegally; and so powerful were they and their friends that it was recognised that the measure, which placed the training of dental students under the New Zealand University, would have to be abandoned if substantial concessions were

not made. The backdoor was opened, therefore, or left ajar, and anyone who at the time of the passing of the Act had been engaged in mechanical dentistry for a certain period was entitled to be placed on the register. There was an understanding, implied if not actually expressed, that there would be 'no further compromise in Regard to the principle of the Act; but six years later a new company of derelicts successfully asked for admission under the pre-1904 terms, and additional legislation in the same direction was passed in 1911 and 1920. And now further concessions are being sought, and the latest Dentists Amendment Bill, despite what should be the convincing representations of the New Zealand Dental Association, has a Cabinet Minister as its sponsor. In the just interests primarily of the public, and secondarily of the qualified practitioners and the 120 students now undergoing the normal four years’ course of training at the Dental School, it is to bo trusted that Parliament will reject the Bill. The import of the question was set forth pithily and cogently by Dr Pickerill, Dean of the Dental Faculty, in a statement published by us yesterday. Surely, as Dr Pickerill urges, it is the duty of Parliament to keep faith with the present students, who naturally resent these reiterated claims that those who have not complied with the law should be allowed to take a short cut to registration and legitimate practice. The protests of the present practitioners are equally worthy of respect. And in relation to the people of the dominion Parliament has an inalienable responsibility, even if the community be too shortsighted to perceive, or too apathetic to maintain, its vital interests in the matter. What a universal outcry there would be if the idea of degrading the standards of medical qualification were to be seriously mooted! Yet the difference between the two ideas is merely of degree, not of kind. The condition of the teeth is seldom an immediate concern of life and death, though it is associated with the most serious physical issues; and so it is apt to be regarded in a more or less trifling spirit. It is time that there were an end to an irresponsible campaign of militant quackery based, as Dr Pickerill shows in detail, on pleas of an utterly false and misleading nature.