🚀 go-pugleaf

     In a nutshell:  How do I know I'm not being ripped off?

     To be more precise:  When my dentist recommends some
procedure, how do I know it's necessary?  I realize that there
are professional bodies regulating such things, that you can
haul your dentist up before them if he/she rips you or your
insurance company off, and so on.

     But let's face it... in a self-regulating profession, with
little consumer input into regulation, there is inevitably some
drift toward getting as much as you can out of the consumer.
Especially if the procedure is unlikely to hurt things.  How do
I know that the dental profession isn't deluding itself into
thinking that some expensive procedure is necessary when it
really isn't?

     I have no complaints with my current dentist, who is an
old highschool friend.  I have no doubt that if she recommends
procedure X, that she sincerely believes it is in my best
interests.  But she gets her information from the Dental
Association and her journals, all of which are controlled by
other dentists!  Why should I trust these people as a whole with
my dental well-being?

     Are there any well-informed consumer advocacy groups
concerned with dentistry out there?

     Please say what your interest in the matter is (dentist,
non-dentist, relative of dentist etc.) in your response.

--Jamie.
  jamie@cs.sfu.ca
"God has a transfinite book of theorems in which the best proofs are written.
 And if he is well-intentioned, he gives it to us for a moment." -- Paul Erdoes