STDWYTK Goes to the Dentist

Few people look forward to visiting the dentist -- it can be an uncomfortable, but necessary, process. In the US, many people end up putting off their appointments due to anxiety or financial concerns, but in general everyone can agree dental hygiene is important, and dentists do incredibly important work. But how many of those procedures -- the root canals, the crowns and so on -- do you actually need? In today's episode, the guys dive into the Stuff They Don't Want You To Know about dentistry.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.

(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is known, and they
called me Ben. We are joined as always with our
super producer, all mission controlled decons. Most importantly, you are you.
You are here, and that makes this the stuff they
don't want you to know. In today's episode, stuff they
don't want you to know is going to the dentist.
And unless be honest, folks, most people hate that kind

(00:49):
of appointment. It can be a painful, expensive, sometimes humiliating hassle.
But still, when everything works out, it's better than the
alternative because if left untree did your cavities, your other
ailments can make a serious negative impact on your life.
And I was thinking about this, you know, all the
way back to uh the stereotypical image of Steve Martin's

(01:14):
dentist in Little Shop of Horrors. Dentists have this unique
spot in culture, at least in the US. Like postal workers,
they've been saddled with all sorts of pretty unkind stereotypes.
And this doesn't mean dentists have done anything wrong. It's
just that in the vast majority of cases, people who

(01:34):
don't care for dentists associate them with previous unpleasant experiences.
There's some behavioralism going on. Definitely, just think about horrible bosses.
I mean just yeah, the dentist can be bad at
least in movies and TV. Well, the biggest one that
I think always has followed me around you Before I

(01:55):
had seen the movie, I was aware of the character
and the scene as the Laurence Olivi a character and
the Marathon Man with Dustin Hoffman or he's literally torturing
the protagonists of the film with dental tools, and he's like,
I think he's like a former Nazi, if I'm not
mistaken from Yeah, and he keeps saying is it safe?
And I've never quite fully understood what that other than

(02:16):
just like an odd idiosyncrasy. But yeah, he's like, you know,
drilling the guy's teeth out like for frenzies just to
make him talk um. And it's a it's a it's
a torture technique. We see, you know in other films too,
like Old Boy, for example, where the character uses the
back end of a hammer to twist the guy's teeth
out of his mouth. Teeth are very triggering for people.
Oh yeah, it's one of the most common nightmare tropes.

(02:39):
Uh that I think, Matt, you were probably gonna mention
this fight and stand. It's if you look at like
for anybody who has strange dreams, you'll notice that you
you probably do have a couple of dreams that are
common in the human species, and one of the most
common is the idea of one's teeth cracking or one's

(03:00):
teeth falling out. But this is not a dream interpretation
episode quite yet. We We do know though that we're
when we're talking about the world of dentistry, we are
talking about some tropes. And at the very top, I
want to give a shout out to an excellent article
published in The Atlantic in twenty nineteen by Faris Jabber

(03:23):
j A. B R. It's called The Truth about Dentistry. Uh.
Farris has done some excellent work here, and I think
he nailed one of our collective interpretations of what visiting
a dentist is like. Yes, definitely, you've likely had some
kind of toothache before in the past, I know I have,

(03:43):
and it is. It's an inescapable terrible feeling, and in
order to fix it you have to go and see
a dentist. And when you go to see a dentist,
you are putting yourself through an experience. And as you said, Ben,
there this writer in the Atlanta describes it as such.
He gets it a masked figure looms over your recumbent body,

(04:07):
wielding power tools and sharp metal instruments, doing things to
your mouth you cannot see, and only asking you questions
after you Okay, this is gonna be an explicit episode,
only asking you questions after you have a bunch of
it in your mouth, you know what I mean? Like
is it safe and well? And and even sometimes asking

(04:30):
you questions that you don't fully understand. I think he
also notes that or that you don't have the answers
to while you're in that position. Yeah, what do you
think purple smells like? I gotta say, though I pride
myself and being a really good patient, I know exactly
when they want me to turn my head. I try
to predict it so that I'm just like so that

(04:51):
they won't literally, you know, jab me in the gums
on purpose. Right. We try to be uh. You know,
those of us on this show, we're talking thing about
this little bit off air with Paul. Uh, those of
us on on the show today, and perhaps you're listening
with us at home or wherever your adventurous find you. Uh,
we're all suffering from what could be called information as

(05:14):
symmetry when we were in that chair. We are not
the experts, right, and sometimes to pay on your dentist's
bedside manner, you may in fact feel like you are
required to be penitent. I'm sorry, doctor, I'm sorry. I
I assure you I will do a better job flossing.
But that is that is the question every time, then

(05:35):
every time for me personally, and I bet for a
lot of other people. So how you been doing on
the flossing? And they know, they know because they're looking
into your mouth. So you can't really, I can't really
pull a deception. You'd have to roll pretty high in
that D and D game. But there's something else too
with this information as symmetry. We have to ask ourselves.

(05:58):
Is dentistry a necessary, very evil or is there more
to the story. The answers may disturb you, and if
you are one of the small portion of the world's
population who does have a legitimate phobia of dentistry and
of talking about teeth and knives and drills in your mouth,
then honestly be warned, this may not be the episode

(06:21):
for you. But let's start at the very beginning, because
dentistry has a surprising history. Here are the facts. Yet
it turns out it's uh I think it and like
sex worker, two of the oldest professions. I just sort
of made that up. But they're probably not too too
far off because the dentistry dates back to seven thousand
b c e UM, where evidence of its practice was

(06:43):
discovered in the Indus Valley civilization. But it wasn't until
five thousand BC that descriptions actually relating to dentistry um
as a profession and tooth decay became kind of part
of the record, right. Uh So at the time, a
Sumarian text described the idea of tooth decay as being

(07:04):
caused by toothworms, um, you know, and this was kind
of the prevailing theory for quite some time, all the
way into the seventeen hundreds. So it does lead experts
to describe dentistry as the oldest specialization in medicine at
the very least, maybe not the oldest profession, but the

(07:24):
first book focusing entirely on the practice of dentistry was
published as far back as fifteen thirty UM and dentistry,
as we've already indicated at the top of the show,
mega important. Today. You always hear about people saying how
like your teeth and your your nerves and your teeth
and your roots of your teeth are like a direct
line to your heart. So if you have, you know,

(07:47):
tooth decay and tooth problems and infections, it can literally
kill you, can affect your jaw, can affect your hearing.
There is a lot at stake here because don't forget
you know, your head is the most important of your limbs, right,
so your mouth is a neighbor to the most mysterious
important organ in your body, the brain, as well as

(08:10):
a lot of your specialized sensory organs. Uh. If you
are you know, a human being or a mammal in general, Hey,
I just want to I just want to speak for
tooth worms just for a moment on their behalf. Because
the concept that there was something foreign in the mouth

(08:30):
that was causing the teeth to decay is a it's
a good thought. They're like, Okay, it must be something
else affecting. This isn't just a natural thing. They just
got the size wrong, right, because a tooth worm it
would have to be you know, at the smallest microscopic.
But really, what you're you're thinking about bacteria and other uh,

(08:51):
microorganisms that are in your teeth kind of eating away
at the enamel, and different chemicals and substances that eat
away at the enamel on your in your teeth. It's
not worms. But they were close, that's all I want
to say. Yeah, yeah, And you have to applaud it
because they were able to they were able to say
something is a miss here, and they were you know,

(09:11):
it's a really good point, Matt. They were kind of
on the money. But dentistry, like other fields of medicine
and scientific research, evolved past its earlier roots roots. Sorry uh,
and you know we can we can skip some of
the very fascinating historical aspects of dentistry, like the the

(09:33):
reign of dentist barbers, where the idea was that if
you are qualified to cut hair, hey, you're qualified to
cut off fingers, arms, extract teeth, why not you got
the stuff already. But but uh, now your dentists will
probably bulk if you ask them to perform an amputation
or if you ask them to cut your hair, as
long as they're legit, you know, been that that, I'm

(09:56):
sorry to cut you off. I keep doing that. The
Atlantic article makes an the great point that likens the
art of dentistry, the science of dentistry, closer to surgery
than to um a medical doctor. At least that's the
way they consider it. And it's very much is in
line with what you were just saying there. Yeah, yeah,
it's true. And today, the what would loosely be called

(10:21):
the global dental services market, meaning everything related to dentistry,
reached the value of almost three hundred and sixty five
point six billion dollars. That's that's well over the g
d P of several countries. And that's just in this year.
In one the dental industry in the US alone is

(10:44):
predicted to reach a value of one hundred and thirty
eight point eight billion dollars. People in the US go
to dentists, um well, regardless of how frequently or infrequently
you go, Uh, it tends to be an expensive endeavor
in short, business is good right now. As of last year,

(11:05):
there were over two hundred thousand dentists estimated to be
working in the US, and this funny story. This led
some industry experts, including dentists themselves, to argue, there are
just too many dentists around because you know from well
from their perspective, you know, the cost of education is rising, right,

(11:25):
and it's healthy for you if you own a dental
practice to have other dentists in the area, right, so
you're not overloaded, but you don't want too many because
then you're you're short changing yourself. It's kind of the
same way that no, it's not there's a Starbucks everywhere.
Keep that part in so this so this is all

(11:48):
well and good, right. And the techniques have, as we've said,
evolved over time, but still not to the point where
they could ease everyone's fears. If you conduct did uh,
If you conducted a survey like some of the ones
have been done over recent years, you will find that
as many as sixty one percent of people more than

(12:09):
half or at least apprehensive about seeing the dentist, and
fifteen percent or so are so anxious about this that
they avoid the dentist almost entirely in a smaller percentage,
like we mentioned before, have a real phobia. They have
to go to a psychiatrist or a therapist to get

(12:29):
themselves back in the dentisty. I think anybody has like
dental fetishes out there. Yes, I don't. I m'd be
fascinated to hear about that so specific. Uh No, it's true,
and I understand exactly why. It's the noises. It's the vulnerability,
you know, especially if you're getting put under for a procedure.
You know that it's like an outpatient procedure, but you

(12:50):
still have that whole like counting backwards from ten as
you start to kind of enter the black land that is,
uh you know, um nitrius um sedation. Suppose there's something
even heavier right that if you feel very out of control.
So there's a lot of factors in here that can
contribute to this anxiety. I totally get. I'm not scared
of the dentist. I don't like needles, and I certainly

(13:12):
don't like getting shots in my mouth, but I'm not
too bad about my My daughter is similarly not too
freaked out. But I have known plenty of people in
my life that absolutely just can't hang with the dentist.
I just want to make I I agree with you. Um,
I love my dental higgenist. By way, by the way,
shout out to Dr Kim she and all the folks
over there. But hey, we've got the same one. Hey,

(13:34):
but I still don't like doing it. But they're great people. Uh.
But what I wanted to point out is what another
reason why many people don't go to a dentist very
frequently is because they don't have dental insurance. Um. And
you know, if you're just doing a yearly checkup or
a like most not most Like many people, it's twice

(13:56):
a year you go, especially if you have insurance, you
go and see the dentist for to look at that.
I know, and that's what you do. But like the
if you don't have insurance and you have any other issue,
like you need a group canal or any other you
know thing, get your wisdom teeth out, or all these
things that we're going to mention later, it would break

(14:16):
the bank. Absolutely. If so, I would argue, it's just
me here, folks. But I would argue that this anxiety
is well founded, especially in the US or any place
that has heavily privatized profit driven medicine and insurance, you know,
insurance schemes, and I'm using schemes in the British sense.

(14:38):
I'm not calling them capers just yet. But what but
what what happens is there's this self fulfilling prophecy where
you say, I'm putting off a trip to the dentist
because I know it'll be expensive and I know it'll
be painful, and it always is because I always put
it off. So we're creating the disaster and the pain

(14:59):
that we predict. And it can be tough, Like you
just said, Matt, it can be tough to avoid this
because in the US, for anyone unfamiliar, you don't have
there there's not there's not really anything like first world healthcare,
by which I mean there's not any kind of universal
medicine outside of limited programs like Medicare or Medicaid, which

(15:22):
could be their own episodes. There is some corruption there
as well, But when we get to the idea of corruption,
we have to say it. With all this money and
all these teeth in play, it shouldn't come as a
surprise that dentistry has a lot of critics and Most
of the criticism up to now attacks the expensive nature

(15:46):
of these procedures, like you have to get a root canal.
Let's just say you hypothetically have to get a root canal.
It sucks. It is not a pleasant experience unless you're
you know, specifically into that kind of pain and that
kind of environment for one reason or another. But it
also is financially unpleasant. You won't have much time to

(16:07):
predict it. By the time you need it it is,
it's going to feel like almost an emergency situation. It
takes a huge bite out of your budget. Even if
you have insurance, it will hit what are called, you know,
like your limits. So in privatized medicine here in the US,
you can have medical insurance, but then if you want
your eyes or your mouth taken care of, you need

(16:29):
two other separate types of insurance, vision insurance and dental insurance.
And this might sound really weird to people in Europe
or in other countries that again have first world medicine,
which to highlight to emphasize this, to repeat the point
the US does not. If you have enough money, you

(16:50):
can get world class care. But these these criticisms about
expense are valid, like like you said, Matt, there are
people who put off necessary procedures because they simply cannot
afford them. And these other criticisms are you know, they're
intertwined with those larger concerns about the state of healthcare
in the US. And weirdly enough, like any profession, American

(17:15):
dentistry has its own lobbying group as its own trade
representative group, the American Dental Association, and the course of
this episode will refer to them as the a d A.
They have historically opposed any kind of significant dental reform,
and they've been pretty open about this too, Like as
far back as nineteen, leaders of the a d A

(17:38):
went to Washington and they went to testify against something
called the Wagner Murray Dingle Bill, which is very more
way more fun to say as a name than it
is to read the bill. Uh, And they said, they
argued the opposite of critics today. They said, because there's
such a limited number of dentists, it's impossible to carry

(17:59):
out any program that promises complete dental care to children,
to both children and adults. So what they're saying is,
we can't make a law to give people decent dental
care or to guarantee it or promise it because we
cannot back up that promise because they're so highly in
demand and scarce. Is that the issue that was that
was their argument? Now? Was that an argument in good faith? Null? Um?

(18:22):
Maybe at the time, maybe at the time, and yeah,
int s, maybe it might be time to update the
old Wagner Murray Dingle or might be Dingel, I don't know,
I don't know the person Dingle and Dillard's. For anyone
who listened to our earlier episode, that would be an

(18:42):
epic like you know, department store kind of mash up. Um. No,
it's it's a good point. Uh and and and all
of this is at least on the surface about insurance, right, um,
But today it turns out that isn't really as much
the issue anymore, right, Yeah, yeah, you're right. Well, the

(19:03):
it might surprise some of our fellow conspiracy realists to
learn that today's episode isn't exactly about insurance. Or you
could make an episode about insurance, um. And it's not
really about the proven inequality in the world of dental care,
which I think we've established both of those pretty clearly.
Today's episode instead is about corruption, conspiracy, and crime. What

(19:26):
are we talking about. We'll tell you after a word
from our sponsors. Here's where it gets crazy. Teeth whitening.
Do I really need all these surgeries? Yeah, Ben, you
may be a really great point. And when we were

(19:47):
talking of fair that, I completely thought of myself as well. Uh,
you're not an expert going into the dentist. You don't
know necessarily what you need or don't need. And you
are leaning on the um in good faith, the true
and honest advice of an expert, just like you would,
you know, taking your car into a mechanic. And we

(20:08):
know how that can often go, uh not in the
favor of the person with less information. You can very
easily be sold a bill of goods and told oh,
you definitely need this thing. So and so is about
to go. That could be absolutely true. It also could
be absolutely false. And unless you are gonna chop around
and uh, you know which most people frankly don't, you're

(20:28):
probably gonna go with what they say. It's a great point.
And and and I want to bring this other piece
into that to think about it kind of simultaneously. As
we tell you some of these stories of actual corruption,
the the other almost non dentistry related um procedures. Let's
call them like teeth whitening. Like there are so many

(20:51):
different kinds of teeth whitening procedure you can get now,
and they all cost a ton of money. Different kinds
of things like getting if you grind your teeth, like
getting one of those molds made are it can cost
so much money. Things like even more plastic surgery, like
things that can be included at many dentistries like botox

(21:12):
and these other procedures. Sometimes, in some weird way, kind
of get wrapped up in the possibilities for you when
you're sitting there in that chair and talking to your
dentist or you know, your dental hygienist. It's just there
are a lot of things that seem to be available
that don't necessarily have to do directly with your teeth,
as well as the actual surgeries and things that you

(21:35):
may be offered. Yeah, yeah, so I think the you know,
we're doing research for this. I I loved that comparison
of the of the mechanic of the garage. The situations
can be very similar, but the situation with a dentist

(21:55):
office is a step more complicated. If we go back
to the work by Farris Jaber. Oh. Also side note
for anybody who wants to learn more about how to
differentiate between a good or unscrupulous auto mechanic, check out
the Car Stuff episodes on it. There are several years old,
but they do hold up and they've got some handy
tips and tricks. Uh. The one takeaway, one key takeaway

(22:22):
about how to trust a mechanic. Um, I don't know, man,
It's it's tough in my own system, but it might
not work for everybody. It's there's a little bit of
social engineering involved to be completely honest, you know me,
but yes, check it out. Check it out. And when
we look at what Jaber is saying about the dentist

(22:44):
mechanic analogy, we find this there there is a clear
and serious problem with some of the science. He says,
quote common dental procedures are not always as safe, effective,
or as durable as we were meant to believe. As
a profession. Dentistry has not yet applied the same level
of self scrutiny as medicine or embraced as sweeping an

(23:08):
emphasis on scientific evidence. Right now, as we record, there
are dental procedures that are safe they're cheap and they're effective,
but they're not gonna they're not commonly deployed because they're
not as profitable. I'm gonna out myself here really quickly.

(23:29):
But I have had a procedure done, um, probably because
I didn't, you know, at least it was suggested, probably
because I didn't floss enough or something. But it's called
scaling and root planing, and it is essentially a next
level deep clean. Instead of just doing the old you know,
pick metal pick and the toothbrush, they used this like this, uh,

(23:51):
I guess ultrasonic kind of like very invasive kind of
pick that literally goes under the gum line to get
rid of like plaque deposits and um, whatever you call it,
that's what you call it. But it requires your mouth
to literally be numbed out because it's very painful. But
they suggest this and it's very expensive, but in your

(24:12):
mind it's like, oh that's pretty steep. Do I really
need this? And I don't. You don't really know like
they say you you do, but then you also they
might suggest it again like I I just you know,
I don't know. It was just I ended up having
to pay quite a bit out of pocket for it,
and then I couldn't help. But wonder, you know, can
I just up my flossing? Can I just like do

(24:34):
a better job? Who I really need to pay for
them to jab me under the gums with this like
you know electronic thing. Yeah, I mean it's a good
question too, because look, one thing you don't have if
you're patient in uh in a dentist in a dentist office,
is you don't have a p O V inside your mouth,

(24:55):
a point of view inside your mouth. So when you're
numbed up and they're working on one tooth, I'm not
saying this happens, but it is completely possible that they
could purposely do something to another tooth that would bring
you back in later and maybe not tell you. As
a matter of fact, I'm certain that may have happened

(25:16):
at some point in the past, whether through human error
just maybe through sinister design. But of course, the vast
majority of dentists are not out to get you. We
need to be very clear because we're about to talk
about some gruesome stuff and some disturbing things. There's a
dentist in Bozeman, Montana named Jane Gillette, and Jane works

(25:40):
closely with the A. D As Center for Evidence Based Dentistry,
and she says that because the dental industry is isolated
from the larger health care system, uh, they're often left
out of the equation when institutions are making evidence based
policies are best practice. So it may not be uh,

(26:03):
you know, if if something seems off with your dentist,
it may not be because they're you know, nefarious in
any way. It may be that they just don't get
the same kind of established best practices as say a
neurologist or a surgeon would. So at the very beginning
here we find two big questions. One or those procedures

(26:25):
that you're paying for based in science. Two or those
procedures that you're paying for actually necessary. Unfortunately, it turns
out our perception collectively of dentistry is rife with misinformation.
Let's go back to what you brought up earlier, Matt. Yes,
most people in the US, when you grow up, maybe

(26:47):
you're in grade school and you get that little visit
from the dentist in your classroom and they're like, here's
how you brush. It's two minutes, and remember you need
to visit the dentist for a checkup and cleaning twice
a year. This is like if there were a Moses
dentist who came down from the Mount a d a

(27:07):
and they had these stone uh, these giant stone retainers
with commandments written upon them. One of those commandments would
be twice a year, get your check up. Even if
you feel like you're fine, even if you lost religiously,
even if you know people are just like strangers on
the street are stopping you and going you have amazing teeth,

(27:29):
sir and or madam, Uh, you still have to go this.
This statement was not arrived at scientifically. This statement is
from advertisements. We even feels like that, especially now, but
when you're a kid, and the way they pitch it
to you, uh, it feels like gospel, right, like you said,
like printed on those tablets. But it also amounts to

(27:50):
money on the bank for the industry, right like if
you do the math on a yearly basis, two trips
a year for every living soul, that's a lot of money. Well,
and if it's covered by insurance, then U then the
average person with insurance is not going to feel a
huge impact on costs. They're gonna have a co pay, uh.

(28:12):
And they're going to well, they're gonna be pain because
it's taken out of their check every month. But this,
this is a system where theoretically everybody wins, but it's
built on it is based almost entirely on a toothpaste
advertisement from the nineteen thirties and another thing, a little

(28:35):
uh illustrated booklet from eighteen forty nine that just kind
of follows the misadventures of a guy who's got a
real pain in the butt or pain in the jaw
of a toothache. And nowadays, if you ask dentist in general,

(28:55):
you won't be at a nine out of ten dentist
agree kind of thing that's a little too burns. But
if you asked dennis in general, they're gonna say, if
you have three yeah, they're gonna say three times a day,
after each meal, uh, come to the desk, right, which
you know, technically, just like changing the oil in your car,
that might be beneficial for you physically, but definitely not

(29:16):
financially in this country. So nowadays, if you ask a
lot of dentists, they're gonna say, if you have good
oral hygiene, you only need to see a dentist every
twelve to sixteen months. And then we also noticed that
a lot of these dental treatments that are considered standard

(29:38):
the and that are considered medicinal so they're not cosmetic,
not like tooth whitening or something like that, those aren't
really substantiated by a ton of research. And Jaber even
argues that many have never been tested in vigorous, serious
clinical trials, and the little data that is a aliable

(30:00):
isn't often super is it often super reassuring? So dude, yeah,
just to take it back to the insurance thing one
more time, know, if you guys have looks at the
the I don't know the fine print of your dental
insurance that we get through this company and that we've
gotten through the years, it always allocates is designed to

(30:24):
have that twice a year, I'll check up. I mean,
so it's it really is like everybody's working together to
make sure they can get that. It's like that's just
enough times to where the patient isn't gonna balk and say, yeah,
I'm not going to go to the dentist that often,
and just enough that the dentist office can make enough

(30:44):
money through you and your procedures. There's the same thing
with other procedures to like the insurance will pony up
every five years. It begs the question, is it only
conspiracy if you're being misled? Like if it's bad? You
know what I mean? Like, I mean, you know you
can't really even let's just say it's excessive to go

(31:05):
two times a year. It's not bad for you, it's
not gonna hurt you. Um, but what is that it
provides an opportunity for further uh things to be done
to your from the mechanic of your mouth, the mechanic
of your mouth. I like that. Uh So, yes, you're right.

(31:26):
You know what, In fact, I would say, as we
reach the third act of our episode, let's let's take
an ant break a little sooner than usual, and let's
we want to give you the whole worst case scenario.
So I know everybody is probably really conscious of the
teeth in your mouth right now. I get it. It's

(31:47):
it's weird not to think about it. So let's let's
take a break. Everybody, Floss will be back and we'll
tell you just how badly these conspiracies can go awry.
We've returned, Paul, give me give me a sound que

(32:08):
that sounds just law and order enough not to get
us sued. Perfect law and order mouth crime. So let's
think of the worst case scenario. Let's say there is
a dentist somewhere out there who realizes they can make
a ton of money convincing patients not all the time,

(32:29):
but every so often that they need an expensive, unnecessary
surgery like they need a root now, or they need
a procedure like a crown. As we said before, very
few patients are going to have the knowledge to dispute
this advice from an expert. You know, who are you
to say without a DDS degree, who are you to say, uh,

(32:54):
that's not on the up and up. I live with
my teeth, bro, I believe in them, doc, and I
know what's best from my teeth. That would feel like
both arrogant and kind of bullheaded. But and it's also
not like you're gonna go, you know what, I need
a second opinion. Who's gonna do that? Right? Who has

(33:14):
the time? And who would who would be willing to
pay the extra expense to have a second opinion, Because,
after all, it's not like you're in a discussion about
your odds of surviving cancer. That would take people to
the world of second opinions, because your life hangs in
the balance. But if it's just one tooth, you're probably
gonna let it slide. And this means that our hypothetical

(33:37):
dentists would have a pretty low chance of being caught,
so long as they didn't get too greedy, so long
as it was as their parasitism and uh, as long
as their parasitism doesn't go past a certain threshold, and
as long as they distribute this grift across an adequate
sample size of patients. But here's the whist. This is

(34:00):
not a hypothetical example. There are well documented cases, multiple
well documented cases of dentists who have conspired to subject
patients to absolutely unnecessary, unneeded procedures with the goal of profit.
These can quickly become expensive. I haven't found to the
earlier question about fetish. I was wondering, you know, is

(34:23):
there like, like there's a certain percentage of shoes sales
people who are in the shoe game not because they
like money, and it's very in defeat, like Tarantino style
and defeat. And I was wondering if there's a dentist
somewhere who's just really into play him with your teeth. Uh,
those people may exist, but we didn't find any hard

(34:46):
evidence of those folks. What we found is largely profit motivation.
There's a case that Jaber dives into about a guy
in San Jose, California. Well, two guys, what is the
dude too need to tooth extracted? His name is Terry
Mitchell and one is a dentist named John Roger Lund.

(35:06):
This took place about twenty years ago. So in this case,
Terry Mitchell is our protagonist in many ways. And he
started seeing Lund on the recommendation of a friend, at
least that's according to him, and you know, they met
each other. It went really well. In the article, even

(35:28):
the building itself has described the way that Lunda looked.
He was just, you know, seemed like a trustworthy, you know,
middle aged man. He said, okay, this, this seems this
seems like it's going to be good. I think we're
gonna get along. And uh, he needed a tooth extracted.
So Lund, the dentist in this case, extracted Mitchell's tooth

(35:50):
or Terry's tooth. Let's call it. Let's do Terry in Lund.
I know it's not quite right because it's a first
name in the last one that sounds like songwriting duo. Yes, yes, um,
but okay, So but during this first visit, kind of
like the mechanic example that you gave been, Lund noticed

(36:10):
that there were two other problems going on under the
hood there for Terry, and he said, there are two
more problems that we need to take care of. And
you know, it makes sense right like you said, like
we've talked about this whole episode. Lund was in Terry's mouth,
saw the problems, let him know, and that should have
been fine and regular and normal and okay, this is

(36:33):
all on the up and up, but it turns out
it wasn't. Yeah, that's the things. So if you are
the typical person, you might get one or two root
canals in your life. Michael, your whole life without getting one.
But in the space of just seven years, lundu the
mouth making the mechanic of the mouth who had said,

(36:55):
you know, basically, I know you're here for an oil
change entire rotation, but we need to your transmission. It's
then the auto version of what he was doing. In
just seven years, Lund gave this guy Terry Mitchell, nine
root canals and around nine crowns. Mitchell's insurance, like most

(37:16):
people's insurance, only covered a little bit of each of
these procedures because they were beyond your twice a year
check up or the small portion ally catd for fillings, etcetera.
So all in all, over seven years get this, Mitchell
ended up paying about fifty grand of his own money
out of pocket. And you know, because this happened over time,

(37:38):
he wasn't particularly troubled by it. He had no reference point.
He was not an expert, you know what I mean.
He wasn't digging into statistics or anything. He just thought
root canals turned out to be as common as fillings.
Just happens in the course of life. And uh, you know,
it's a necessary evil the US. Why you say it

(38:00):
is he trusted Lundon. There was social engineering going on.
He said, you know, if I need these treatments, well
I should get them before things get worse, right, And
he probably had, you know, um horrific spectral visions his
life as a man with full dentures at a young age,
and he wanted to avoid it. But there's other things

(38:22):
he did not know that would have perhaps changed his
decision if he had learned them. If he had learned
of even one of these pieces of information over that
seven years. First, another one of Lund's patients was having
the same experience. Yeah, businesswoman in her fifties named Joyce Cordy.
She learned of Lunds not through a word of mouth referral,

(38:44):
but through a service called Dists. Yeah, and it's again
kind of things like one hundred dentists or care Credit
and stuff like that that sort of kind of point
to how slightly problematic a lot of these things are
care credit being like a credit card that people apply
for that specifically is meant to pay for medical expenses

(39:05):
or dental expenses on credit with a pretty high interest rate. Um.
But we'll get more into that later. So when Cordy
visited Lund for the first time back in she was
perfectly healthy mouth wise U. She had never had so
much as a cavity, and to her knowledge, she had
a perfectly healthy and happy mouth U, which is what

(39:27):
everyone wants. Um. But she had had a small dental
bridge installed to fix something that was not any fault
of her own in terms of her you know, hygiene.
It was a congenital anomaly. She was born with one
tooth trapped inside of another one and had to have
one of those extracted. I wonder what the name of
that condition is. Um. And within a year Lund was

(39:51):
concerned at least with her the quality of her bridge,
the resilience anyway, Um and told her that she needed
root can owls and crowns um to to fix whatever
was wrong with the s bridge Um. And she didn't
understand because, you know, she before she'd seen this, this guy,

(40:11):
she had been fine. She'd never had any dental procedures
other than this one to fix something that, you know,
again when she was born with so why all of
a sudden the need for all of these procedures when
she had experienced decades of good dental health. So she,
you know, expressed this openly to lund Um and he,

(40:33):
you know, has any good huckster does, had a line
counter to every point that she made. Um the cavity
on this too, who was in the wrong position to
treat with a typical filling things like that your gums
are receding causing tooth decay. And then over the course
of ten years, Lund gave Cordy ten rude canals and

(40:56):
ten crowns and Mitchell seriously, and it also leveled up
you know, Chichen wise, I believe it was around fifty
K for Terry Mitchell. She was in closer to seventy
dollars for all of this dental work. Um. He also
removed her bridge and replaced it with two new ones

(41:18):
that left a gap in her front teeth. Yeah, she
did not, for the record request the madonna. Look. Uh,
this was not This was not her plan. But again
she was in the hands of an expert in her case,
in particular her one of her parents was a doctor,
so she was kind of primed to respect this as

(41:40):
to respect these professionals as authority figures, which you know,
I think you should. But again, just like a crooked mechanic,
Lundon other dentists like him really stood there a very
small chance of being caught. In fact, Lundon retired without
controversy at first. We only know the full extent of

(42:02):
this story because of the dentist who took over his practice.
Like we said, the vast majority of dentists are on
the up and up their professionals. They just want to
help you and they just want to make a living.
And that's where our protagonists or other protagonists comes in.
Brendan Zeidler, he did some digging. So Brenln Ziedler buys

(42:24):
Lund's practice around two thousand twelve, and so he sort
of he inherits those patients and their treatment plans. Within
a few months, Zeidler began to suspect that, uh, there
was a rotten tooth in this dental practice because he
looked at he looked at these financial records. It started

(42:46):
out with self interest, to be clear, because he said, Okay,
Lund was a rock star dentist. When it came to
the bottom line, this guy was making bands on bands
on bands. But Zeedler asked himself, how come I'm only
making like ten to as much cash as this guy

(43:08):
was making every month in his practice. You know, I'm right,
like he's making more than me in some months. And
then what is a band? Stacks? Stack? You know uns
dollar dollar bills, y'all? Is it? Is it a hundred
or a thousand? Well, I mean a band would be
a thousand made of hundreds if I'm not mistaken. So

(43:31):
one band is usually a thousand. So is that twenties
like inside with a rubber band around it? Well, blue bill,
they'll usually be stacked like blue bands would be stacks.
A stack of ten thousand, and they would they I
think they're usually a hundred dollar bills. Cool, thank you guys.
I just I know that comes up a lot Matt

(43:56):
in your underground dentistry practice. It does payments of bands
like how much, how much for how much for my
how much for my crowns? Dr Frederick? Is that a
stack each and a half bands and a half bands? Sir?
Uh so? So this is the thing, like we said,

(44:20):
he inherits these patients, and he is speaking to more
and more patients, and as he's speaking to them, he's
starting to realize, hang on, there's a trend here. Because
he is the person who's looking inside their mouths. It's
like these people have had a lot of work done,
much more than I have ever seen before. And so

(44:41):
he wouldn't. He didn't initially like tell them this, like
someone is playing crazy games with your mouth. He said,
after you know, there twice a year, twice a year,
cleaning or whatever, he would look at me and say like, hey,
everything looks pretty great. You know. It's the equivalent of
taking her car in for an oil change and the
mechanics saying, hey, we change your oil. We refilled the

(45:05):
you know, the wiper fluid. You r G two G,
my friend, that means good to go, because I'm really
corny mechanic. We also put in a new transmission though,
because we were pretty sure yours was on the fritz.
I know, I know he didn't have any symptoms of that,
and he didn't ask for it, but trust us, you're
gonna be all the better for it. But but really
it's crazy because in this case, Eiler did not do that,

(45:27):
like just as you said, but he just said, no,
you're good, we'll see you, you know, six months. And
like you said, the patients were not used to that.
They were the ones. They were the ones raising the
alarm because they were used to like just all of
these procedures that were unnecessary, and so they were now
suspicious of the doctor that was actually acting in good faith. Yes, yeah,

(45:51):
some of them even kind of asked him for a
second opinion from himself, like you did you look at
every tooth, as though he was gonna say, I just
looked at your canines. I'm a thing guy, you know, um,
and and and just just I know this is probably
obvious to most people, but I don't think we are
not implying that the dental profession as a whole is populated.

(46:14):
I think this guy is a perfect example, is populated
by these uh, these crooks. In fact, there's a really
good article ben that that I believe you cited as well,
um in Dentistry Today, the you know, the publication of
Dentists that goes through all of this stuff and holds
it up as an example of like, yeah, there's gonna
be some bad actors in every profession, and here are

(46:36):
some of the worst ones in ours, just so you
can be armed with this information and know what to
look for. Right. Well, yes, but here's the thing. At
this point in the story, Ziedler, dentist number two, who's
like looking at all these patients. This dentist doesn't know
if perhaps lund actually did amazing work fixed all these

(46:58):
teeth and they're just great now because they're all fixed
because of LUN's amazing work, right right, He can't prove
if it's that where they actually have been having you know,
way too many procedures. So what he does is he
starts digging more into Lundon to see if he can
find anything else out. Yeah, from like August of two

(47:19):
thousand twelve or so, he loses his weekends. Ziegler does
because instead of instead of kicking it and you know, um,
go into a dentist country club, which is not a
real thing. H He spends every Saturday and Sunday for
the next nine months diving into the records of the

(47:40):
past five years of LUN's former practice. These are charts
that include work performed on hundreds of patients, and he
builds out, because he's probably super fun at parties, a
giant Xcel spreadsheet where he meticulously logs every procedure that
Lund has made during those five years and then does

(48:04):
some basic, uh, some basic analyzes. And what he found
was horrified because it turned out that every single year,
Lund was performing very particular procedures at cartoonishly high rates.
So a typical dentist, let's we said, a typical person
might get one to two root canals in their lifetime.

(48:24):
That's number with a lot of variants. So don't don't
feel like you're bad somehow if you had three or four,
everybody's life is different. This means that a typical dentist
is not going to choose a root canal as their
first option. They would maybe perform a root canal on
a tooth that had a crowd on it from earlier

(48:46):
in three to seven percent of cases. Our boy lund
was giving people root canals in nine percent of cases.
And Ziedler eventually spoiler alert takes this guy to court.
He says that Lundon has performed invasive, costly, unnecessary procedures
on tons of people, and some of them had been

(49:09):
seeing him. They trusted him, They've been going to him
for decades, Like like Matt's, Dr Kimchi You've established this bond,
you know, and You're like, if I have to have
this unpleasant experience, I at least want to trust the
person who's going through it with me. That's very understandable,
But dude, I totally trust her. She has pictures with Luda,
so I mean because she does. She has actually met him,

(49:32):
she has great stories about him. This is I think
this is a nice counterbalance we're recommending. We're recommending a
dentists we like while we're talking about this, just absolute
con artist. I can't emphasize enough how amazing it is
that her name is Dr kim Chi. Uh. That's incredible.
It's one of my favorite Korean snacks. I feel so bad.

(49:53):
We're totally not mentioning her partner and drus he's also
my dentist. Just fine, but I think it's time for
me to switch, you know, two out of three, I
feel like I need to get on the Kimchy train.
But no, you're you're right. I like I said, I
like my dentist too. And it is a trust thing,
especially since you have that kind of I mean you

(50:14):
do with your doctor to um, but it's not quite
the same for some reason. The doctor typically isn't plumbing
around in your body, you know, like you get some
blood taken, but that's gonna be a different assistant every time.
The doctor usually just pops into the room, talks to
you for a couple of seconds and then's gone, whereas
the dentist usually comes in and really goes in there

(50:35):
and like you know, either does the bulk of the
procedure or at the very least is much more hands on.
Definitely grabs your tongue with that gauze that is just
so pleasant. I love it, but I could see the
feeling absolutely betrayed. Oh yeah yeah, because this is this
is the thing we thanks to Zeidler, can learn a

(51:00):
little bit about Lunz m O one of his favorite
treatments when his favorite things to give people were was
the crown, a dental crown. That's that's a metal or
ceramic cap, more and more often ceramic now that completely
covers envelops an injured or decayed tooth, and that that
original tooth, his first shaved down to to a tag,

(51:23):
to a stump. I could tell Matt, you love this
in particular so that you can slot that new that
new uh exo skeleton on it. And these crowns have
a pretty long life. They last tend to fifteen years
on average. Lundon wasn't only giving his patients crowns they
didn't need. He was also replacing those crowns every five years.

(51:45):
Why is that, asked Zeedler. That's because five years is
the minimal interval of time before insurance companies will cover
the procedure again. So she knew what he was doing.
He was waited and it was just a factory. It
was a factory. And it turns out Terry Mitchell, despite

(52:06):
you know, probably being swindled out of fifty grand, he
got off relatively easy. More than fifty of Lund's patients
also had just bizarrely high numbers of root canals fifteen
twenty twenty four. For reference, the average human mouth contains

(52:26):
thirty two teeth, so that like, at this point there's
somebody walking around who has the majority of their teeth
are have had root canals. And in addition to this,
he had also get this build patients for treatmentcy never
actually administered. So in our auto mechanic example, and this

(52:49):
has happened I'm sure too many friends of ours into
some of our non gear heads in the audience. It's
the equivalent of being like charged for having your transmission
fluid changed, and they just never did it because they
were like, how is he going to check or um
similar to the Just Breaks scandal. If you're familiar with

(53:10):
that franchise, look it up. They did some serious dirt.
So this is just one example. This is like true
dentistry crime or what do we call it, paulis sound
cute math crime? And and now we have to ask
ourselves what comes next. Because dentistry is an industry is

(53:30):
still struggling to embrace the same scientific inquiry, evidence based standards,
best practices that are common in the rest of the
medical world. That situation has left dentists with a lot
of latitude, a lot of agency to advise unnecessary procedures.
And this doesn't mean that there doesn't mean they're all
con artists. No, of course, the vast, vast majority of

(53:55):
dentists are just honest people, honest experts trying to do
a job because in their mind, doing a good job
means that their practice will continue. They don't feel like
they need to or whatever want to resort to swindling people. Right,
And it's a list of these candidates for over treatment
that we have here. Um things like root canals, crowns

(54:18):
and veneers, teeth whitening and filling, and when I mentioned
at the top of the show, deep cleaning, which is
again the fancy name for that is scaling and route planning,
and like, my insurance would pay for one quadrant of
my mouth four quadrants to the mouth, if you can imagine.
And then I had to pay for the rest um.
But they did a thing where they like quoted me
on it, and then I said, okay for that, if

(54:41):
that's what insurance will pay. It was decent. I was like,
I'll pay this out of pocket. And then when I
actually did the procedure, I walk out to pay and
it was double what they said, And I was like, dang,
I would have said no, right, I would have said no.
I would have said I'm not going to do it.
Then I did kind of talk them down, but I

(55:01):
felt like I was like negotiating with a card dealer
or something like that. That was weird. Right. It all
goes back to the car mechanic you guys, Um, there's
another thing in here that really reson resonated with me
from that Atlantic article then, and it's the the concept
of kind of doing what Lund did, replacing those crowns

(55:23):
or fillings for different kinds. Like the new filling. It's
the new substance that's better than the old metal filling.
It's this new reson thing. It's this new pseudo metal
thing that you can get, um that becomes a superfluous
thing that you don't have to do. And it goes
back to the science problem that we discussed earlier, where

(55:45):
it's not fully known if some of these new resin
substances are actually stronger or better than the old metal ones,
or if the metal fillings actually are as dangerous as
they purport to be, because there's not enough research there
in enough it used to actually get that kind of
statistical analysis to really say, Okay, this is exactly the

(56:05):
way it is. Um, this resin is definitely better than
this other thing. Just something to keep in your mind
when you're being told by your dentist, no matter where
you are, who you are, that you need something extra
like that. Right, yeah, well said, uh this The phrase
we just used over treatment is a euphemism, right, it can.

(56:26):
It can mean people acting in good faith but doing
the most in your mouth, but it can also mean
intentional criminal activity, such as the conspiracy undertaken for many
years by Dr Lunz. It seems distressingly, distressingly common because

(56:47):
there's there's a shockingly high amount of incongruity between one
dentist and the next. There's a Swiss university called E.
T H. Zurich, and while back they had a team
of researchers who got together and they asked they took
a volunteer patient who had three tiny cavities, the kinds

(57:09):
of things that could be easily treated. Right, had they
had this patient go through Zurich and go to one
hundred and eighty dentists who are randomly selected, they weren't
suspected of doing anything wrong. They were just normal working dentists.
What they found is that the dentist advice ran contrary

(57:29):
often to the guidelines of the like Swiss Dental Association.
They have the Swiss Dental Guidelines and their position is,
if you've got minor cavities like this volunteer patient, you
don't need fillings. Instead, the dentist needs to encourage you
to do better preventative maintenance because when you have a

(57:51):
minor cavity, you can actually reverse some of this damage
if you stay on your p's and queues with brushing
instead of that. Fifty out of the eighty dentists suggested
various forms of unnecessary treatment, and they advised UH. Their
their recommendations were not uniform. They were all over the place,

(58:11):
like anywhere from one to six fillings and other other procedures.
But okay, maybe maybe Swiss Swiss Advices is too far away.
Maybe you're saying, I don't live in Switzerland. How does
this apply to me. Let's go to the US writer
named William Eckenbarger, writing for Readers Digest, went through twenty

(58:33):
eight states, visiting fifty dentists to see how they would UH.
They would react to the state of his dental health,
and he got he got recommendations for everything from like
here's a single crown to there's a wreck, there's a
tear down. We have to fully reconstruct your mouth. The

(58:53):
price tag variants there started from five hundred dollars and
went to nearly thirty grand. Uh. And this gives you
a sense of just how varied this can be. As
we said in the top, it is exceedingly rare for
someone to get a second opinion from a different dentist.
But it might not be the worst move, because again,

(59:15):
there need to be some better safeguards in place. Trap
our story up. Back to Zieedler October. He sues Lundon
as soon as he thinks he can prove his case.
He says, you've misrepresented your practice when you gave it
to me, and therefore you've breached our contract. You're because
he thought he was gonna make a lot of money.

(59:36):
He said, you're reported income for your practice of seven
hundred thousand to nine thousand dollars per year was a
result of fraudulent billing activity, billing for unnecessary treatment, and
billing for treatment that was never performed. The suit was
settled for how much, Well, we don't know confidential amount,

(59:57):
We'll never know. So there you have. The mechanic analogy
turns out to be unfortunately and tragically apt. Of course,
as we said several times in this episode, yes, the
vast majority of dentists are not out to scam people.
They want to do a great job. They want to
grow their practice. If you feel that you have been
taken in by someone with dishonest tendencies, or even if

(01:00:20):
you don't think there's corruption and crime of foot, if
you feel maybe your dentist is just with the best
intentions doing too much, you should get a second opinion.
You should get it as soon as possible. Don't get
it from your buddies. Either, get it from a different
dentist that you that you haven't met before. Uh, And
we want to hear your stories at this point, won't

(01:00:41):
ask what you think. We've got dental hygienists in the
crowd here, we have, we have dentists who listened to
this show. We'd love to hear from anybody with firsthand experience,
whether you are in the seat or whether you are
someone treating a patient. We'd like to hear whether you
have heard things like this in your act of the
Global Woods, especially if you're a dentist yourself. Um, I

(01:01:03):
think we'd all be curious to learn whether in your
industry or in you know, your region, there's a practice
that everybody kind of knows is crooked, kind of like
how somewhere some someone is the world's worst StAst you're
not asked. The field of astronautics is relatively small right now.

(01:01:26):
Everybody knows who the world's where StAst you're not is.
So if you're a dentist in your region, you know,
especially if you're a more rural region and there's a
bad actor than the odds are the people who would
be more aware of that would be dentists who have
seen their work. Just to be clear, I am the
world's worst astronaut, just if you if you're wondering, I
would not do well up there. But get it together, Matt.

(01:01:51):
But this is the last time we're gonna say in
this episode we love dentists and dentaligenis especially whens listening,
as you said, Ben, because really it's a cool it's
it's a great thing to help people all the time.
Dentists help people all the time. This is very rare
and they get such a hard time for it. So
they because of all the things we mentioned, because of
the stereotypes, and because of all the phobias and just

(01:02:13):
people's you know, perspectives on dentists. But if you do
want to hear it straight from the dentist's mouth collectively,
you can check out this article on Dentistry Today dot
com that really runs down all of this uh corruption
and and and and openly acknowledges it um and the
article title is Bad Dentists and the Professional Code of

(01:02:33):
Silence by Michael W. Davis DDS. So, as we said,
let us know your stories, tell us your experiences, uh,
we would, We would love to hear from you. We
try to be easy to find online Facebook, Twitter, Instagram,
all the hits, all the good ones. You can find

(01:02:54):
us Conspiracy Stuff, Conspiracy Stuff Show you can if you
if you like the visual components of things. Also check
us out on YouTube where we are YouTube dot com
slash conspiracy Stuff. But wait, you say I hate social media.
I don't sip those social meds. No worries, fellow conspiracy realist.

(01:03:15):
You can also contact us directly on our call in line.
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(01:03:36):
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