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Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is

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Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or

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Speaker 1: learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A

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Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.

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Speaker 1: My name is Matt, my name is known, and they

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Speaker 1: called me Ben. We are joined as always with our

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Speaker 1: super producer, all mission controlled decons. Most importantly, you are you.

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Speaker 1: You are here, and that makes this the stuff they

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Speaker 1: don't want you to know. In today's episode, stuff they

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Speaker 1: don't want you to know is going to the dentist.

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Speaker 1: And unless be honest, folks, most people hate that kind

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Speaker 1: of appointment. It can be a painful, expensive, sometimes humiliating hassle.

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Speaker 1: But still, when everything works out, it's better than the

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Speaker 1: alternative because if left untree did your cavities, your other

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Speaker 1: ailments can make a serious negative impact on your life.

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Speaker 1: And I was thinking about this, you know, all the

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Speaker 1: way back to uh the stereotypical image of Steve Martin's

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Speaker 1: dentist in Little Shop of Horrors. Dentists have this unique

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Speaker 1: spot in culture, at least in the US. Like postal workers,

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Speaker 1: they've been saddled with all sorts of pretty unkind stereotypes.

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Speaker 1: And this doesn't mean dentists have done anything wrong. It's

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Speaker 1: just that in the vast majority of cases, people who

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Speaker 1: don't care for dentists associate them with previous unpleasant experiences.

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Speaker 1: There's some behavioralism going on. Definitely, just think about horrible bosses.

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Speaker 1: I mean just yeah, the dentist can be bad at

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Speaker 1: least in movies and TV. Well, the biggest one that

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Speaker 1: I think always has followed me around you Before I

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Speaker 1: had seen the movie, I was aware of the character

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Speaker 1: and the scene as the Laurence Olivi a character and

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Speaker 1: the Marathon Man with Dustin Hoffman or he's literally torturing

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Speaker 1: the protagonists of the film with dental tools, and he's like,

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Speaker 1: I think he's like a former Nazi, if I'm not

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Speaker 1: mistaken from Yeah, and he keeps saying is it safe?

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Speaker 1: And I've never quite fully understood what that other than

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Speaker 1: just like an odd idiosyncrasy. But yeah, he's like, you know,

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Speaker 1: drilling the guy's teeth out like for frenzies just to

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Speaker 1: make him talk um. And it's a it's a it's

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Speaker 1: a torture technique. We see, you know in other films too,

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Speaker 1: like Old Boy, for example, where the character uses the

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Speaker 1: back end of a hammer to twist the guy's teeth

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Speaker 1: out of his mouth. Teeth are very triggering for people.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it's one of the most common nightmare tropes.

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Speaker 1: Uh that I think, Matt, you were probably gonna mention

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Speaker 1: this fight and stand. It's if you look at like

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Speaker 1: for anybody who has strange dreams, you'll notice that you

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Speaker 1: you probably do have a couple of dreams that are

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Speaker 1: common in the human species, and one of the most

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Speaker 1: common is the idea of one's teeth cracking or one's

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Speaker 1: teeth falling out. But this is not a dream interpretation

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Speaker 1: episode quite yet. We We do know though that we're

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Speaker 1: when we're talking about the world of dentistry, we are

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Speaker 1: talking about some tropes. And at the very top, I

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Speaker 1: want to give a shout out to an excellent article

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Speaker 1: published in The Atlantic in twenty nineteen by Faris Jabber

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Speaker 1: j A. B R. It's called The Truth about Dentistry. Uh.

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Speaker 1: Farris has done some excellent work here, and I think

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Speaker 1: he nailed one of our collective interpretations of what visiting

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Speaker 1: a dentist is like. Yes, definitely, you've likely had some

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Speaker 1: kind of toothache before in the past, I know I have,

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Speaker 1: and it is. It's an inescapable terrible feeling, and in

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Speaker 1: order to fix it you have to go and see

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Speaker 1: a dentist. And when you go to see a dentist,

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Speaker 1: you are putting yourself through an experience. And as you said, Ben,

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Speaker 1: there this writer in the Atlanta describes it as such.

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Speaker 1: He gets it a masked figure looms over your recumbent body,

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Speaker 1: wielding power tools and sharp metal instruments, doing things to

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Speaker 1: your mouth you cannot see, and only asking you questions

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Speaker 1: after you Okay, this is gonna be an explicit episode,

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Speaker 1: only asking you questions after you have a bunch of

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Speaker 1: it in your mouth, you know what I mean? Like

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Speaker 1: is it safe and well? And and even sometimes asking

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Speaker 1: you questions that you don't fully understand. I think he

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Speaker 1: also notes that or that you don't have the answers

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Speaker 1: to while you're in that position. Yeah, what do you

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Speaker 1: think purple smells like? I gotta say, though I pride

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Speaker 1: myself and being a really good patient, I know exactly

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Speaker 1: when they want me to turn my head. I try

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Speaker 1: to predict it so that I'm just like so that

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Speaker 1: they won't literally, you know, jab me in the gums

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Speaker 1: on purpose. Right. We try to be uh. You know,

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Speaker 1: those of us on this show, we're talking thing about

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Speaker 1: this little bit off air with Paul. Uh, those of

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Speaker 1: us on on the show today, and perhaps you're listening

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Speaker 1: with us at home or wherever your adventurous find you. Uh,

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Speaker 1: we're all suffering from what could be called information as

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Speaker 1: symmetry when we were in that chair. We are not

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Speaker 1: the experts, right, and sometimes to pay on your dentist's

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Speaker 1: bedside manner, you may in fact feel like you are

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Speaker 1: required to be penitent. I'm sorry, doctor, I'm sorry. I

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Speaker 1: I assure you I will do a better job flossing.

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Speaker 1: But that is that is the question every time, then

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Speaker 1: every time for me personally, and I bet for a

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Speaker 1: lot of other people. So how you been doing on

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Speaker 1: the flossing? And they know, they know because they're looking

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Speaker 1: into your mouth. So you can't really, I can't really

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Speaker 1: pull a deception. You'd have to roll pretty high in

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Speaker 1: that D and D game. But there's something else too

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Speaker 1: with this information as symmetry. We have to ask ourselves.

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Speaker 1: Is dentistry a necessary, very evil or is there more

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Speaker 1: to the story. The answers may disturb you, and if

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Speaker 1: you are one of the small portion of the world's

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Speaker 1: population who does have a legitimate phobia of dentistry and

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Speaker 1: of talking about teeth and knives and drills in your mouth,

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Speaker 1: then honestly be warned, this may not be the episode

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Speaker 1: for you. But let's start at the very beginning, because

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Speaker 1: dentistry has a surprising history. Here are the facts. Yet

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Speaker 1: it turns out it's uh I think it and like

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Speaker 1: sex worker, two of the oldest professions. I just sort

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Speaker 1: of made that up. But they're probably not too too

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Speaker 1: far off because the dentistry dates back to seven thousand

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Speaker 1: b c e UM, where evidence of its practice was

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Speaker 1: discovered in the Indus Valley civilization. But it wasn't until

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Speaker 1: five thousand BC that descriptions actually relating to dentistry um

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Speaker 1: as a profession and tooth decay became kind of part

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Speaker 1: of the record, right. Uh So at the time, a

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Speaker 1: Sumarian text described the idea of tooth decay as being

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Speaker 1: caused by toothworms, um, you know, and this was kind

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Speaker 1: of the prevailing theory for quite some time, all the

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Speaker 1: way into the seventeen hundreds. So it does lead experts

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Speaker 1: to describe dentistry as the oldest specialization in medicine at

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Speaker 1: the very least, maybe not the oldest profession, but the

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Speaker 1: first book focusing entirely on the practice of dentistry was

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Speaker 1: published as far back as fifteen thirty UM and dentistry,

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Speaker 1: as we've already indicated at the top of the show,

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Speaker 1: mega important. Today. You always hear about people saying how

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Speaker 1: like your teeth and your your nerves and your teeth

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Speaker 1: and your roots of your teeth are like a direct

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Speaker 1: line to your heart. So if you have, you know,

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Speaker 1: tooth decay and tooth problems and infections, it can literally

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Speaker 1: kill you, can affect your jaw, can affect your hearing.

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Speaker 1: There is a lot at stake here because don't forget

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Speaker 1: you know, your head is the most important of your limbs, right,

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Speaker 1: so your mouth is a neighbor to the most mysterious

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Speaker 1: important organ in your body, the brain, as well as

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Speaker 1: a lot of your specialized sensory organs. Uh. If you

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Speaker 1: are you know, a human being or a mammal in general, Hey,

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Speaker 1: I just want to I just want to speak for

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Speaker 1: tooth worms just for a moment on their behalf. Because

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Speaker 1: the concept that there was something foreign in the mouth

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Speaker 1: that was causing the teeth to decay is a it's

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Speaker 1: a good thought. They're like, Okay, it must be something

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Speaker 1: else affecting. This isn't just a natural thing. They just

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Speaker 1: got the size wrong, right, because a tooth worm it

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Speaker 1: would have to be you know, at the smallest microscopic.

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Speaker 1: But really, what you're you're thinking about bacteria and other uh,

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Speaker 1: microorganisms that are in your teeth kind of eating away

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Speaker 1: at the enamel, and different chemicals and substances that eat

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Speaker 1: away at the enamel on your in your teeth. It's

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Speaker 1: not worms. But they were close, that's all I want

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Speaker 1: to say. Yeah, yeah, And you have to applaud it

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Speaker 1: because they were able to they were able to say

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Speaker 1: something is a miss here, and they were you know,

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Speaker 1: it's a really good point, Matt. They were kind of

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Speaker 1: on the money. But dentistry, like other fields of medicine

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Speaker 1: and scientific research, evolved past its earlier roots roots. Sorry uh,

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Speaker 1: and you know we can we can skip some of

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Speaker 1: the very fascinating historical aspects of dentistry, like the the

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Speaker 1: reign of dentist barbers, where the idea was that if

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Speaker 1: you are qualified to cut hair, hey, you're qualified to

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Speaker 1: cut off fingers, arms, extract teeth, why not you got

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Speaker 1: the stuff already. But but uh, now your dentists will

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Speaker 1: probably bulk if you ask them to perform an amputation

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Speaker 1: or if you ask them to cut your hair, as

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Speaker 1: long as they're legit, you know, been that that, I'm

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Speaker 1: sorry to cut you off. I keep doing that. The

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Speaker 1: Atlantic article makes an the great point that likens the

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Speaker 1: art of dentistry, the science of dentistry, closer to surgery

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Speaker 1: than to um a medical doctor. At least that's the

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Speaker 1: way they consider it. And it's very much is in

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Speaker 1: line with what you were just saying there. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's true. And today, the what would loosely be called

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Speaker 1: the global dental services market, meaning everything related to dentistry,

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Speaker 1: reached the value of almost three hundred and sixty five

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Speaker 1: point six billion dollars. That's that's well over the g

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Speaker 1: d P of several countries. And that's just in this year.

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Speaker 1: In one the dental industry in the US alone is

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Speaker 1: predicted to reach a value of one hundred and thirty

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Speaker 1: eight point eight billion dollars. People in the US go

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Speaker 1: to dentists, um well, regardless of how frequently or infrequently

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Speaker 1: you go, Uh, it tends to be an expensive endeavor

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Speaker 1: in short, business is good right now. As of last year,

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Speaker 1: there were over two hundred thousand dentists estimated to be

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Speaker 1: working in the US, and this funny story. This led

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Speaker 1: some industry experts, including dentists themselves, to argue, there are

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Speaker 1: just too many dentists around because you know from well

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Speaker 1: from their perspective, you know, the cost of education is rising, right,

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Speaker 1: and it's healthy for you if you own a dental

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Speaker 1: practice to have other dentists in the area, right, so

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Speaker 1: you're not overloaded, but you don't want too many because

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Speaker 1: then you're you're short changing yourself. It's kind of the

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Speaker 1: same way that no, it's not there's a Starbucks everywhere.

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Speaker 1: Keep that part in so this so this is all

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Speaker 1: well and good, right. And the techniques have, as we've said,

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Speaker 1: evolved over time, but still not to the point where

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Speaker 1: they could ease everyone's fears. If you conduct did uh,

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Speaker 1: If you conducted a survey like some of the ones

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Speaker 1: have been done over recent years, you will find that

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Speaker 1: as many as sixty one percent of people more than

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Speaker 1: half or at least apprehensive about seeing the dentist, and

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Speaker 1: fifteen percent or so are so anxious about this that

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Speaker 1: they avoid the dentist almost entirely in a smaller percentage,

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Speaker 1: like we mentioned before, have a real phobia. They have

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Speaker 1: to go to a psychiatrist or a therapist to get

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Speaker 1: themselves back in the dentisty. I think anybody has like

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Speaker 1: dental fetishes out there. Yes, I don't. I m'd be

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Speaker 1: fascinated to hear about that so specific. Uh No, it's true,

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Speaker 1: and I understand exactly why. It's the noises. It's the vulnerability,

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Speaker 1: you know, especially if you're getting put under for a procedure.

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Speaker 1: You know that it's like an outpatient procedure, but you

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Speaker 1: still have that whole like counting backwards from ten as

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Speaker 1: you start to kind of enter the black land that is,

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Speaker 1: uh you know, um nitrius um sedation. Suppose there's something

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Speaker 1: even heavier right that if you feel very out of control.

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Speaker 1: So there's a lot of factors in here that can

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Speaker 1: contribute to this anxiety. I totally get. I'm not scared

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Speaker 1: of the dentist. I don't like needles, and I certainly

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Speaker 1: don't like getting shots in my mouth, but I'm not

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Speaker 1: too bad about my My daughter is similarly not too

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Speaker 1: freaked out. But I have known plenty of people in

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Speaker 1: my life that absolutely just can't hang with the dentist.

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Speaker 1: I just want to make I I agree with you. Um,

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Speaker 1: I love my dental higgenist. By way, by the way,

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Speaker 1: shout out to Dr Kim she and all the folks

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Speaker 1: over there. But hey, we've got the same one. Hey,

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Speaker 1: but I still don't like doing it. But they're great people. Uh.

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Speaker 1: But what I wanted to point out is what another

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Speaker 1: reason why many people don't go to a dentist very

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Speaker 1: frequently is because they don't have dental insurance. Um. And

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Speaker 1: you know, if you're just doing a yearly checkup or

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Speaker 1: a like most not most Like many people, it's twice

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Speaker 1: a year you go, especially if you have insurance, you

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Speaker 1: go and see the dentist for to look at that.

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Speaker 1: I know, and that's what you do. But like the

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Speaker 1: if you don't have insurance and you have any other issue,

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Speaker 1: like you need a group canal or any other you

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Speaker 1: know thing, get your wisdom teeth out, or all these

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Speaker 1: things that we're going to mention later, it would break

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Speaker 1: the bank. Absolutely. If so, I would argue, it's just

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Speaker 1: me here, folks. But I would argue that this anxiety

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Speaker 1: is well founded, especially in the US or any place

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Speaker 1: that has heavily privatized profit driven medicine and insurance, you know,

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Speaker 1: insurance schemes, and I'm using schemes in the British sense.

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Speaker 1: I'm not calling them capers just yet. But what but

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Speaker 1: what what happens is there's this self fulfilling prophecy where

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Speaker 1: you say, I'm putting off a trip to the dentist

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Speaker 1: because I know it'll be expensive and I know it'll

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Speaker 1: be painful, and it always is because I always put

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Speaker 1: it off. So we're creating the disaster and the pain

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Speaker 1: that we predict. And it can be tough, Like you

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Speaker 1: just said, Matt, it can be tough to avoid this

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Speaker 1: because in the US, for anyone unfamiliar, you don't have

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Speaker 1: there there's not there's not really anything like first world healthcare,

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Speaker 1: by which I mean there's not any kind of universal

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Speaker 1: medicine outside of limited programs like Medicare or Medicaid, which

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Speaker 1: could be their own episodes. There is some corruption there

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Speaker 1: as well, But when we get to the idea of corruption,

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Speaker 1: we have to say it. With all this money and

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Speaker 1: all these teeth in play, it shouldn't come as a

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Speaker 1: surprise that dentistry has a lot of critics and Most

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Speaker 1: of the criticism up to now attacks the expensive nature

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Speaker 1: of these procedures, like you have to get a root canal.

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Speaker 1: Let's just say you hypothetically have to get a root canal.

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Speaker 1: It sucks. It is not a pleasant experience unless you're

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Speaker 1: you know, specifically into that kind of pain and that

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Speaker 1: kind of environment for one reason or another. But it

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Speaker 1: also is financially unpleasant. You won't have much time to

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Speaker 1: predict it. By the time you need it it is,

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Speaker 1: it's going to feel like almost an emergency situation. It

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Speaker 1: takes a huge bite out of your budget. Even if

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Speaker 1: you have insurance, it will hit what are called, you know,

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Speaker 1: like your limits. So in privatized medicine here in the US,

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Speaker 1: you can have medical insurance, but then if you want

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Speaker 1: your eyes or your mouth taken care of, you need

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Speaker 1: two other separate types of insurance, vision insurance and dental insurance.

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Speaker 1: And this might sound really weird to people in Europe

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Speaker 1: or in other countries that again have first world medicine,

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Speaker 1: which to highlight to emphasize this, to repeat the point

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Speaker 1: the US does not. If you have enough money, you

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Speaker 1: can get world class care. But these these criticisms about

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Speaker 1: expense are valid, like like you said, Matt, there are

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Speaker 1: people who put off necessary procedures because they simply cannot

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Speaker 1: afford them. And these other criticisms are you know, they're

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Speaker 1: intertwined with those larger concerns about the state of healthcare

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Speaker 1: in the US. And weirdly enough, like any profession, American

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Speaker 1: dentistry has its own lobbying group as its own trade

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Speaker 1: representative group, the American Dental Association, and the course of

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Speaker 1: this episode will refer to them as the a d A.

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Speaker 1: They have historically opposed any kind of significant dental reform,

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Speaker 1: and they've been pretty open about this too, Like as

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Speaker 1: far back as nineteen, leaders of the a d A

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Speaker 1: went to Washington and they went to testify against something

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Speaker 1: called the Wagner Murray Dingle Bill, which is very more

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Speaker 1: way more fun to say as a name than it

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Speaker 1: is to read the bill. Uh, And they said, they

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Speaker 1: argued the opposite of critics today. They said, because there's

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Speaker 1: such a limited number of dentists, it's impossible to carry

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Speaker 1: out any program that promises complete dental care to children,

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Speaker 1: to both children and adults. So what they're saying is,

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Speaker 1: we can't make a law to give people decent dental

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Speaker 1: care or to guarantee it or promise it because we

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Speaker 1: cannot back up that promise because they're so highly in

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Speaker 1: demand and scarce. Is that the issue that was that

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Speaker 1: was their argument? Now? Was that an argument in good faith? Null? Um?

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Speaker 1: Maybe at the time, maybe at the time, and yeah,

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Speaker 1: int s, maybe it might be time to update the

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Speaker 1: old Wagner Murray Dingle or might be Dingel, I don't know,

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Speaker 1: I don't know the person Dingle and Dillard's. For anyone

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Speaker 1: who listened to our earlier episode, that would be an

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Speaker 1: epic like you know, department store kind of mash up. Um. No,

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Speaker 1: it's it's a good point. Uh and and and all

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Speaker 1: of this is at least on the surface about insurance, right, um,

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Speaker 1: But today it turns out that isn't really as much

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Speaker 1: the issue anymore, right, Yeah, yeah, you're right. Well, the

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Speaker 1: it might surprise some of our fellow conspiracy realists to

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Speaker 1: learn that today's episode isn't exactly about insurance. Or you

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Speaker 1: could make an episode about insurance, um. And it's not

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Speaker 1: really about the proven inequality in the world of dental care,

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Speaker 1: which I think we've established both of those pretty clearly.

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Speaker 1: Today's episode instead is about corruption, conspiracy, and crime. What

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Speaker 1: are we talking about. We'll tell you after a word

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Speaker 1: from our sponsors. Here's where it gets crazy. Teeth whitening.

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Speaker 1: Do I really need all these surgeries? Yeah, Ben, you

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Speaker 1: may be a really great point. And when we were

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Speaker 1: talking of fair that, I completely thought of myself as well. Uh,

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Speaker 1: you're not an expert going into the dentist. You don't

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Speaker 1: know necessarily what you need or don't need. And you

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Speaker 1: are leaning on the um in good faith, the true

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Speaker 1: and honest advice of an expert, just like you would,

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Speaker 1: you know, taking your car into a mechanic. And we

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Speaker 1: know how that can often go, uh not in the

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Speaker 1: favor of the person with less information. You can very

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Speaker 1: easily be sold a bill of goods and told oh,

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Speaker 1: you definitely need this thing. So and so is about

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Speaker 1: to go. That could be absolutely true. It also could

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Speaker 1: be absolutely false. And unless you are gonna chop around

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Speaker 1: and uh, you know which most people frankly don't, you're

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Speaker 1: probably gonna go with what they say. It's a great point.

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Speaker 1: And and and I want to bring this other piece

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Speaker 1: into that to think about it kind of simultaneously. As

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Speaker 1: we tell you some of these stories of actual corruption,

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Speaker 1: the the other almost non dentistry related um procedures. Let's

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Speaker 1: call them like teeth whitening. Like there are so many

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Speaker 1: different kinds of teeth whitening procedure you can get now,

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Speaker 1: and they all cost a ton of money. Different kinds

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Speaker 1: of things like getting if you grind your teeth, like

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Speaker 1: getting one of those molds made are it can cost

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Speaker 1: so much money. Things like even more plastic surgery, like

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Speaker 1: things that can be included at many dentistries like botox

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Speaker 1: and these other procedures. Sometimes, in some weird way, kind

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Speaker 1: of get wrapped up in the possibilities for you when

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Speaker 1: you're sitting there in that chair and talking to your

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Speaker 1: dentist or you know, your dental hygienist. It's just there

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Speaker 1: are a lot of things that seem to be available

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Speaker 1: that don't necessarily have to do directly with your teeth,

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Speaker 1: as well as the actual surgeries and things that you

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Speaker 1: may be offered. Yeah, yeah, so I think the you know,

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Speaker 1: we're doing research for this. I I loved that comparison

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Speaker 1: of the of the mechanic of the garage. The situations

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Speaker 1: can be very similar, but the situation with a dentist

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Speaker 1: office is a step more complicated. If we go back

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Speaker 1: to the work by Farris Jaber. Oh. Also side note

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Speaker 1: for anybody who wants to learn more about how to

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Speaker 1: differentiate between a good or unscrupulous auto mechanic, check out

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Speaker 1: the Car Stuff episodes on it. There are several years old,

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Speaker 1: but they do hold up and they've got some handy

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Speaker 1: tips and tricks. Uh. The one takeaway, one key takeaway

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Speaker 1: about how to trust a mechanic. Um, I don't know, man,

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Speaker 1: It's it's tough in my own system, but it might

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Speaker 1: not work for everybody. It's there's a little bit of

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Speaker 1: social engineering involved to be completely honest, you know me,

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Speaker 1: but yes, check it out. Check it out. And when

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Speaker 1: we look at what Jaber is saying about the dentist

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Speaker 1: mechanic analogy, we find this there there is a clear

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Speaker 1: and serious problem with some of the science. He says,

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Speaker 1: quote common dental procedures are not always as safe, effective,

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Speaker 1: or as durable as we were meant to believe. As

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Speaker 1: a profession. Dentistry has not yet applied the same level

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Speaker 1: of self scrutiny as medicine or embraced as sweeping an

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Speaker 1: emphasis on scientific evidence. Right now, as we record, there

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Speaker 1: are dental procedures that are safe they're cheap and they're effective,

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Speaker 1: but they're not gonna they're not commonly deployed because they're

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Speaker 1: not as profitable. I'm gonna out myself here really quickly.

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Speaker 1: But I have had a procedure done, um, probably because

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Speaker 1: I didn't, you know, at least it was suggested, probably

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Speaker 1: because I didn't floss enough or something. But it's called

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Speaker 1: scaling and root planing, and it is essentially a next

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Speaker 1: level deep clean. Instead of just doing the old you know,

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Speaker 1: pick metal pick and the toothbrush, they used this like this, uh,

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Speaker 1: I guess ultrasonic kind of like very invasive kind of

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Speaker 1: pick that literally goes under the gum line to get

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Speaker 1: rid of like plaque deposits and um, whatever you call it,

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Speaker 1: that's what you call it. But it requires your mouth

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Speaker 1: to literally be numbed out because it's very painful. But

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Speaker 1: they suggest this and it's very expensive, but in your

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Speaker 1: mind it's like, oh that's pretty steep. Do I really

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Speaker 1: need this? And I don't. You don't really know like

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Speaker 1: they say you you do, but then you also they

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Speaker 1: might suggest it again like I I just you know,

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Speaker 1: I don't know. It was just I ended up having

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Speaker 1: to pay quite a bit out of pocket for it,

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Speaker 1: and then I couldn't help. But wonder, you know, can

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Speaker 1: I just up my flossing? Can I just like do

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Speaker 1: a better job? Who I really need to pay for

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Speaker 1: them to jab me under the gums with this like

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Speaker 1: you know electronic thing. Yeah, I mean it's a good

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Speaker 1: question too, because look, one thing you don't have if

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Speaker 1: you're patient in uh in a dentist in a dentist office,

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Speaker 1: is you don't have a p O V inside your mouth,

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Speaker 1: a point of view inside your mouth. So when you're

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Speaker 1: numbed up and they're working on one tooth, I'm not

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Speaker 1: saying this happens, but it is completely possible that they

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Speaker 1: could purposely do something to another tooth that would bring

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Speaker 1: you back in later and maybe not tell you. As

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Speaker 1: a matter of fact, I'm certain that may have happened

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Speaker 1: at some point in the past, whether through human error

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Speaker 1: just maybe through sinister design. But of course, the vast

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Speaker 1: majority of dentists are not out to get you. We

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Speaker 1: need to be very clear because we're about to talk

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Speaker 1: about some gruesome stuff and some disturbing things. There's a

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Speaker 1: dentist in Bozeman, Montana named Jane Gillette, and Jane works

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Speaker 1: closely with the A. D As Center for Evidence Based Dentistry,

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Speaker 1: and she says that because the dental industry is isolated

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Speaker 1: from the larger health care system, uh, they're often left

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Speaker 1: out of the equation when institutions are making evidence based

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Speaker 1: policies are best practice. So it may not be uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, if if something seems off with your dentist,

427
00:26:05,840 --> 00:26:09,480
Speaker 1: it may not be because they're you know, nefarious in

428
00:26:09,480 --> 00:26:12,320
Speaker 1: any way. It may be that they just don't get

429
00:26:12,440 --> 00:26:16,600
Speaker 1: the same kind of established best practices as say a

430
00:26:16,840 --> 00:26:21,040
Speaker 1: neurologist or a surgeon would. So at the very beginning

431
00:26:21,119 --> 00:26:24,960
Speaker 1: here we find two big questions. One or those procedures

432
00:26:25,080 --> 00:26:28,600
Speaker 1: that you're paying for based in science. Two or those

433
00:26:28,680 --> 00:26:34,280
Speaker 1: procedures that you're paying for actually necessary. Unfortunately, it turns

434
00:26:34,320 --> 00:26:40,160
Speaker 1: out our perception collectively of dentistry is rife with misinformation.

435
00:26:40,560 --> 00:26:43,720
Speaker 1: Let's go back to what you brought up earlier, Matt. Yes,

436
00:26:44,000 --> 00:26:47,280
Speaker 1: most people in the US, when you grow up, maybe

437
00:26:47,320 --> 00:26:49,639
Speaker 1: you're in grade school and you get that little visit

438
00:26:49,760 --> 00:26:52,720
Speaker 1: from the dentist in your classroom and they're like, here's

439
00:26:52,720 --> 00:26:56,199
Speaker 1: how you brush. It's two minutes, and remember you need

440
00:26:56,280 --> 00:26:59,240
Speaker 1: to visit the dentist for a checkup and cleaning twice

441
00:26:59,440 --> 00:27:02,880
Speaker 1: a year. This is like if there were a Moses

442
00:27:03,119 --> 00:27:07,560
Speaker 1: dentist who came down from the Mount a d a

443
00:27:07,800 --> 00:27:12,280
Speaker 1: and they had these stone uh, these giant stone retainers

444
00:27:12,400 --> 00:27:15,600
Speaker 1: with commandments written upon them. One of those commandments would

445
00:27:15,640 --> 00:27:18,600
Speaker 1: be twice a year, get your check up. Even if

446
00:27:18,640 --> 00:27:21,399
Speaker 1: you feel like you're fine, even if you lost religiously,

447
00:27:21,920 --> 00:27:24,480
Speaker 1: even if you know people are just like strangers on

448
00:27:24,560 --> 00:27:28,440
Speaker 1: the street are stopping you and going you have amazing teeth,

449
00:27:29,000 --> 00:27:33,159
Speaker 1: sir and or madam, Uh, you still have to go this.

450
00:27:33,680 --> 00:27:38,399
Speaker 1: This statement was not arrived at scientifically. This statement is

451
00:27:38,560 --> 00:27:43,080
Speaker 1: from advertisements. We even feels like that, especially now, but

452
00:27:43,200 --> 00:27:45,000
Speaker 1: when you're a kid, and the way they pitch it

453
00:27:45,080 --> 00:27:47,960
Speaker 1: to you, uh, it feels like gospel, right, like you said,

454
00:27:48,000 --> 00:27:50,560
Speaker 1: like printed on those tablets. But it also amounts to

455
00:27:50,720 --> 00:27:53,119
Speaker 1: money on the bank for the industry, right like if

456
00:27:53,160 --> 00:27:56,159
Speaker 1: you do the math on a yearly basis, two trips

457
00:27:56,240 --> 00:28:00,280
Speaker 1: a year for every living soul, that's a lot of money. Well,

458
00:28:00,320 --> 00:28:04,920
Speaker 1: and if it's covered by insurance, then U then the

459
00:28:05,160 --> 00:28:08,920
Speaker 1: average person with insurance is not going to feel a

460
00:28:09,080 --> 00:28:12,600
Speaker 1: huge impact on costs. They're gonna have a co pay, uh.

461
00:28:12,760 --> 00:28:15,359
Speaker 1: And they're going to well, they're gonna be pain because

462
00:28:15,400 --> 00:28:18,080
Speaker 1: it's taken out of their check every month. But this,

463
00:28:18,520 --> 00:28:24,960
Speaker 1: this is a system where theoretically everybody wins, but it's

464
00:28:25,440 --> 00:28:29,840
Speaker 1: built on it is based almost entirely on a toothpaste

465
00:28:29,840 --> 00:28:34,720
Speaker 1: advertisement from the nineteen thirties and another thing, a little

466
00:28:35,040 --> 00:28:40,200
Speaker 1: uh illustrated booklet from eighteen forty nine that just kind

467
00:28:40,240 --> 00:28:44,560
Speaker 1: of follows the misadventures of a guy who's got a

468
00:28:44,640 --> 00:28:47,000
Speaker 1: real pain in the butt or pain in the jaw

469
00:28:47,040 --> 00:28:54,040
Speaker 1: of a toothache. And nowadays, if you ask dentist in general,

470
00:28:55,080 --> 00:28:57,040
Speaker 1: you won't be at a nine out of ten dentist

471
00:28:57,120 --> 00:28:59,720
Speaker 1: agree kind of thing that's a little too burns. But

472
00:28:59,800 --> 00:29:02,640
Speaker 1: if you asked dennis in general, they're gonna say, if

473
00:29:02,720 --> 00:29:06,000
Speaker 1: you have three yeah, they're gonna say three times a day,

474
00:29:06,480 --> 00:29:10,280
Speaker 1: after each meal, uh, come to the desk, right, which

475
00:29:10,520 --> 00:29:13,240
Speaker 1: you know, technically, just like changing the oil in your car,

476
00:29:13,440 --> 00:29:16,760
Speaker 1: that might be beneficial for you physically, but definitely not

477
00:29:16,880 --> 00:29:21,920
Speaker 1: financially in this country. So nowadays, if you ask a

478
00:29:22,040 --> 00:29:24,000
Speaker 1: lot of dentists, they're gonna say, if you have good

479
00:29:24,200 --> 00:29:27,560
Speaker 1: oral hygiene, you only need to see a dentist every

480
00:29:27,840 --> 00:29:32,400
Speaker 1: twelve to sixteen months. And then we also noticed that

481
00:29:32,920 --> 00:29:36,960
Speaker 1: a lot of these dental treatments that are considered standard

482
00:29:38,480 --> 00:29:41,920
Speaker 1: the and that are considered medicinal so they're not cosmetic,

483
00:29:42,080 --> 00:29:46,000
Speaker 1: not like tooth whitening or something like that, those aren't

484
00:29:46,080 --> 00:29:51,040
Speaker 1: really substantiated by a ton of research. And Jaber even

485
00:29:51,200 --> 00:29:56,400
Speaker 1: argues that many have never been tested in vigorous, serious

486
00:29:56,440 --> 00:30:00,360
Speaker 1: clinical trials, and the little data that is a aliable

487
00:30:00,760 --> 00:30:08,560
Speaker 1: isn't often super is it often super reassuring? So dude, yeah,

488
00:30:09,160 --> 00:30:10,640
Speaker 1: just to take it back to the insurance thing one

489
00:30:10,680 --> 00:30:12,960
Speaker 1: more time, know, if you guys have looks at the

490
00:30:13,920 --> 00:30:17,360
Speaker 1: the I don't know the fine print of your dental

491
00:30:18,120 --> 00:30:20,240
Speaker 1: insurance that we get through this company and that we've

492
00:30:20,280 --> 00:30:24,360
Speaker 1: gotten through the years, it always allocates is designed to

493
00:30:24,520 --> 00:30:27,600
Speaker 1: have that twice a year, I'll check up. I mean,

494
00:30:27,840 --> 00:30:30,840
Speaker 1: so it's it really is like everybody's working together to

495
00:30:31,000 --> 00:30:34,000
Speaker 1: make sure they can get that. It's like that's just

496
00:30:34,480 --> 00:30:39,160
Speaker 1: enough times to where the patient isn't gonna balk and say, yeah,

497
00:30:39,560 --> 00:30:41,160
Speaker 1: I'm not going to go to the dentist that often,

498
00:30:41,680 --> 00:30:44,760
Speaker 1: and just enough that the dentist office can make enough

499
00:30:44,840 --> 00:30:49,120
Speaker 1: money through you and your procedures. There's the same thing

500
00:30:49,200 --> 00:30:52,680
Speaker 1: with other procedures to like the insurance will pony up

501
00:30:52,720 --> 00:30:55,800
Speaker 1: every five years. It begs the question, is it only

502
00:30:55,960 --> 00:31:00,840
Speaker 1: conspiracy if you're being misled? Like if it's bad? You

503
00:31:00,920 --> 00:31:02,280
Speaker 1: know what I mean? Like, I mean, you know you

504
00:31:02,360 --> 00:31:05,080
Speaker 1: can't really even let's just say it's excessive to go

505
00:31:05,200 --> 00:31:07,520
Speaker 1: two times a year. It's not bad for you, it's

506
00:31:07,520 --> 00:31:11,560
Speaker 1: not gonna hurt you. Um, but what is that it

507
00:31:12,000 --> 00:31:18,480
Speaker 1: provides an opportunity for further uh things to be done

508
00:31:18,560 --> 00:31:21,600
Speaker 1: to your from the mechanic of your mouth, the mechanic

509
00:31:21,680 --> 00:31:25,680
Speaker 1: of your mouth. I like that. Uh So, yes, you're right.

510
00:31:26,160 --> 00:31:28,200
Speaker 1: You know what, In fact, I would say, as we

511
00:31:28,440 --> 00:31:33,360
Speaker 1: reach the third act of our episode, let's let's take

512
00:31:33,360 --> 00:31:36,440
Speaker 1: an ant break a little sooner than usual, and let's

513
00:31:37,120 --> 00:31:39,680
Speaker 1: we want to give you the whole worst case scenario.

514
00:31:40,360 --> 00:31:44,560
Speaker 1: So I know everybody is probably really conscious of the

515
00:31:44,640 --> 00:31:47,000
Speaker 1: teeth in your mouth right now. I get it. It's

516
00:31:47,120 --> 00:31:50,320
Speaker 1: it's weird not to think about it. So let's let's

517
00:31:50,360 --> 00:31:54,240
Speaker 1: take a break. Everybody, Floss will be back and we'll

518
00:31:54,320 --> 00:31:58,040
Speaker 1: tell you just how badly these conspiracies can go awry.

519
00:32:04,640 --> 00:32:08,080
Speaker 1: We've returned, Paul, give me give me a sound que

520
00:32:08,160 --> 00:32:10,600
Speaker 1: that sounds just law and order enough not to get

521
00:32:10,680 --> 00:32:15,880
Speaker 1: us sued. Perfect law and order mouth crime. So let's

522
00:32:15,960 --> 00:32:19,120
Speaker 1: think of the worst case scenario. Let's say there is

523
00:32:19,200 --> 00:32:24,160
Speaker 1: a dentist somewhere out there who realizes they can make

524
00:32:24,240 --> 00:32:28,960
Speaker 1: a ton of money convincing patients not all the time,

525
00:32:29,080 --> 00:32:33,400
Speaker 1: but every so often that they need an expensive, unnecessary

526
00:32:33,880 --> 00:32:36,719
Speaker 1: surgery like they need a root now, or they need

527
00:32:36,800 --> 00:32:40,160
Speaker 1: a procedure like a crown. As we said before, very

528
00:32:40,240 --> 00:32:43,160
Speaker 1: few patients are going to have the knowledge to dispute

529
00:32:43,320 --> 00:32:46,920
Speaker 1: this advice from an expert. You know, who are you

530
00:32:47,760 --> 00:32:53,280
Speaker 1: to say without a DDS degree, who are you to say, uh,

531
00:32:54,440 --> 00:32:56,480
Speaker 1: that's not on the up and up. I live with

532
00:32:56,560 --> 00:32:59,280
Speaker 1: my teeth, bro, I believe in them, doc, and I

533
00:32:59,400 --> 00:33:03,760
Speaker 1: know what's best from my teeth. That would feel like

534
00:33:04,160 --> 00:33:08,240
Speaker 1: both arrogant and kind of bullheaded. But and it's also

535
00:33:08,360 --> 00:33:10,719
Speaker 1: not like you're gonna go, you know what, I need

536
00:33:10,800 --> 00:33:14,800
Speaker 1: a second opinion. Who's gonna do that? Right? Who has

537
00:33:14,920 --> 00:33:17,520
Speaker 1: the time? And who would who would be willing to

538
00:33:17,600 --> 00:33:20,680
Speaker 1: pay the extra expense to have a second opinion, Because,

539
00:33:20,720 --> 00:33:23,520
Speaker 1: after all, it's not like you're in a discussion about

540
00:33:23,560 --> 00:33:27,280
Speaker 1: your odds of surviving cancer. That would take people to

541
00:33:27,400 --> 00:33:30,120
Speaker 1: the world of second opinions, because your life hangs in

542
00:33:30,200 --> 00:33:33,480
Speaker 1: the balance. But if it's just one tooth, you're probably

543
00:33:33,520 --> 00:33:37,360
Speaker 1: gonna let it slide. And this means that our hypothetical

544
00:33:37,520 --> 00:33:41,040
Speaker 1: dentists would have a pretty low chance of being caught,

545
00:33:41,240 --> 00:33:44,160
Speaker 1: so long as they didn't get too greedy, so long

546
00:33:44,280 --> 00:33:49,320
Speaker 1: as it was as their parasitism and uh, as long

547
00:33:49,360 --> 00:33:52,880
Speaker 1: as their parasitism doesn't go past a certain threshold, and

548
00:33:52,960 --> 00:33:56,880
Speaker 1: as long as they distribute this grift across an adequate

549
00:33:56,960 --> 00:34:00,920
Speaker 1: sample size of patients. But here's the whist. This is

550
00:34:00,960 --> 00:34:05,520
Speaker 1: not a hypothetical example. There are well documented cases, multiple

551
00:34:05,640 --> 00:34:10,120
Speaker 1: well documented cases of dentists who have conspired to subject

552
00:34:10,200 --> 00:34:16,480
Speaker 1: patients to absolutely unnecessary, unneeded procedures with the goal of profit.

553
00:34:16,680 --> 00:34:20,360
Speaker 1: These can quickly become expensive. I haven't found to the

554
00:34:20,400 --> 00:34:23,520
Speaker 1: earlier question about fetish. I was wondering, you know, is

555
00:34:23,640 --> 00:34:28,040
Speaker 1: there like, like there's a certain percentage of shoes sales

556
00:34:28,120 --> 00:34:31,600
Speaker 1: people who are in the shoe game not because they

557
00:34:31,680 --> 00:34:34,720
Speaker 1: like money, and it's very in defeat, like Tarantino style

558
00:34:34,800 --> 00:34:37,080
Speaker 1: and defeat. And I was wondering if there's a dentist

559
00:34:37,320 --> 00:34:41,440
Speaker 1: somewhere who's just really into play him with your teeth. Uh,

560
00:34:41,840 --> 00:34:46,160
Speaker 1: those people may exist, but we didn't find any hard

561
00:34:46,280 --> 00:34:51,040
Speaker 1: evidence of those folks. What we found is largely profit motivation.

562
00:34:51,719 --> 00:34:55,520
Speaker 1: There's a case that Jaber dives into about a guy

563
00:34:55,680 --> 00:34:59,239
Speaker 1: in San Jose, California. Well, two guys, what is the

564
00:34:59,320 --> 00:35:01,719
Speaker 1: dude too need to tooth extracted? His name is Terry

565
00:35:01,760 --> 00:35:06,200
Speaker 1: Mitchell and one is a dentist named John Roger Lund.

566
00:35:06,560 --> 00:35:10,520
Speaker 1: This took place about twenty years ago. So in this case,

567
00:35:10,760 --> 00:35:15,279
Speaker 1: Terry Mitchell is our protagonist in many ways. And he

568
00:35:15,440 --> 00:35:19,759
Speaker 1: started seeing Lund on the recommendation of a friend, at

569
00:35:19,840 --> 00:35:23,640
Speaker 1: least that's according to him, and you know, they met

570
00:35:23,760 --> 00:35:27,399
Speaker 1: each other. It went really well. In the article, even

571
00:35:28,080 --> 00:35:32,400
Speaker 1: the building itself has described the way that Lunda looked.

572
00:35:32,520 --> 00:35:35,800
Speaker 1: He was just, you know, seemed like a trustworthy, you know,

573
00:35:35,960 --> 00:35:39,080
Speaker 1: middle aged man. He said, okay, this, this seems this

574
00:35:39,160 --> 00:35:40,560
Speaker 1: seems like it's going to be good. I think we're

575
00:35:40,560 --> 00:35:45,759
Speaker 1: gonna get along. And uh, he needed a tooth extracted.

576
00:35:46,040 --> 00:35:49,959
Speaker 1: So Lund, the dentist in this case, extracted Mitchell's tooth

577
00:35:50,120 --> 00:35:52,680
Speaker 1: or Terry's tooth. Let's call it. Let's do Terry in Lund.

578
00:35:52,800 --> 00:35:55,160
Speaker 1: I know it's not quite right because it's a first

579
00:35:55,239 --> 00:36:01,920
Speaker 1: name in the last one that sounds like songwriting duo. Yes, yes, um,

580
00:36:03,440 --> 00:36:06,200
Speaker 1: but okay, So but during this first visit, kind of

581
00:36:06,280 --> 00:36:10,880
Speaker 1: like the mechanic example that you gave been, Lund noticed

582
00:36:10,920 --> 00:36:13,440
Speaker 1: that there were two other problems going on under the

583
00:36:13,520 --> 00:36:17,359
Speaker 1: hood there for Terry, and he said, there are two

584
00:36:17,400 --> 00:36:19,440
Speaker 1: more problems that we need to take care of. And

585
00:36:19,719 --> 00:36:24,040
Speaker 1: you know, it makes sense right like you said, like

586
00:36:24,120 --> 00:36:27,200
Speaker 1: we've talked about this whole episode. Lund was in Terry's mouth,

587
00:36:27,440 --> 00:36:30,480
Speaker 1: saw the problems, let him know, and that should have

588
00:36:30,520 --> 00:36:33,800
Speaker 1: been fine and regular and normal and okay, this is

589
00:36:33,840 --> 00:36:35,839
Speaker 1: all on the up and up, but it turns out

590
00:36:35,880 --> 00:36:39,520
Speaker 1: it wasn't. Yeah, that's the things. So if you are

591
00:36:39,680 --> 00:36:42,759
Speaker 1: the typical person, you might get one or two root

592
00:36:42,800 --> 00:36:46,560
Speaker 1: canals in your life. Michael, your whole life without getting one.

593
00:36:47,440 --> 00:36:52,160
Speaker 1: But in the space of just seven years, lundu the

594
00:36:52,520 --> 00:36:55,040
Speaker 1: mouth making the mechanic of the mouth who had said,

595
00:36:55,200 --> 00:36:58,000
Speaker 1: you know, basically, I know you're here for an oil

596
00:36:58,080 --> 00:37:01,640
Speaker 1: change entire rotation, but we need to your transmission. It's

597
00:37:01,680 --> 00:37:04,680
Speaker 1: then the auto version of what he was doing. In

598
00:37:04,840 --> 00:37:10,200
Speaker 1: just seven years, Lund gave this guy Terry Mitchell, nine

599
00:37:10,600 --> 00:37:16,200
Speaker 1: root canals and around nine crowns. Mitchell's insurance, like most

600
00:37:16,280 --> 00:37:19,320
Speaker 1: people's insurance, only covered a little bit of each of

601
00:37:19,400 --> 00:37:22,200
Speaker 1: these procedures because they were beyond your twice a year

602
00:37:22,320 --> 00:37:26,440
Speaker 1: check up or the small portion ally catd for fillings, etcetera.

603
00:37:26,960 --> 00:37:30,560
Speaker 1: So all in all, over seven years get this, Mitchell

604
00:37:30,719 --> 00:37:34,080
Speaker 1: ended up paying about fifty grand of his own money

605
00:37:34,239 --> 00:37:38,719
Speaker 1: out of pocket. And you know, because this happened over time,

606
00:37:38,920 --> 00:37:44,040
Speaker 1: he wasn't particularly troubled by it. He had no reference point.

607
00:37:44,520 --> 00:37:46,319
Speaker 1: He was not an expert, you know what I mean.

608
00:37:46,440 --> 00:37:50,279
Speaker 1: He wasn't digging into statistics or anything. He just thought

609
00:37:50,560 --> 00:37:53,600
Speaker 1: root canals turned out to be as common as fillings.

610
00:37:54,239 --> 00:37:57,440
Speaker 1: Just happens in the course of life. And uh, you know,

611
00:37:57,640 --> 00:38:00,600
Speaker 1: it's a necessary evil the US. Why you say it

612
00:38:00,719 --> 00:38:03,320
Speaker 1: is he trusted Lundon. There was social engineering going on.

613
00:38:03,719 --> 00:38:07,160
Speaker 1: He said, you know, if I need these treatments, well

614
00:38:07,200 --> 00:38:10,719
Speaker 1: I should get them before things get worse, right, And

615
00:38:10,800 --> 00:38:16,440
Speaker 1: he probably had, you know, um horrific spectral visions his

616
00:38:16,640 --> 00:38:20,040
Speaker 1: life as a man with full dentures at a young age,

617
00:38:20,200 --> 00:38:22,760
Speaker 1: and he wanted to avoid it. But there's other things

618
00:38:22,960 --> 00:38:25,279
Speaker 1: he did not know that would have perhaps changed his

619
00:38:25,440 --> 00:38:27,680
Speaker 1: decision if he had learned them. If he had learned

620
00:38:27,680 --> 00:38:30,560
Speaker 1: of even one of these pieces of information over that

621
00:38:30,719 --> 00:38:35,160
Speaker 1: seven years. First, another one of Lund's patients was having

622
00:38:35,239 --> 00:38:41,200
Speaker 1: the same experience. Yeah, businesswoman in her fifties named Joyce Cordy.

623
00:38:41,520 --> 00:38:44,400
Speaker 1: She learned of Lunds not through a word of mouth referral,

624
00:38:44,560 --> 00:38:49,640
Speaker 1: but through a service called Dists. Yeah, and it's again

625
00:38:49,840 --> 00:38:53,280
Speaker 1: kind of things like one hundred dentists or care Credit

626
00:38:53,400 --> 00:38:55,680
Speaker 1: and stuff like that that sort of kind of point

627
00:38:55,760 --> 00:38:59,400
Speaker 1: to how slightly problematic a lot of these things are

628
00:38:59,440 --> 00:39:02,160
Speaker 1: care credit being like a credit card that people apply

629
00:39:02,320 --> 00:39:04,960
Speaker 1: for that specifically is meant to pay for medical expenses

630
00:39:05,040 --> 00:39:09,239
Speaker 1: or dental expenses on credit with a pretty high interest rate. Um.

631
00:39:09,360 --> 00:39:12,640
Speaker 1: But we'll get more into that later. So when Cordy

632
00:39:12,800 --> 00:39:17,160
Speaker 1: visited Lund for the first time back in she was

633
00:39:17,239 --> 00:39:20,080
Speaker 1: perfectly healthy mouth wise U. She had never had so

634
00:39:20,160 --> 00:39:23,000
Speaker 1: much as a cavity, and to her knowledge, she had

635
00:39:23,080 --> 00:39:27,040
Speaker 1: a perfectly healthy and happy mouth U, which is what

636
00:39:27,120 --> 00:39:31,320
Speaker 1: everyone wants. Um. But she had had a small dental

637
00:39:31,440 --> 00:39:35,280
Speaker 1: bridge installed to fix something that was not any fault

638
00:39:35,320 --> 00:39:37,440
Speaker 1: of her own in terms of her you know, hygiene.

639
00:39:37,800 --> 00:39:41,120
Speaker 1: It was a congenital anomaly. She was born with one

640
00:39:41,239 --> 00:39:44,400
Speaker 1: tooth trapped inside of another one and had to have

641
00:39:44,520 --> 00:39:46,520
Speaker 1: one of those extracted. I wonder what the name of

642
00:39:46,560 --> 00:39:51,120
Speaker 1: that condition is. Um. And within a year Lund was

643
00:39:51,719 --> 00:39:55,800
Speaker 1: concerned at least with her the quality of her bridge,

644
00:39:56,160 --> 00:39:59,400
Speaker 1: the resilience anyway, Um and told her that she needed

645
00:39:59,520 --> 00:40:03,800
Speaker 1: root can owls and crowns um to to fix whatever

646
00:40:04,200 --> 00:40:07,479
Speaker 1: was wrong with the s bridge Um. And she didn't

647
00:40:07,520 --> 00:40:11,359
Speaker 1: understand because, you know, she before she'd seen this, this guy,

648
00:40:11,800 --> 00:40:16,120
Speaker 1: she had been fine. She'd never had any dental procedures

649
00:40:16,200 --> 00:40:18,200
Speaker 1: other than this one to fix something that, you know,

650
00:40:18,360 --> 00:40:20,600
Speaker 1: again when she was born with so why all of

651
00:40:20,640 --> 00:40:24,359
Speaker 1: a sudden the need for all of these procedures when

652
00:40:24,480 --> 00:40:28,200
Speaker 1: she had experienced decades of good dental health. So she,

653
00:40:28,960 --> 00:40:33,120
Speaker 1: you know, expressed this openly to lund Um and he,

654
00:40:33,760 --> 00:40:38,240
Speaker 1: you know, has any good huckster does, had a line

655
00:40:39,120 --> 00:40:42,280
Speaker 1: counter to every point that she made. Um the cavity

656
00:40:42,360 --> 00:40:43,719
Speaker 1: on this too, who was in the wrong position to

657
00:40:43,800 --> 00:40:47,000
Speaker 1: treat with a typical filling things like that your gums

658
00:40:47,080 --> 00:40:51,040
Speaker 1: are receding causing tooth decay. And then over the course

659
00:40:51,120 --> 00:40:55,800
Speaker 1: of ten years, Lund gave Cordy ten rude canals and

660
00:40:56,040 --> 00:41:01,080
Speaker 1: ten crowns and Mitchell seriously, and it also leveled up

661
00:41:01,160 --> 00:41:04,080
Speaker 1: you know, Chichen wise, I believe it was around fifty

662
00:41:04,200 --> 00:41:08,640
Speaker 1: K for Terry Mitchell. She was in closer to seventy

663
00:41:09,160 --> 00:41:13,240
Speaker 1: dollars for all of this dental work. Um. He also

664
00:41:13,840 --> 00:41:17,800
Speaker 1: removed her bridge and replaced it with two new ones

665
00:41:18,440 --> 00:41:21,840
Speaker 1: that left a gap in her front teeth. Yeah, she

666
00:41:22,000 --> 00:41:25,560
Speaker 1: did not, for the record request the madonna. Look. Uh,

667
00:41:25,760 --> 00:41:29,920
Speaker 1: this was not This was not her plan. But again

668
00:41:30,040 --> 00:41:31,839
Speaker 1: she was in the hands of an expert in her case,

669
00:41:31,920 --> 00:41:35,440
Speaker 1: in particular her one of her parents was a doctor,

670
00:41:35,800 --> 00:41:40,359
Speaker 1: so she was kind of primed to respect this as

671
00:41:40,680 --> 00:41:44,120
Speaker 1: to respect these professionals as authority figures, which you know,

672
00:41:44,320 --> 00:41:48,520
Speaker 1: I think you should. But again, just like a crooked mechanic,

673
00:41:49,520 --> 00:41:54,600
Speaker 1: Lundon other dentists like him really stood there a very

674
00:41:54,640 --> 00:41:59,040
Speaker 1: small chance of being caught. In fact, Lundon retired without

675
00:41:59,200 --> 00:42:02,880
Speaker 1: controversy at first. We only know the full extent of

676
00:42:02,960 --> 00:42:07,080
Speaker 1: this story because of the dentist who took over his practice.

677
00:42:07,760 --> 00:42:10,360
Speaker 1: Like we said, the vast majority of dentists are on

678
00:42:10,440 --> 00:42:12,920
Speaker 1: the up and up their professionals. They just want to

679
00:42:13,160 --> 00:42:14,839
Speaker 1: help you and they just want to make a living.

680
00:42:15,400 --> 00:42:19,680
Speaker 1: And that's where our protagonists or other protagonists comes in.

681
00:42:19,880 --> 00:42:24,280
Speaker 1: Brendan Zeidler, he did some digging. So Brenln Ziedler buys

682
00:42:24,360 --> 00:42:28,719
Speaker 1: Lund's practice around two thousand twelve, and so he sort

683
00:42:28,760 --> 00:42:34,200
Speaker 1: of he inherits those patients and their treatment plans. Within

684
00:42:34,280 --> 00:42:38,799
Speaker 1: a few months, Zeidler began to suspect that, uh, there

685
00:42:38,920 --> 00:42:43,600
Speaker 1: was a rotten tooth in this dental practice because he

686
00:42:43,719 --> 00:42:46,480
Speaker 1: looked at he looked at these financial records. It started

687
00:42:46,520 --> 00:42:49,920
Speaker 1: out with self interest, to be clear, because he said, Okay,

688
00:42:50,239 --> 00:42:54,239
Speaker 1: Lund was a rock star dentist. When it came to

689
00:42:54,320 --> 00:42:58,400
Speaker 1: the bottom line, this guy was making bands on bands

690
00:42:58,440 --> 00:43:03,719
Speaker 1: on bands. But Zeedler asked himself, how come I'm only

691
00:43:03,800 --> 00:43:07,879
Speaker 1: making like ten to as much cash as this guy

692
00:43:08,040 --> 00:43:11,520
Speaker 1: was making every month in his practice. You know, I'm right,

693
00:43:11,640 --> 00:43:15,920
Speaker 1: like he's making more than me in some months. And

694
00:43:16,000 --> 00:43:22,440
Speaker 1: then what is a band? Stacks? Stack? You know uns

695
00:43:23,040 --> 00:43:25,680
Speaker 1: dollar dollar bills, y'all? Is it? Is it a hundred

696
00:43:25,800 --> 00:43:27,800
Speaker 1: or a thousand? Well, I mean a band would be

697
00:43:27,840 --> 00:43:30,920
Speaker 1: a thousand made of hundreds if I'm not mistaken. So

698
00:43:31,440 --> 00:43:35,480
Speaker 1: one band is usually a thousand. So is that twenties

699
00:43:35,600 --> 00:43:40,439
Speaker 1: like inside with a rubber band around it? Well, blue bill,

700
00:43:40,600 --> 00:43:45,040
Speaker 1: they'll usually be stacked like blue bands would be stacks.

701
00:43:45,160 --> 00:43:47,680
Speaker 1: A stack of ten thousand, and they would they I

702
00:43:47,760 --> 00:43:51,040
Speaker 1: think they're usually a hundred dollar bills. Cool, thank you guys.

703
00:43:51,080 --> 00:43:55,879
Speaker 1: I just I know that comes up a lot Matt

704
00:43:56,000 --> 00:44:01,440
Speaker 1: in your underground dentistry practice. It does payments of bands

705
00:44:03,440 --> 00:44:06,440
Speaker 1: like how much, how much for how much for my

706
00:44:07,080 --> 00:44:10,880
Speaker 1: how much for my crowns? Dr Frederick? Is that a

707
00:44:10,960 --> 00:44:15,160
Speaker 1: stack each and a half bands and a half bands? Sir?

708
00:44:15,800 --> 00:44:20,040
Speaker 1: Uh so? So this is the thing, like we said,

709
00:44:20,080 --> 00:44:23,200
Speaker 1: he inherits these patients, and he is speaking to more

710
00:44:23,239 --> 00:44:27,319
Speaker 1: and more patients, and as he's speaking to them, he's

711
00:44:27,360 --> 00:44:33,160
Speaker 1: starting to realize, hang on, there's a trend here. Because

712
00:44:33,239 --> 00:44:35,600
Speaker 1: he is the person who's looking inside their mouths. It's

713
00:44:35,680 --> 00:44:38,040
Speaker 1: like these people have had a lot of work done,

714
00:44:38,640 --> 00:44:41,600
Speaker 1: much more than I have ever seen before. And so

715
00:44:41,880 --> 00:44:44,400
Speaker 1: he wouldn't. He didn't initially like tell them this, like

716
00:44:44,600 --> 00:44:48,920
Speaker 1: someone is playing crazy games with your mouth. He said,

717
00:44:49,680 --> 00:44:53,560
Speaker 1: after you know, there twice a year, twice a year,

718
00:44:53,600 --> 00:44:55,960
Speaker 1: cleaning or whatever, he would look at me and say like, hey,

719
00:44:56,080 --> 00:44:59,200
Speaker 1: everything looks pretty great. You know. It's the equivalent of

720
00:44:59,320 --> 00:45:01,480
Speaker 1: taking her car in for an oil change and the

721
00:45:01,560 --> 00:45:05,239
Speaker 1: mechanics saying, hey, we change your oil. We refilled the

722
00:45:05,640 --> 00:45:08,160
Speaker 1: you know, the wiper fluid. You r G two G,

723
00:45:08,800 --> 00:45:12,000
Speaker 1: my friend, that means good to go, because I'm really

724
00:45:12,040 --> 00:45:14,879
Speaker 1: corny mechanic. We also put in a new transmission though,

725
00:45:14,960 --> 00:45:17,840
Speaker 1: because we were pretty sure yours was on the fritz.

726
00:45:18,080 --> 00:45:20,080
Speaker 1: I know, I know he didn't have any symptoms of that,

727
00:45:20,239 --> 00:45:22,759
Speaker 1: and he didn't ask for it, but trust us, you're

728
00:45:22,800 --> 00:45:25,120
Speaker 1: gonna be all the better for it. But but really

729
00:45:25,160 --> 00:45:27,279
Speaker 1: it's crazy because in this case, Eiler did not do that,

730
00:45:27,960 --> 00:45:29,880
Speaker 1: like just as you said, but he just said, no,

731
00:45:30,040 --> 00:45:32,800
Speaker 1: you're good, we'll see you, you know, six months. And

732
00:45:33,360 --> 00:45:36,239
Speaker 1: like you said, the patients were not used to that.

733
00:45:37,040 --> 00:45:39,040
Speaker 1: They were the ones. They were the ones raising the

734
00:45:39,400 --> 00:45:42,200
Speaker 1: alarm because they were used to like just all of

735
00:45:42,280 --> 00:45:45,640
Speaker 1: these procedures that were unnecessary, and so they were now

736
00:45:45,760 --> 00:45:50,280
Speaker 1: suspicious of the doctor that was actually acting in good faith. Yes, yeah,

737
00:45:51,040 --> 00:45:53,480
Speaker 1: some of them even kind of asked him for a

738
00:45:53,600 --> 00:45:57,080
Speaker 1: second opinion from himself, like you did you look at

739
00:45:57,120 --> 00:46:00,200
Speaker 1: every tooth, as though he was gonna say, I just

740
00:46:00,280 --> 00:46:03,359
Speaker 1: looked at your canines. I'm a thing guy, you know, um,

741
00:46:05,120 --> 00:46:07,080
Speaker 1: and and and just just I know this is probably

742
00:46:07,120 --> 00:46:09,239
Speaker 1: obvious to most people, but I don't think we are

743
00:46:09,320 --> 00:46:14,000
Speaker 1: not implying that the dental profession as a whole is populated.

744
00:46:14,000 --> 00:46:16,000
Speaker 1: I think this guy is a perfect example, is populated

745
00:46:16,080 --> 00:46:18,880
Speaker 1: by these uh, these crooks. In fact, there's a really

746
00:46:18,960 --> 00:46:21,680
Speaker 1: good article ben that that I believe you cited as well,

747
00:46:22,080 --> 00:46:26,480
Speaker 1: um in Dentistry Today, the you know, the publication of

748
00:46:26,719 --> 00:46:29,920
Speaker 1: Dentists that goes through all of this stuff and holds

749
00:46:29,960 --> 00:46:32,640
Speaker 1: it up as an example of like, yeah, there's gonna

750
00:46:32,680 --> 00:46:36,400
Speaker 1: be some bad actors in every profession, and here are

751
00:46:36,480 --> 00:46:38,920
Speaker 1: some of the worst ones in ours, just so you

752
00:46:39,000 --> 00:46:42,160
Speaker 1: can be armed with this information and know what to

753
00:46:42,239 --> 00:46:46,160
Speaker 1: look for. Right. Well, yes, but here's the thing. At

754
00:46:46,239 --> 00:46:49,960
Speaker 1: this point in the story, Ziedler, dentist number two, who's

755
00:46:50,080 --> 00:46:53,160
Speaker 1: like looking at all these patients. This dentist doesn't know

756
00:46:53,800 --> 00:46:58,160
Speaker 1: if perhaps lund actually did amazing work fixed all these

757
00:46:58,320 --> 00:47:01,760
Speaker 1: teeth and they're just great now because they're all fixed

758
00:47:01,840 --> 00:47:05,560
Speaker 1: because of LUN's amazing work, right right, He can't prove

759
00:47:05,640 --> 00:47:09,320
Speaker 1: if it's that where they actually have been having you know,

760
00:47:09,560 --> 00:47:12,320
Speaker 1: way too many procedures. So what he does is he

761
00:47:12,400 --> 00:47:15,160
Speaker 1: starts digging more into Lundon to see if he can

762
00:47:15,200 --> 00:47:19,480
Speaker 1: find anything else out. Yeah, from like August of two

763
00:47:19,600 --> 00:47:25,160
Speaker 1: thousand twelve or so, he loses his weekends. Ziegler does

764
00:47:25,360 --> 00:47:29,040
Speaker 1: because instead of instead of kicking it and you know, um,

765
00:47:29,800 --> 00:47:32,360
Speaker 1: go into a dentist country club, which is not a

766
00:47:32,400 --> 00:47:35,719
Speaker 1: real thing. H He spends every Saturday and Sunday for

767
00:47:35,800 --> 00:47:40,600
Speaker 1: the next nine months diving into the records of the

768
00:47:40,760 --> 00:47:45,040
Speaker 1: past five years of LUN's former practice. These are charts

769
00:47:45,120 --> 00:47:50,080
Speaker 1: that include work performed on hundreds of patients, and he

770
00:47:50,239 --> 00:47:53,440
Speaker 1: builds out, because he's probably super fun at parties, a

771
00:47:53,640 --> 00:48:00,200
Speaker 1: giant Xcel spreadsheet where he meticulously logs every procedure that

772
00:48:00,400 --> 00:48:03,960
Speaker 1: Lund has made during those five years and then does

773
00:48:04,080 --> 00:48:08,080
Speaker 1: some basic, uh, some basic analyzes. And what he found

774
00:48:08,400 --> 00:48:11,600
Speaker 1: was horrified because it turned out that every single year,

775
00:48:12,080 --> 00:48:18,120
Speaker 1: Lund was performing very particular procedures at cartoonishly high rates.

776
00:48:18,239 --> 00:48:21,640
Speaker 1: So a typical dentist, let's we said, a typical person

777
00:48:21,719 --> 00:48:24,680
Speaker 1: might get one to two root canals in their lifetime.

778
00:48:24,800 --> 00:48:27,120
Speaker 1: That's number with a lot of variants. So don't don't

779
00:48:27,200 --> 00:48:30,200
Speaker 1: feel like you're bad somehow if you had three or four,

780
00:48:30,960 --> 00:48:36,040
Speaker 1: everybody's life is different. This means that a typical dentist

781
00:48:36,400 --> 00:48:38,759
Speaker 1: is not going to choose a root canal as their

782
00:48:38,800 --> 00:48:43,200
Speaker 1: first option. They would maybe perform a root canal on

783
00:48:43,400 --> 00:48:45,920
Speaker 1: a tooth that had a crowd on it from earlier

784
00:48:46,480 --> 00:48:51,120
Speaker 1: in three to seven percent of cases. Our boy lund

785
00:48:51,560 --> 00:48:55,520
Speaker 1: was giving people root canals in nine percent of cases.

786
00:48:56,080 --> 00:48:59,439
Speaker 1: And Ziedler eventually spoiler alert takes this guy to court.

787
00:49:00,160 --> 00:49:05,560
Speaker 1: He says that Lundon has performed invasive, costly, unnecessary procedures

788
00:49:06,040 --> 00:49:09,600
Speaker 1: on tons of people, and some of them had been

789
00:49:09,680 --> 00:49:12,239
Speaker 1: seeing him. They trusted him, They've been going to him

790
00:49:12,480 --> 00:49:17,240
Speaker 1: for decades, Like like Matt's, Dr Kimchi You've established this bond,

791
00:49:17,440 --> 00:49:18,920
Speaker 1: you know, and You're like, if I have to have

792
00:49:19,080 --> 00:49:22,759
Speaker 1: this unpleasant experience, I at least want to trust the

793
00:49:22,880 --> 00:49:26,040
Speaker 1: person who's going through it with me. That's very understandable,

794
00:49:26,520 --> 00:49:29,240
Speaker 1: But dude, I totally trust her. She has pictures with Luda,

795
00:49:29,520 --> 00:49:32,239
Speaker 1: so I mean because she does. She has actually met him,

796
00:49:32,239 --> 00:49:35,160
Speaker 1: she has great stories about him. This is I think

797
00:49:35,239 --> 00:49:38,840
Speaker 1: this is a nice counterbalance we're recommending. We're recommending a

798
00:49:38,960 --> 00:49:42,360
Speaker 1: dentists we like while we're talking about this, just absolute

799
00:49:42,440 --> 00:49:46,680
Speaker 1: con artist. I can't emphasize enough how amazing it is

800
00:49:46,800 --> 00:49:50,520
Speaker 1: that her name is Dr kim Chi. Uh. That's incredible.

801
00:49:50,680 --> 00:49:53,520
Speaker 1: It's one of my favorite Korean snacks. I feel so bad.

802
00:49:53,560 --> 00:49:59,919
Speaker 1: We're totally not mentioning her partner and drus he's also

803
00:50:01,520 --> 00:50:03,320
Speaker 1: my dentist. Just fine, but I think it's time for

804
00:50:03,400 --> 00:50:06,360
Speaker 1: me to switch, you know, two out of three, I

805
00:50:06,440 --> 00:50:08,319
Speaker 1: feel like I need to get on the Kimchy train.

806
00:50:08,440 --> 00:50:10,000
Speaker 1: But no, you're you're right. I like I said, I

807
00:50:10,120 --> 00:50:12,040
Speaker 1: like my dentist too. And it is a trust thing,

808
00:50:12,560 --> 00:50:14,560
Speaker 1: especially since you have that kind of I mean you

809
00:50:14,640 --> 00:50:18,439
Speaker 1: do with your doctor to um, but it's not quite

810
00:50:18,480 --> 00:50:22,200
Speaker 1: the same for some reason. The doctor typically isn't plumbing

811
00:50:22,239 --> 00:50:24,920
Speaker 1: around in your body, you know, like you get some

812
00:50:24,960 --> 00:50:28,120
Speaker 1: blood taken, but that's gonna be a different assistant every time.

813
00:50:28,520 --> 00:50:30,680
Speaker 1: The doctor usually just pops into the room, talks to

814
00:50:30,719 --> 00:50:33,240
Speaker 1: you for a couple of seconds and then's gone, whereas

815
00:50:33,239 --> 00:50:35,719
Speaker 1: the dentist usually comes in and really goes in there

816
00:50:35,760 --> 00:50:37,920
Speaker 1: and like you know, either does the bulk of the

817
00:50:38,040 --> 00:50:41,000
Speaker 1: procedure or at the very least is much more hands on.

818
00:50:41,840 --> 00:50:44,560
Speaker 1: Definitely grabs your tongue with that gauze that is just

819
00:50:44,960 --> 00:50:49,040
Speaker 1: so pleasant. I love it, but I could see the

820
00:50:49,200 --> 00:50:55,080
Speaker 1: feeling absolutely betrayed. Oh yeah yeah, because this is this

821
00:50:55,280 --> 00:51:00,600
Speaker 1: is the thing we thanks to Zeidler, can learn a

822
00:51:00,680 --> 00:51:04,160
Speaker 1: little bit about Lunz m O one of his favorite

823
00:51:04,200 --> 00:51:07,080
Speaker 1: treatments when his favorite things to give people were was

824
00:51:07,360 --> 00:51:10,800
Speaker 1: the crown, a dental crown. That's that's a metal or

825
00:51:10,960 --> 00:51:15,120
Speaker 1: ceramic cap, more and more often ceramic now that completely

826
00:51:15,600 --> 00:51:19,360
Speaker 1: covers envelops an injured or decayed tooth, and that that

827
00:51:19,480 --> 00:51:23,719
Speaker 1: original tooth, his first shaved down to to a tag,

828
00:51:23,840 --> 00:51:25,640
Speaker 1: to a stump. I could tell Matt, you love this

829
00:51:25,760 --> 00:51:28,520
Speaker 1: in particular so that you can slot that new that

830
00:51:28,719 --> 00:51:32,840
Speaker 1: new uh exo skeleton on it. And these crowns have

831
00:51:33,040 --> 00:51:36,040
Speaker 1: a pretty long life. They last tend to fifteen years

832
00:51:36,120 --> 00:51:39,920
Speaker 1: on average. Lundon wasn't only giving his patients crowns they

833
00:51:39,960 --> 00:51:44,880
Speaker 1: didn't need. He was also replacing those crowns every five years.

834
00:51:45,360 --> 00:51:49,560
Speaker 1: Why is that, asked Zeedler. That's because five years is

835
00:51:49,680 --> 00:51:54,319
Speaker 1: the minimal interval of time before insurance companies will cover

836
00:51:54,480 --> 00:51:57,720
Speaker 1: the procedure again. So she knew what he was doing.

837
00:51:58,080 --> 00:52:02,080
Speaker 1: He was waited and it was just a factory. It

838
00:52:02,200 --> 00:52:06,280
Speaker 1: was a factory. And it turns out Terry Mitchell, despite

839
00:52:06,440 --> 00:52:09,520
Speaker 1: you know, probably being swindled out of fifty grand, he

840
00:52:09,640 --> 00:52:14,560
Speaker 1: got off relatively easy. More than fifty of Lund's patients

841
00:52:14,880 --> 00:52:20,799
Speaker 1: also had just bizarrely high numbers of root canals fifteen

842
00:52:21,280 --> 00:52:26,759
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four. For reference, the average human mouth contains

843
00:52:26,920 --> 00:52:31,440
Speaker 1: thirty two teeth, so that like, at this point there's

844
00:52:31,520 --> 00:52:35,959
Speaker 1: somebody walking around who has the majority of their teeth

845
00:52:36,040 --> 00:52:39,759
Speaker 1: are have had root canals. And in addition to this,

846
00:52:41,520 --> 00:52:45,719
Speaker 1: he had also get this build patients for treatmentcy never

847
00:52:45,840 --> 00:52:49,640
Speaker 1: actually administered. So in our auto mechanic example, and this

848
00:52:49,800 --> 00:52:52,520
Speaker 1: has happened I'm sure too many friends of ours into

849
00:52:53,040 --> 00:52:55,560
Speaker 1: some of our non gear heads in the audience. It's

850
00:52:55,600 --> 00:52:59,640
Speaker 1: the equivalent of being like charged for having your transmission

851
00:52:59,640 --> 00:53:02,520
Speaker 1: fluid changed, and they just never did it because they

852
00:53:02,560 --> 00:53:05,359
Speaker 1: were like, how is he going to check or um

853
00:53:05,840 --> 00:53:09,920
Speaker 1: similar to the Just Breaks scandal. If you're familiar with

854
00:53:10,000 --> 00:53:13,239
Speaker 1: that franchise, look it up. They did some serious dirt.

855
00:53:14,239 --> 00:53:17,000
Speaker 1: So this is just one example. This is like true

856
00:53:17,120 --> 00:53:20,200
Speaker 1: dentistry crime or what do we call it, paulis sound

857
00:53:20,239 --> 00:53:25,839
Speaker 1: cute math crime? And and now we have to ask

858
00:53:25,880 --> 00:53:30,360
Speaker 1: ourselves what comes next. Because dentistry is an industry is

859
00:53:30,360 --> 00:53:35,560
Speaker 1: still struggling to embrace the same scientific inquiry, evidence based standards,

860
00:53:35,640 --> 00:53:37,759
Speaker 1: best practices that are common in the rest of the

861
00:53:37,800 --> 00:53:42,279
Speaker 1: medical world. That situation has left dentists with a lot

862
00:53:42,360 --> 00:53:46,960
Speaker 1: of latitude, a lot of agency to advise unnecessary procedures.

863
00:53:47,040 --> 00:53:49,480
Speaker 1: And this doesn't mean that there doesn't mean they're all

864
00:53:49,520 --> 00:53:54,880
Speaker 1: con artists. No, of course, the vast, vast majority of

865
00:53:55,080 --> 00:53:59,600
Speaker 1: dentists are just honest people, honest experts trying to do

866
00:53:59,719 --> 00:54:03,239
Speaker 1: a job because in their mind, doing a good job

867
00:54:03,640 --> 00:54:06,480
Speaker 1: means that their practice will continue. They don't feel like

868
00:54:06,640 --> 00:54:11,000
Speaker 1: they need to or whatever want to resort to swindling people. Right,

869
00:54:11,080 --> 00:54:13,840
Speaker 1: And it's a list of these candidates for over treatment

870
00:54:13,920 --> 00:54:18,680
Speaker 1: that we have here. Um things like root canals, crowns

871
00:54:18,719 --> 00:54:21,680
Speaker 1: and veneers, teeth whitening and filling, and when I mentioned

872
00:54:21,719 --> 00:54:24,000
Speaker 1: at the top of the show, deep cleaning, which is

873
00:54:24,080 --> 00:54:26,680
Speaker 1: again the fancy name for that is scaling and route planning,

874
00:54:27,000 --> 00:54:30,000
Speaker 1: and like, my insurance would pay for one quadrant of

875
00:54:30,120 --> 00:54:33,760
Speaker 1: my mouth four quadrants to the mouth, if you can imagine.

876
00:54:34,000 --> 00:54:35,680
Speaker 1: And then I had to pay for the rest um.

877
00:54:36,120 --> 00:54:37,960
Speaker 1: But they did a thing where they like quoted me

878
00:54:38,280 --> 00:54:41,000
Speaker 1: on it, and then I said, okay for that, if

879
00:54:41,040 --> 00:54:44,200
Speaker 1: that's what insurance will pay. It was decent. I was like,

880
00:54:44,239 --> 00:54:45,600
Speaker 1: I'll pay this out of pocket. And then when I

881
00:54:45,640 --> 00:54:49,239
Speaker 1: actually did the procedure, I walk out to pay and

882
00:54:49,320 --> 00:54:52,520
Speaker 1: it was double what they said, And I was like, dang,

883
00:54:52,920 --> 00:54:56,080
Speaker 1: I would have said no, right, I would have said no.

884
00:54:56,760 --> 00:54:58,160
Speaker 1: I would have said I'm not going to do it.

885
00:54:58,280 --> 00:55:01,040
Speaker 1: Then I did kind of talk them down, but I

886
00:55:01,080 --> 00:55:03,760
Speaker 1: felt like I was like negotiating with a card dealer

887
00:55:03,880 --> 00:55:06,719
Speaker 1: or something like that. That was weird. Right. It all

888
00:55:06,800 --> 00:55:10,600
Speaker 1: goes back to the car mechanic you guys, Um, there's

889
00:55:10,600 --> 00:55:13,719
Speaker 1: another thing in here that really reson resonated with me

890
00:55:13,800 --> 00:55:17,840
Speaker 1: from that Atlantic article then, and it's the the concept

891
00:55:18,040 --> 00:55:22,880
Speaker 1: of kind of doing what Lund did, replacing those crowns

892
00:55:23,120 --> 00:55:27,520
Speaker 1: or fillings for different kinds. Like the new filling. It's

893
00:55:27,600 --> 00:55:30,560
Speaker 1: the new substance that's better than the old metal filling.

894
00:55:30,600 --> 00:55:34,480
Speaker 1: It's this new reson thing. It's this new pseudo metal

895
00:55:35,239 --> 00:55:38,800
Speaker 1: thing that you can get, um that becomes a superfluous

896
00:55:38,880 --> 00:55:41,640
Speaker 1: thing that you don't have to do. And it goes

897
00:55:41,719 --> 00:55:45,080
Speaker 1: back to the science problem that we discussed earlier, where

898
00:55:45,560 --> 00:55:48,720
Speaker 1: it's not fully known if some of these new resin

899
00:55:48,840 --> 00:55:53,279
Speaker 1: substances are actually stronger or better than the old metal ones,

900
00:55:53,400 --> 00:55:55,960
Speaker 1: or if the metal fillings actually are as dangerous as

901
00:55:56,080 --> 00:55:59,400
Speaker 1: they purport to be, because there's not enough research there

902
00:55:59,520 --> 00:56:01,480
Speaker 1: in enough it used to actually get that kind of

903
00:56:01,560 --> 00:56:05,520
Speaker 1: statistical analysis to really say, Okay, this is exactly the

904
00:56:05,600 --> 00:56:09,160
Speaker 1: way it is. Um, this resin is definitely better than

905
00:56:09,280 --> 00:56:12,120
Speaker 1: this other thing. Just something to keep in your mind

906
00:56:12,320 --> 00:56:14,839
Speaker 1: when you're being told by your dentist, no matter where

907
00:56:14,880 --> 00:56:17,200
Speaker 1: you are, who you are, that you need something extra

908
00:56:17,400 --> 00:56:22,600
Speaker 1: like that. Right, yeah, well said, uh this The phrase

909
00:56:22,680 --> 00:56:26,560
Speaker 1: we just used over treatment is a euphemism, right, it can.

910
00:56:26,880 --> 00:56:32,120
Speaker 1: It can mean people acting in good faith but doing

911
00:56:32,200 --> 00:56:35,000
Speaker 1: the most in your mouth, but it can also mean

912
00:56:35,920 --> 00:56:40,319
Speaker 1: intentional criminal activity, such as the conspiracy undertaken for many

913
00:56:40,440 --> 00:56:47,200
Speaker 1: years by Dr Lunz. It seems distressingly, distressingly common because

914
00:56:47,360 --> 00:56:53,120
Speaker 1: there's there's a shockingly high amount of incongruity between one

915
00:56:53,239 --> 00:56:57,080
Speaker 1: dentist and the next. There's a Swiss university called E.

916
00:56:57,200 --> 00:57:01,040
Speaker 1: T H. Zurich, and while back they had a team

917
00:57:01,080 --> 00:57:04,799
Speaker 1: of researchers who got together and they asked they took

918
00:57:04,840 --> 00:57:09,080
Speaker 1: a volunteer patient who had three tiny cavities, the kinds

919
00:57:09,160 --> 00:57:12,200
Speaker 1: of things that could be easily treated. Right, had they

920
00:57:12,320 --> 00:57:16,160
Speaker 1: had this patient go through Zurich and go to one

921
00:57:16,280 --> 00:57:20,080
Speaker 1: hundred and eighty dentists who are randomly selected, they weren't

922
00:57:20,120 --> 00:57:24,600
Speaker 1: suspected of doing anything wrong. They were just normal working dentists.

923
00:57:25,200 --> 00:57:29,680
Speaker 1: What they found is that the dentist advice ran contrary

924
00:57:29,920 --> 00:57:35,640
Speaker 1: often to the guidelines of the like Swiss Dental Association.

925
00:57:35,840 --> 00:57:39,520
Speaker 1: They have the Swiss Dental Guidelines and their position is,

926
00:57:39,800 --> 00:57:42,880
Speaker 1: if you've got minor cavities like this volunteer patient, you

927
00:57:42,960 --> 00:57:46,600
Speaker 1: don't need fillings. Instead, the dentist needs to encourage you

928
00:57:46,840 --> 00:57:51,000
Speaker 1: to do better preventative maintenance because when you have a

929
00:57:51,080 --> 00:57:54,360
Speaker 1: minor cavity, you can actually reverse some of this damage

930
00:57:54,440 --> 00:57:57,280
Speaker 1: if you stay on your p's and queues with brushing

931
00:57:57,760 --> 00:58:02,240
Speaker 1: instead of that. Fifty out of the eighty dentists suggested

932
00:58:02,360 --> 00:58:08,080
Speaker 1: various forms of unnecessary treatment, and they advised UH. Their

933
00:58:08,160 --> 00:58:11,000
Speaker 1: their recommendations were not uniform. They were all over the place,

934
00:58:11,200 --> 00:58:15,640
Speaker 1: like anywhere from one to six fillings and other other procedures.

935
00:58:16,240 --> 00:58:21,400
Speaker 1: But okay, maybe maybe Swiss Swiss Advices is too far away.

936
00:58:21,480 --> 00:58:23,720
Speaker 1: Maybe you're saying, I don't live in Switzerland. How does

937
00:58:23,760 --> 00:58:27,560
Speaker 1: this apply to me. Let's go to the US writer

938
00:58:27,720 --> 00:58:33,600
Speaker 1: named William Eckenbarger, writing for Readers Digest, went through twenty

939
00:58:33,720 --> 00:58:38,680
Speaker 1: eight states, visiting fifty dentists to see how they would UH.

940
00:58:38,800 --> 00:58:41,919
Speaker 1: They would react to the state of his dental health,

941
00:58:42,320 --> 00:58:45,840
Speaker 1: and he got he got recommendations for everything from like

942
00:58:46,320 --> 00:58:50,400
Speaker 1: here's a single crown to there's a wreck, there's a

943
00:58:50,440 --> 00:58:53,800
Speaker 1: tear down. We have to fully reconstruct your mouth. The

944
00:58:53,960 --> 00:58:57,320
Speaker 1: price tag variants there started from five hundred dollars and

945
00:58:57,400 --> 00:59:02,400
Speaker 1: went to nearly thirty grand. Uh. And this gives you

946
00:59:02,480 --> 00:59:05,160
Speaker 1: a sense of just how varied this can be. As

947
00:59:05,240 --> 00:59:08,160
Speaker 1: we said in the top, it is exceedingly rare for

948
00:59:08,280 --> 00:59:11,320
Speaker 1: someone to get a second opinion from a different dentist.

949
00:59:12,040 --> 00:59:15,720
Speaker 1: But it might not be the worst move, because again,

950
00:59:15,800 --> 00:59:18,760
Speaker 1: there need to be some better safeguards in place. Trap

951
00:59:18,800 --> 00:59:23,600
Speaker 1: our story up. Back to Zieedler October. He sues Lundon

952
00:59:23,840 --> 00:59:26,120
Speaker 1: as soon as he thinks he can prove his case.

953
00:59:26,400 --> 00:59:29,520
Speaker 1: He says, you've misrepresented your practice when you gave it

954
00:59:29,600 --> 00:59:34,400
Speaker 1: to me, and therefore you've breached our contract. You're because

955
00:59:34,440 --> 00:59:35,959
Speaker 1: he thought he was gonna make a lot of money.

956
00:59:36,320 --> 00:59:39,920
Speaker 1: He said, you're reported income for your practice of seven

957
00:59:40,040 --> 00:59:45,840
Speaker 1: hundred thousand to nine thousand dollars per year was a

958
00:59:45,960 --> 00:59:50,240
Speaker 1: result of fraudulent billing activity, billing for unnecessary treatment, and

959
00:59:50,360 --> 00:59:53,280
Speaker 1: billing for treatment that was never performed. The suit was

960
00:59:53,360 --> 00:59:56,800
Speaker 1: settled for how much, Well, we don't know confidential amount,

961
00:59:57,560 --> 01:00:01,600
Speaker 1: We'll never know. So there you have. The mechanic analogy

962
01:00:01,680 --> 01:00:04,880
Speaker 1: turns out to be unfortunately and tragically apt. Of course,

963
01:00:05,000 --> 01:00:08,000
Speaker 1: as we said several times in this episode, yes, the

964
01:00:08,120 --> 01:00:11,560
Speaker 1: vast majority of dentists are not out to scam people.

965
01:00:11,880 --> 01:00:13,360
Speaker 1: They want to do a great job. They want to

966
01:00:13,400 --> 01:00:16,160
Speaker 1: grow their practice. If you feel that you have been

967
01:00:16,240 --> 01:00:20,080
Speaker 1: taken in by someone with dishonest tendencies, or even if

968
01:00:20,120 --> 01:00:22,160
Speaker 1: you don't think there's corruption and crime of foot, if

969
01:00:22,200 --> 01:00:25,600
Speaker 1: you feel maybe your dentist is just with the best

970
01:00:25,680 --> 01:00:29,360
Speaker 1: intentions doing too much, you should get a second opinion.

971
01:00:29,480 --> 01:00:31,520
Speaker 1: You should get it as soon as possible. Don't get

972
01:00:31,560 --> 01:00:35,120
Speaker 1: it from your buddies. Either, get it from a different

973
01:00:35,200 --> 01:00:38,560
Speaker 1: dentist that you that you haven't met before. Uh, And

974
01:00:39,760 --> 01:00:41,840
Speaker 1: we want to hear your stories at this point, won't

975
01:00:41,840 --> 01:00:44,920
Speaker 1: ask what you think. We've got dental hygienists in the

976
01:00:45,000 --> 01:00:48,520
Speaker 1: crowd here, we have, we have dentists who listened to

977
01:00:48,600 --> 01:00:52,280
Speaker 1: this show. We'd love to hear from anybody with firsthand experience,

978
01:00:52,320 --> 01:00:54,560
Speaker 1: whether you are in the seat or whether you are

979
01:00:54,680 --> 01:00:58,000
Speaker 1: someone treating a patient. We'd like to hear whether you

980
01:00:58,160 --> 01:01:00,320
Speaker 1: have heard things like this in your act of the

981
01:01:00,360 --> 01:01:03,880
Speaker 1: Global Woods, especially if you're a dentist yourself. Um, I

982
01:01:03,960 --> 01:01:07,320
Speaker 1: think we'd all be curious to learn whether in your

983
01:01:07,400 --> 01:01:12,120
Speaker 1: industry or in you know, your region, there's a practice

984
01:01:12,320 --> 01:01:16,960
Speaker 1: that everybody kind of knows is crooked, kind of like

985
01:01:17,080 --> 01:01:20,680
Speaker 1: how somewhere some someone is the world's worst StAst you're

986
01:01:20,680 --> 01:01:24,840
Speaker 1: not asked. The field of astronautics is relatively small right now.

987
01:01:26,000 --> 01:01:28,760
Speaker 1: Everybody knows who the world's where StAst you're not is.

988
01:01:28,840 --> 01:01:31,120
Speaker 1: So if you're a dentist in your region, you know,

989
01:01:31,240 --> 01:01:34,280
Speaker 1: especially if you're a more rural region and there's a

990
01:01:34,400 --> 01:01:36,960
Speaker 1: bad actor than the odds are the people who would

991
01:01:37,000 --> 01:01:38,840
Speaker 1: be more aware of that would be dentists who have

992
01:01:38,920 --> 01:01:41,760
Speaker 1: seen their work. Just to be clear, I am the

993
01:01:41,800 --> 01:01:45,480
Speaker 1: world's worst astronaut, just if you if you're wondering, I

994
01:01:45,480 --> 01:01:49,680
Speaker 1: would not do well up there. But get it together, Matt.

995
01:01:51,200 --> 01:01:52,840
Speaker 1: But this is the last time we're gonna say in

996
01:01:52,880 --> 01:01:57,840
Speaker 1: this episode we love dentists and dentaligenis especially whens listening,

997
01:01:57,880 --> 01:02:01,200
Speaker 1: as you said, Ben, because really it's a cool it's

998
01:02:01,360 --> 01:02:03,200
Speaker 1: it's a great thing to help people all the time.

999
01:02:03,400 --> 01:02:05,800
Speaker 1: Dentists help people all the time. This is very rare

1000
01:02:06,080 --> 01:02:08,400
Speaker 1: and they get such a hard time for it. So

1001
01:02:08,480 --> 01:02:10,720
Speaker 1: they because of all the things we mentioned, because of

1002
01:02:10,800 --> 01:02:13,120
Speaker 1: the stereotypes, and because of all the phobias and just

1003
01:02:13,240 --> 01:02:15,440
Speaker 1: people's you know, perspectives on dentists. But if you do

1004
01:02:15,600 --> 01:02:19,520
Speaker 1: want to hear it straight from the dentist's mouth collectively,

1005
01:02:20,200 --> 01:02:23,600
Speaker 1: you can check out this article on Dentistry Today dot

1006
01:02:23,680 --> 01:02:26,560
Speaker 1: com that really runs down all of this uh corruption

1007
01:02:26,800 --> 01:02:29,960
Speaker 1: and and and and openly acknowledges it um and the

1008
01:02:30,080 --> 01:02:33,720
Speaker 1: article title is Bad Dentists and the Professional Code of

1009
01:02:33,920 --> 01:02:39,880
Speaker 1: Silence by Michael W. Davis DDS. So, as we said,

1010
01:02:40,240 --> 01:02:44,520
Speaker 1: let us know your stories, tell us your experiences, uh,

1011
01:02:44,760 --> 01:02:46,560
Speaker 1: we would, We would love to hear from you. We

1012
01:02:46,640 --> 01:02:51,040
Speaker 1: try to be easy to find online Facebook, Twitter, Instagram,

1013
01:02:51,240 --> 01:02:53,960
Speaker 1: all the hits, all the good ones. You can find

1014
01:02:54,040 --> 01:02:57,960
Speaker 1: us Conspiracy Stuff, Conspiracy Stuff Show you can if you

1015
01:02:58,280 --> 01:03:01,240
Speaker 1: if you like the visual components of things. Also check

1016
01:03:01,320 --> 01:03:04,240
Speaker 1: us out on YouTube where we are YouTube dot com

1017
01:03:04,360 --> 01:03:11,800
Speaker 1: slash conspiracy Stuff. But wait, you say I hate social media.

1018
01:03:11,920 --> 01:03:15,640
Speaker 1: I don't sip those social meds. No worries, fellow conspiracy realist.

1019
01:03:15,720 --> 01:03:19,440
Speaker 1: You can also contact us directly on our call in line.

1020
01:03:19,920 --> 01:03:23,320
Speaker 1: That's right. Our number is one eight three three st

1021
01:03:23,560 --> 01:03:27,320
Speaker 1: d w y t K. After you hear ben Beckon,

1022
01:03:27,440 --> 01:03:30,280
Speaker 1: you forth into the darkness to leave a message. Please

1023
01:03:30,320 --> 01:03:32,720
Speaker 1: do so. Give us your name, the one you'd like

1024
01:03:32,880 --> 01:03:34,440
Speaker 1: for us to refer to you as, doesn't have to

1025
01:03:34,480 --> 01:03:36,680
Speaker 1: be your real name. Then leave your message. You have

1026
01:03:36,960 --> 01:03:40,040
Speaker 1: three minutes. We asked that you please please call one time.

1027
01:03:40,800 --> 01:03:42,600
Speaker 1: You don't call it five times in a row. Call

1028
01:03:42,680 --> 01:03:44,840
Speaker 1: one time, leave your message, and that will be that.

1029
01:03:44,920 --> 01:03:47,560
Speaker 1: If you need to send us extra information, we highly

1030
01:03:47,640 --> 01:03:50,040
Speaker 1: recommend you connect with us in one of the other ways.

1031
01:03:50,520 --> 01:03:53,040
Speaker 1: The best way, especially if you've got links or an

1032
01:03:53,080 --> 01:03:56,760
Speaker 1: attachment or something like that. Please contact us via our

1033
01:03:56,840 --> 01:04:00,240
Speaker 1: good old fashioned email address. We are conspiracy and heart

1034
01:04:00,320 --> 01:04:21,240
Speaker 1: radio dot com. Stuff they don't want you to know

1035
01:04:21,520 --> 01:04:24,480
Speaker 1: is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts

1036
01:04:24,520 --> 01:04:26,720
Speaker 1: from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,

1037
01:04:26,840 --> 01:04:29,680
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