
Tooth Regeneration Gel Could Replace Painful Fillings - alexandros
http://news.discovery.com/tech/tooth-regeneration-gel.html
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mikecane
Science moves too slow for my own good. Ship me a supply of gel and I'll DIY.
If I wind up growing three new teeth as a weird side-effect, I wouldn't care.
Anything to get rid of that damned primitive drill!

~~~
dublinclontarf
You had a drill? Wow that's way ahead of me. I had a tooth "taken care of" in
a dental hospital over here (PRChina). They used a hammer and chisel.

There was a stern nurse whose only job was to go around the
cubicals(booths?they're certainly not rooms) knocking out teeth. On my way out
I seen her in another cubicle doing the same to some other poor chap.

My jaw was more painful than the actual tooth for a good few days after that.

But yeah, ship the gel.

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bh42
I wonder which is more painful? What you had, or what I had in Eastern Europe,
which is the same old drill, but no anesthesia.

Incidentally, living in the west has totally pussyfied me. No offense meant to
my (now) fellow westerners.

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sliverstorm
We've got it good, and by that I mean to include Eastern Europe.

"An Egyptian lower jaw, dated by experts from 2900 to 2750 BC, demonstrates
two holes drilled through the bone, presumably to drain an abscessed tooth."

Other than that, as best I understand back in the day people simply had to
live with it.

I'm not sure which choice is worse, but I'd certainly rather you get me drunk,
knock me out and drill my tooth, than either of those.

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Tuna-Fish
> Other than that, as best I understand back in the day people simply had to
> live with it.

An untreated cavity often causes infection that spreads to the jaw and from
there to the rest of the head. This is usually lethal.

Before dentists, teeth that developed cavities were usually removed.

~~~
sliverstorm
Well sure it kills you, but did they know to pull the tooth in 4000BC?

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jbermudes
Another interesting development in the fight against cavities is the idea of
genetically modifying the bacteria that secrete the acid that causes cavities
to make them harmless. The NYTimes had an article about it 8 years ago, I
wonder whatever happened to the technology

<http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/15/magazine/15GENE.html>

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mikecane
Someone killed a Comment about the expense of dentistry. There's been a huge
growth in "medical tourism." One of them is to fix teeth and this is an
excellent account of when it was still very inexpensive to have done in Costa
Rica: <http://tftb.com/beautyfromafar/newsmile1.html>

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ck2
Let's see, that would be under the "five year" plan <http://xkcd.com/678/>

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kevingadd
From the end of the article: "That said, regenerating a tooth from within
would only be useful in a relatively small number of cases. Most cavities
would still need to be drilled and filled."

Still cool, I guess.

~~~
trebor
I'm assuming from that sentence that the treatment will be costly. Though,
honestly, for a tooth regeneration treatment you'd not need high margins for
profitability.

~~~
sliverstorm
What with the number of people that get cavities, I'd hope it wouldn't be hard
to make profitable.

I'd also hope it'll be cheap. Getting a tooth drilled requires all sorts of
infrastructure, and hours of time on the part of a trained PhD. Slapping some
goop on? All you have to do is make the goop cheaper, and costs plummet.

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greyfade
Or, you know, just keep your vitamin D and calcium intake high and not worry
too much about it.

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jared314
Replace the tooth-filling material with something that bone can grow
into/replace and you would have something more general. I have no idea how
that would work, but they do something similar with joint replacements.

~~~
mikecane
I've seen reports where coral was used for bone regrowth. A quick Google find:
<http://www.arthroscopy.com/sp12013.htm>

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kilian
Great timing, in 15 minutes I go to the dentist for my first ever cavities :(

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GrandMasterBirt
Honestly, the drill does not bother me whatsoever. After a bad root canal and
someone fixing it up after an infection, drills are like walking through
rainbow fields with unicorns and happiness.

However the potential of this is amazing. There are other implications of
fillings. If you keep getting fillings in the same tooth, eventually you will
need a root canal which means... a dead tooth, which is bad. However this will
make your tooth regenerate meaning that there is no filling and thus the hole
never gets "deeper" approaching your root. This will not only eliminate the
drill for small holes but can potentially reduce the total number of necessary
root canals. Maybe long-term treatment could cause teeth to completely
regenerate, maybe pain for a year, but pain for a year for a completely healed
tooth is worth it vs fillings which are a patch-up. Can't wait till this is a
reality.

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synnik
This is following the pattern of many medical advances I have seen in my
lifetime:

Step 1) Alternative medicine quacks say that they can do something
'impossible', like regenerate teeth.

Step 2) Doctors say that claim is flat out impossible.

Step 3) Wait 5-10 years.

Step 4) Doctors have a medicine that does the claim from step 1.

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bena
The problem being is that the people in Step 1 aren't the same in Step 4 and
you are misrepresenting the people in Step 2.

It's more like:

Step 1) Alternative medicine quacks say that their special goop can regenerate
teeth.

Step 2) Actual researchers, scientists, and doctors investigate the goop and
discover it's flour, water, and sugar, with some ginseng thrown in. And that
such a combination would never be able to regenerate teeth.

Step 3) Inspired by the idea of tooth regenerating goop, people with a
knowledge of chemistry, dentistry, and biology work on making a goop that can
when combined with the materials commonly found in human mouths will begin to
calcify and harden.

Step 4) Tooth goop gets announced to public.

Step 5) Alternative medicine quacks act like they were the foundational
research the led to this advance.

Here's something I've heard once: "You know what they call alternative
medicine that works? Medicine".

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synnik
I'm honestly surprised at the downvotes here. Even including people who went
back to download older comments on totally different threads. Interesitng.

In any case, I simply stated the pattern. Everyone else added a value judgment
into it, apparently.

And no, I did not misrepresent those in Step 2. There is a huge difference
between saying, "That is impossible.", and saying, "Interesting idea. Your
implementation is wrong, but we will see what we can do with the idea."

Most of the time, I see the "impossible" reaction.

Of course people in Step 1 and 4 are different. And of course real research is
done on it. That is exactly the point. It is the pattern that is interesting,
and the talk of who the players are is exactly why it is interesting

~~~
bena
It is a misrepresentation because doctors aren't saying "that's impossible"
they're saying "what you claim your product does is false because for your
implementation to work would require impossible reactions".

You've misrepresented their position of debunking junk medicine by claiming
their position is that the end result is impossible.

And you imply (by omission basically) that the people in Steps 1 and 4 are
from the same field (junk medicine) which is never the case. You want to
attribute this general fuzzy-wuzzy idea concept to junk medicine to validate
junk medicine as a whole.

However, of course results claimed by junk medicine will be replicated by real
medicine later. Junk medicine doesn't have to work. Junk medicine has had
baldness cures and impotency cures since forever. Real medicine now actually
does have stuff to correct baldness and impotency. That does not mean that
junk medicine had anything to do with solving the problems. The best that
could be said for junk medicine is that it articulates problems.

~~~
eru
And most quacks are quite good at listening to their clients. Perhaps because
that's all they can do.

Most physician are way too busy to spend much time with their patients.

