DENTAL CLINICS.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19168, 26 November 1927, Page 19

DENTAL CLINICS.

TROUBLE IN ENGLAND. PRACTITIONERS AT WAR. (FBOK OUR OWK COHBBBPOHDJSNT.) LONDON. October 19. _ The movement to give greater facilities to the general public in the matter of dental treatment continues to be a matter of strife in this country. To the amazement of the rank and file members several of their professional associations have sponsored a scheme which is held to be disastrous to the private practitioner. It is proposed, in brief, to set up experimental clinics with a view to establishing a circle of clinics throughout the country, that here dental treatment will be given to insured persons and probably to non-insured persons "also. The British Dental Association, the Public Dental Service Association, and the Society of Dental Surgeons have endorsed the proposal, but the gauntlet of "uncompromising opposition has been thrown down by the Incorporated Dental Society. "Such institutional mass production centres to cut the cost of dental services is not in the interests of the insured public," it protests. "It also disregards the rights of the individual dentist, and in many industrial areas a lifetime spent on building up a practice will have been utterly wasted." It points out that the insured people number about one-third of the population. If they and their dependents resort to the clinics scores of dentists will be entirely deprived of their patients. The "pro-clinic" party, on the other hand, state that no pressure will be put on people to attend the clinics, and.they are not to be advertised in a manner detrimental to the private practitioner.