8 ms·

Although amazing, I am following similar news for last 20 years, and promise of tooth regrowth was as a holly grail of dental health, but on the other side it i

Although amazing, I am following similar news for last 20 years, and promise of tooth regrowth was as a holly grail of dental health, but on the other side it is similar like a nuclear fusion always 20 years away. Process goes like this, "big news -> excitement -> and then nothing -> few years later again nothing -> you go to you dentist for regular check and when you ask he laughs in your face." I read about steam cell re-growth, electric arc repair, calcium filaments instead of "plastic" composts ... and nothing came into fruition. If it ever gets to the market probably I will not need teeth anymore. In this type of economic environment why would dentists allowed everyone to have perfectly healthy teeth? This type of product may succeed only if someone decides to go rogue like Tesla with electric cars, deliberately impacting competitors ...

mdpopescu 6y ago
As a general rule, the entire medical profession has the incentives set up the wrong way - the more problems you have, the more they benefit. I have read that there was a time, in the distant past, where you paid a doctor only as long as you were healthy. I can come up with some problems even in that case, but I can't help but think it might still be an improvement over the current situation...
- kleiba 6y ago
  there was a time, in the distant past, where you paid a doctor only as long as you were healthy This sounds implausible, and even if it were true it would not be very fair: it's usually not the doctor's fault when you've got some medical issue, so why should s/he suffer from that financially?
  - Tade0 6y ago
    Also it creates a major incentive to disregard diseases. What follows is that a dead patient, while not a source of income, is at the same time not a source of costs. I don't see how such an arrangement could work long-term.
    - _0ffh 6y ago
      Right. I think I remember it used to be normal in some societies to pay the doctor only if he managed to cure you. That sounds much more plausible. Paying for the state transition from sick to okay should work just fine.
      - bluGill 6y ago
        The problem is if you can't be cured but can be helped. Diabetes is an example of something where with medical care you can live a long life, even though we can't cure you; but without help you are dead quickly.
- seer 6y ago
  I think I’ve read somewhere about this being an old Chinese tradition. They would pay doctors for the amount pf people he is looking after, and he has the incentive to keep his “flock” healthy as that would mean much less work for him.
  - inter_netuser 6y ago
    It is common today too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitation_(healthcare) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitation_(healthcare)
- bipson 6y ago
  Except that it is simply not true - the world is not that simple. There are several incentives at play for a doctor. Obviously there are different fields, and dental is slightly weird compared to the others, but first of all, doctors are trained to help and learn cures. A doctor that keeps you sick instead of healthy is quickly out of a job (or out of patients, if you prefer). There are other doctors you know, and there is word-of-mouth, and ratings etc. There is no world-wide conspiracy of dental workers to keep you from getting a specific cure. Aka: Game Theory. And an easy way to get rid of this would be if the doctors would be paid to keep you healthy: So you pay as long as you are healthy, e.g. a valuable work-force. Hmmm, I wonder if you could just use income tax to fuel this...? Oh, we just invented universal health care, didn't we?
  - bluGill 6y ago
    Or even private insurance. There is a reason many insurance plans send you exercise right reminders all the time: healthy people cost less to ensure and so make more money.
- Guillaume86 6y ago
  It's worse than saying we should only pay devs the days there's no bugs in production, doctors can't decide to magically prevent diseases from existing or accidents to happen.
  - mdpopescu 6y ago
    Huh. Almost as if a company would provide a guarantee and only get paid if they kept the servers running for at least 99.999% of the time. Weird, huh?
- raducu 6y ago
  There's overwhelming evidence against such a broad statement. There are good mechanics, cars are getting safer, cops do fight crime, soldiers do fight wars and so on, social workers so do their jobs, teachers usually teach and so on. You can say the same for every kind of work -- that you are incentivized to do a poor work so that there's more demand for the work, but the counter incentive is the free market. If others can do a better job than you and eat your lunch, they will.
  - mdpopescu 6y ago
    > ... but the counter incentive is the free market. Yes. Which is why the free market is ILLEGAL in the medical system, in the police system, in the educational system, in the judiciary system...
    - dennis_jeeves 6y ago
      Lol, how do you manage to keep your sanity on HN? Everyone else thinks that medicine/police/education/judiciary is so special that the free market cannot deal with it.
      - mdpopescu 6y ago
        It's difficult :)
  - jjk166 6y ago
    > There are good mechanics, cars are getting safer, cops do fight crime, soldiers do fight wars and so on, social workers so do their jobs, teachers usually teach and so on. But there also exist many mechanics who try to get you to pay for unnecessary services, which mechanics are incentivized for. Cars are getting safer for their human passengers by increasing the energy absorbed by the car body, which coincidentally increases the odds of a car being totaled in an accident, which increases demand for cars, which is what car manufacturers are incentivized for. Cops are incentivized to make lots of arrests - which means they mostly fight crime which doesn't require extensive investigation nor poses high risk, ie lots of low level non-violent crimes. Soldiers are not incentivized to prolong wars (they get paid in peace time, which also has much lower risks of death and disability). Major defense contractors and some politicians though do have an incentive to prolong wars, and coincidentally the US has been continuously at war for nearly 20 years. How many major cities have had a serious social problem eliminated by the efforts of social workers? That's not their job, which is why it doesn't get done. Teachers have no perverse incentive not to teach, they don't get paid more if their students don't pass. In fact it's a real problem where schools that have poor performance for unrelated reasons get punished with reduced funding, leading to a downward spiral that has destroyed lots of inner city schools. Even if the government doesn't formally have such punitive measures in place, the fact is wealthy families move away from mediocre school districts, which reduces the funding available for them, which quickly leads to the school district becoming even worse. Perverse incentives don't mean you're incentivized to do your job poorly, it means the job you're incentivized to do well isn't necessarily the one people would want you to do.
- CA0DA 6y ago
  Look up "medicare accountable care" Edit: I did it for you: "An accountable care organization (ACO) is a healthcare organization that ties provider reimbursements to quality metrics and reductions in the cost of care" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accountable_care_organization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accountable_care_organization
- k__ 6y ago
  When I look at the prices for recurring preventive health measures in dental, I don't think this is 100% true.
- zulban 6y ago
  > the entire medical profession has the incentives set up the wrong way Now seems like a good time to remind everyone that the world is not the USA. Most developed countries don't treat medicine as a for profit business.
- matheusmoreira 6y ago
  As a general rule doctors always do what they believe is best for their patients. I don't think I've ever seen one intentionally harm patients in order to keep them coming back. There are so many people in need that doing such a thing would be pointless anyway.
raducu 6y ago
Because any regrowth solution would be quite expensive, time consuming and prone to problems. It would likely be performed by surgeons and monitored by orthodontists there couls be multiple teeth comming out, missaligned and so forth. I'd much rather do things the old fashion way than risk all sorts of problem down the line, have multiple trips, wait months upon months for my teeth to regrow. As a last resort, or instead of an implant, yeah, sure! But afik, the money you pay for materials are smaller than the surgeon's fee, so I see no incentive for a surgeon not to give you natural teeth if he could. It could be that he'd make more money that, way, less checkups and so on.
- NiceWayToDoIT 6y ago
  That is interesting way of thinking, make sense, although it would be nice to have options, and then you choose on your own. Like you will go to dentist and they tell you: - option 1 costs $$ and you need to wait 5 months and there is 2% danger of genetic mutation - option 2 costs $ it is immediate but over time you need to come again and it will cost you $$ over 10 years, it does not look as nice and maybe there are side effects - options 3 cost .c but has mercury that can over 30 years cause serious issue ... Something along those lines
- bionhoward 6y ago
  Regeneration need not be expensive. The cells can do the work, as evidenced by the embryo. We just have to figure out how to tell the cells to do it again. And, critically, tell them to stop when they're done...
  - raducu 6y ago
    Something tells me the "botox" cosmetical procedures are expensive where only doctors are allowed to do it. Surely teeth regrowth must be more expensive and more complicated than that. A simple anesthesia for tooth cannot be performed by someone who is not a certified dentist. I'm just speculating that tooth regrowth will be in the same ballpark as implants and it will be just another option.
matheusmoreira 6y ago
> why would dentists allowed everyone to have perfectly healthy teeth? Because it's the ethical thing to do.
- NiceWayToDoIT 6y ago
  Many things are harmful and non ethical but we still do it for the sake of profit: - using pesticides and herbicides - using fossil fuels - waging wars for the sake of profit - over fishing - deforestation - spying on people to make profit from advertisement and to influence their political views ... - ... And if I continue list can get very, very long ... :/
throw1234651234 6y ago
Unfortunately, stuff like this is what makes it clear to me that all claims of slowing aging / reversal are a complete joke. We can't even put a hard layer on a tooth that mimics a natural layer, seriously? Not to mention that we can't prevent baldness, nor do we REALLY know how much muscle control can reverse myopia. We can't even re-attach nails to the nail base, etc, etc, etc.
- NiceWayToDoIT 6y ago
  Probably not for us, but as soon as billionaires start dying some of them will get very scare of death, and put all his money in, and in future probably that fountain of youth will be reserved for a very small minority, or it will be like a commercial product for the elite, aristocrats mainly ...
wmeredith 6y ago
> In this type of economic environment why would dentists allowed everyone to have perfectly healthy teeth? This is utter nonsense. As someone close to the dental field, I can tell you that 99% of people already can have perfect teeth if they cut down/eliminate sugar consumption + brush and floss daily. No one does this. Pretty much all dentists want them too.
- vagab0nd 6y ago
  Not to disagree with you, but I do this and I still have cavities. I do a checkup every 4 months, and usually need 1 - 2 fillings each time. The doctors can't tell me why or how to prevent it. It's very frustrating.

mdpopescu 6y ago

As a general rule, the entire medical profession has the incentives set up the wrong way - the more problems you have, the more they benefit. I have read that there was a time, in the distant past, where you paid a doctor only as long as you were healthy. I can come up with some problems even in that case, but I can't help but think it might still be an improvement over the current situation...

kleiba 6y ago
there was a time, in the distant past, where you paid a doctor only as long as you were healthy This sounds implausible, and even if it were true it would not be very fair: it's usually not the doctor's fault when you've got some medical issue, so why should s/he suffer from that financially?
- Tade0 6y ago
  Also it creates a major incentive to disregard diseases. What follows is that a dead patient, while not a source of income, is at the same time not a source of costs. I don't see how such an arrangement could work long-term.
  - _0ffh 6y ago
    Right. I think I remember it used to be normal in some societies to pay the doctor only if he managed to cure you. That sounds much more plausible. Paying for the state transition from sick to okay should work just fine.
    - bluGill 6y ago
      The problem is if you can't be cured but can be helped. Diabetes is an example of something where with medical care you can live a long life, even though we can't cure you; but without help you are dead quickly.
seer 6y ago
I think I’ve read somewhere about this being an old Chinese tradition. They would pay doctors for the amount pf people he is looking after, and he has the incentive to keep his “flock” healthy as that would mean much less work for him.
- inter_netuser 6y ago
  It is common today too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitation_(healthcare) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitation_(healthcare)
bipson 6y ago
Except that it is simply not true - the world is not that simple. There are several incentives at play for a doctor. Obviously there are different fields, and dental is slightly weird compared to the others, but first of all, doctors are trained to help and learn cures. A doctor that keeps you sick instead of healthy is quickly out of a job (or out of patients, if you prefer). There are other doctors you know, and there is word-of-mouth, and ratings etc. There is no world-wide conspiracy of dental workers to keep you from getting a specific cure. Aka: Game Theory. And an easy way to get rid of this would be if the doctors would be paid to keep you healthy: So you pay as long as you are healthy, e.g. a valuable work-force. Hmmm, I wonder if you could just use income tax to fuel this...? Oh, we just invented universal health care, didn't we?
- bluGill 6y ago
  Or even private insurance. There is a reason many insurance plans send you exercise right reminders all the time: healthy people cost less to ensure and so make more money.
Guillaume86 6y ago
It's worse than saying we should only pay devs the days there's no bugs in production, doctors can't decide to magically prevent diseases from existing or accidents to happen.
- mdpopescu 6y ago
  Huh. Almost as if a company would provide a guarantee and only get paid if they kept the servers running for at least 99.999% of the time. Weird, huh?
raducu 6y ago
There's overwhelming evidence against such a broad statement. There are good mechanics, cars are getting safer, cops do fight crime, soldiers do fight wars and so on, social workers so do their jobs, teachers usually teach and so on. You can say the same for every kind of work -- that you are incentivized to do a poor work so that there's more demand for the work, but the counter incentive is the free market. If others can do a better job than you and eat your lunch, they will.
- mdpopescu 6y ago
  > ... but the counter incentive is the free market. Yes. Which is why the free market is ILLEGAL in the medical system, in the police system, in the educational system, in the judiciary system...
  - dennis_jeeves 6y ago
    Lol, how do you manage to keep your sanity on HN? Everyone else thinks that medicine/police/education/judiciary is so special that the free market cannot deal with it.
    - mdpopescu 6y ago
      It's difficult :)
- jjk166 6y ago
  > There are good mechanics, cars are getting safer, cops do fight crime, soldiers do fight wars and so on, social workers so do their jobs, teachers usually teach and so on. But there also exist many mechanics who try to get you to pay for unnecessary services, which mechanics are incentivized for. Cars are getting safer for their human passengers by increasing the energy absorbed by the car body, which coincidentally increases the odds of a car being totaled in an accident, which increases demand for cars, which is what car manufacturers are incentivized for. Cops are incentivized to make lots of arrests - which means they mostly fight crime which doesn't require extensive investigation nor poses high risk, ie lots of low level non-violent crimes. Soldiers are not incentivized to prolong wars (they get paid in peace time, which also has much lower risks of death and disability). Major defense contractors and some politicians though do have an incentive to prolong wars, and coincidentally the US has been continuously at war for nearly 20 years. How many major cities have had a serious social problem eliminated by the efforts of social workers? That's not their job, which is why it doesn't get done. Teachers have no perverse incentive not to teach, they don't get paid more if their students don't pass. In fact it's a real problem where schools that have poor performance for unrelated reasons get punished with reduced funding, leading to a downward spiral that has destroyed lots of inner city schools. Even if the government doesn't formally have such punitive measures in place, the fact is wealthy families move away from mediocre school districts, which reduces the funding available for them, which quickly leads to the school district becoming even worse. Perverse incentives don't mean you're incentivized to do your job poorly, it means the job you're incentivized to do well isn't necessarily the one people would want you to do.
CA0DA 6y ago
Look up "medicare accountable care" Edit: I did it for you: "An accountable care organization (ACO) is a healthcare organization that ties provider reimbursements to quality metrics and reductions in the cost of care" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accountable_care_organization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accountable_care_organization
k__ 6y ago
When I look at the prices for recurring preventive health measures in dental, I don't think this is 100% true.
zulban 6y ago
> the entire medical profession has the incentives set up the wrong way Now seems like a good time to remind everyone that the world is not the USA. Most developed countries don't treat medicine as a for profit business.
matheusmoreira 6y ago
As a general rule doctors always do what they believe is best for their patients. I don't think I've ever seen one intentionally harm patients in order to keep them coming back. There are so many people in need that doing such a thing would be pointless anyway.

raducu 6y ago

Because any regrowth solution would be quite expensive, time consuming and prone to problems. It would likely be performed by surgeons and monitored by orthodontists there couls be multiple teeth comming out, missaligned and so forth. I'd much rather do things the old fashion way than risk all sorts of problem down the line, have multiple trips, wait months upon months for my teeth to regrow. As a last resort, or instead of an implant, yeah, sure! But afik, the money you pay for materials are smaller than the surgeon's fee, so I see no incentive for a surgeon not to give you natural teeth if he could. It could be that he'd make more money that, way, less checkups and so on.

NiceWayToDoIT 6y ago
That is interesting way of thinking, make sense, although it would be nice to have options, and then you choose on your own. Like you will go to dentist and they tell you: - option 1 costs $$ and you need to wait 5 months and there is 2% danger of genetic mutation - option 2 costs $ it is immediate but over time you need to come again and it will cost you $$ over 10 years, it does not look as nice and maybe there are side effects - options 3 cost .c but has mercury that can over 30 years cause serious issue ... Something along those lines
bionhoward 6y ago
Regeneration need not be expensive. The cells can do the work, as evidenced by the embryo. We just have to figure out how to tell the cells to do it again. And, critically, tell them to stop when they're done...
- raducu 6y ago
  Something tells me the "botox" cosmetical procedures are expensive where only doctors are allowed to do it. Surely teeth regrowth must be more expensive and more complicated than that. A simple anesthesia for tooth cannot be performed by someone who is not a certified dentist. I'm just speculating that tooth regrowth will be in the same ballpark as implants and it will be just another option.

matheusmoreira 6y ago

> why would dentists allowed everyone to have perfectly healthy teeth? Because it's the ethical thing to do.

NiceWayToDoIT 6y ago
Many things are harmful and non ethical but we still do it for the sake of profit: - using pesticides and herbicides - using fossil fuels - waging wars for the sake of profit - over fishing - deforestation - spying on people to make profit from advertisement and to influence their political views ... - ... And if I continue list can get very, very long ... :/

throw1234651234 6y ago

Unfortunately, stuff like this is what makes it clear to me that all claims of slowing aging / reversal are a complete joke. We can't even put a hard layer on a tooth that mimics a natural layer, seriously? Not to mention that we can't prevent baldness, nor do we REALLY know how much muscle control can reverse myopia. We can't even re-attach nails to the nail base, etc, etc, etc.

NiceWayToDoIT 6y ago
Probably not for us, but as soon as billionaires start dying some of them will get very scare of death, and put all his money in, and in future probably that fountain of youth will be reserved for a very small minority, or it will be like a commercial product for the elite, aristocrats mainly ...

wmeredith 6y ago

> In this type of economic environment why would dentists allowed everyone to have perfectly healthy teeth? This is utter nonsense. As someone close to the dental field, I can tell you that 99% of people already can have perfect teeth if they cut down/eliminate sugar consumption + brush and floss daily. No one does this. Pretty much all dentists want them too.

vagab0nd 6y ago
Not to disagree with you, but I do this and I still have cavities. I do a checkup every 4 months, and usually need 1 - 2 fillings each time. The doctors can't tell me why or how to prevent it. It's very frustrating.