Dental implants could be grown inside patients' mouths

Conventional dental implants are typically screwed into the patient’s jaw bone, require visits to several types of clinicians, take two to six months to heal, and are still subject to failure. Not exactly an ideal solution to missing teeth. A professor of dental medicine at Columbia University Medical Center, however, has devised a technique wherein implants could be grown in the empty tooth socket, right inside the patient’s mouth.

Dr. Jeremy Mao started with a tooth-shaped scaffold made of microchannelled natural materials, infused with a growth factor. In an animal-model study, he placed that structure in a recipient’s empty tooth socket, then caused their stem cells to home (migrate) onto the scaffold. It resulted not only in the growth of a new tooth-like structure, but also in the regeneration of periodontal ligaments and the formation of new alveolar bone.

Dr. Mao believes that a complete tooth could be grown in as little as nine weeks.

Previously, such “tooth-growing” would have required the use of harvested stem cells, and would have to be done in an external environment such as a petri dish. By growing within the tooth socket, the implant integrates with the surrounding tissue in a way that would otherwise be impossible. Because it’s made from the recipient’s own cells, it will continuously regenerate and could even last their lifetime.

I don’t usually weigh in on political issues but this damned country of ours is driving me to distraction and it’s time someone got it sorted out.

So, for the benefit of any politician who stumbles across this I will be spending the next 10 weeks outlining simple steps that can be taken to help create a better America.

Today, I tackle the prickly issue of health care reform.

In my view, this country needs to surgically remove its head from its ass and stop flirting with god damned socialized medicine.

Call me old-fashioned but I’d rather pay to have a Lexus-driving quack prod my polyps than get treatment for free from Dr. Zhivago and his pinko comrades at the Vladimir Tretiak Memorial Hospital.

If a doctor doesn’t have a monetary interest in examining my testicles then just what the hell is he doing with his hands down my trousers in the first place? Anyone who wants to manhandle my bolsheviks is going to a capitalist and an American patriot god damn it.

Besides, once you give people access to free medical treatment they’re going to start using it. Mr. and Mrs. Average America will be flooding into emergency rooms across the country every time they get the collywobbles, catch a brain fever or lose an arm in a combine harvester.

(When I was a boy the rule of thumb was if you couldn’t sew an appendage back on at home, you fed it to the pigs and got back to work. You sure as Hell didn’t run off to a hospital and expect other taxpayers to foot the bill.)

It’s a slippery slope. Offer people free health care and the next thing you know they’ll be demanding clean water, safe working environments, flying cars and access to domesticated monkeys.

They’ll get complacent and forget about even trying to prevent injury. It won’t be long before people will stop wearing seat-belts and start bathing with clock radios and toasters– confident in the knowledge that the American taxpayer will remedy any foolish injury they happen to incur.

We need to drive a rusty bone saw through the heart of this foolishness. Expensive health care makes good economic sense. You don’t need to be J.P. Morgan to recognize that if we’re serious about eradicating poverty in this county and re-establishing a decent quality of life, the quickest way to do is to make sure that only the rich can afford to get medical treatment.

Trust me - if we can just stay the course and fend off health care reform for another decade or two most of the poor people will have died off from untreated heart disease, diabetes or alcohol-related firearm tragedies and we can all get back to sitting on park benches sipping lemonade without fear of having our wallets lifted and organs harvested by impoverished nogoodniks.

And that’s an America I think we’d all like to see.

Next week: Straightening out Gay Marriage

~ Don Mills ~

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