Posted on 12/24/2007 7:18:58 PM PST by neverdem
BARBOURVILLE, Ky. — In the 18 years he has been visiting nursing homes, seeing patients in his private practice and, more recently, driving his mobile dental clinic through Appalachian hills and hollows, Dr. Edwin E. Smith has seen the extremes of neglect.
He has seen the shame of a 14-year-old girl who would not lift her head because she had lost most of her teeth from malnutrition, and the do-it-yourself pride of an elderly mountain man who, unable to afford a dentist, pulled his own infected teeth with a pair of pliers and a swig of peroxide.
He has seen the brutal result of angry husbands hitting their wives and the end game of pill-poppers who crack healthy teeth, one by one, to get dentists to prescribe pain medications.
But mostly he has seen everyday people who are too busy putting food on the table to worry about oral hygiene. Many of them savor their sweets, drink well water without fluoride and long ago started ruining their teeth by chewing tobacco and smoking.
Dr. Smith has a rare window on a state with the highest proportion of adults under 65 without teeth, where about half the population does not have dental insurance. He struggles to counter the effects of the drastic shortage of dentists in rural areas and oral hygiene habits that have been slow to change.
“The level of need is hard to believe until you see it up close,” said Dr. Smith, who runs a free dental clinic at a high school in one of Kentucky’s poorest counties. He also provides free care to about half of the patients who visit his private practice in Barbourville.
Kentucky is among the worst states nationally in the proportion of low-income residents served by free or subsidized dental clinics, and less...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Hey Kentucky, brush your freaking teeth. What do you think this is? England?
All they have to do is move to a big city within 250 miles, get real jobs, and then they can afford to visit dentists ~ oh, yes, and buy toothbrushes and toothpaste!
This traveling dentist is simply encouraging them to stay in those hills and hollows and glory in their poverty and ignorance.
ping
http://www.sullivan-county.com/nf0/dispatch/moun_money.htm
Mercedes-Benz and BMW vehicles roll off assembly lines in thriving Alabama and South Carolina cities, thanks in part to $8.5 million in federal money designed to help poverty-stricken Appalachia.
Hey Man.
You’re needed in Kentucky.
If it wasn’t a special day I’d make a comment about big cities!
There is a saying in those “hills and hollows”,”I kin make a livin on a flat rock”. Some birds were born to fly free!
We so often see these “OMG we’re just so negletful of people who desperately need our help” stories. The upshot is that YOU must vote for more programs, more wealth distribution and then the federal government will be able to solve these problems and save these poor people.
This seems aimed at people who want dental programs for people who are so malnourished that one might think to focus on something other than merely the teeth.
How obvious can these people be!!! Let us spend your money on fixing their teeth although they are not capable of figuring out how to live their lives at the most basic level and giving them great chompers won’t help one bit.
I get so tired of this stuff.
FORTY years AFTER LBJ’s War on Poverty. It is a quagmire motivated by Big Dem.
FORTY years AFTER LBJ’s War on Poverty. It is a quagmire motivated by Big Dem.
Normally I look with a healthy dose of suspicion anything the Slimes has to say.
Especially when Kentucky is such an easy target.
But.... other data seems to bear this out as true.
Hey Kentucky, brush your freaking teeth. What do you think this is? England?
. . .the shame of a 14-year-old girl who would not lift her head because she had lost most of her teeth from malnutrition . . .
Seems like this Christmas brought out the worst in some of us.
Yeah, but those city folks are weird. Most of ‘em thinks they’re too good to marry their own sister.
“That money should be targeted to the most needy areas, to the most needy people,” said the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who toured southeast Ohio and other struggling Appalachian communities last fall to focus national attention on their plight. “I don’t understand those priorities.”
What they really need is a bus ticket. Pumping money into the region is a waste of resources.
They are fascinating and there is a ton of stuff in there that is about to become lost technology/art
As if there aren't crack addicts with rotting teeth sleeping in the doorways of the Times Building.
Hills and hollows beats the hell out of city any day of the week.
Help for folks living in Appalachia is a bus ticket out.
Sounds like the American Dental Association needs to establish clinics with rotating volunteers, and with dental school students from across the USA. They can ask Colgate for supplies(but nothing made in China or South Africa,especially from those dollar stores).
It’s the end of 2007, and the article is saying that Americans are out there that don’t know the value of a toohbrush and toothpaste?
That’s a real stretch. At this point, that’s a personal choice, not societal cruelty.
Clint Eastwood was pretty good in that movie.
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