Harvard Dentists

Last week nine college graduates marched into Harvard's dental school, listened to a few cheering words from Dean Leroy Miner, then went right next door into medical school. There they started courses in biochemistry, anatomy, physiology. None of them will look at a cavity for three years. So ended a one-man revolution which Dean Miner has plotted for 17 years--the merging at Harvard of dentistry with medicine.

Dean Miner and President Conant of Harvard believe that the nation's biggest medical problem,* decaying teeth, could be overcome if students were set to research on the cause of dental disease. At present, they claim, most of the 70,000 practicing U.S. dentists are too busy filling, polishing and pulling, to give any heed to research. Nor do they know a great deal about the tooth as an organ of the body.

Instead of the usual four-year course devoted almost entirely to mouth and teeth, students at Harvard School of Dental Medicine will have a seven-year grind. After three and a half years in medical school, they will wind up with one and a half of dentistry, tackling such problems as teeth and diet, pyorrhea, malocclusion (improper biting). At graduation, students will receive both an M.D. and Doctor of Medical Dentistry degree. Before going into research (probably none of them will become family dentists), they will have to spend a year or two interning in hospitals, for practical experience.

Some dentists last week were huffy over the new plan, feared they would eventually be swallowed up by the medical profession. Biggest blast came from the Texas Dental Journal. Wrote the editor: "[This plan] will not produce M.D.'s or D.M.D.'s, but B.B.'s (Bewildered Bastards), illegitimate offspring not acceptable to either dentistry or medicine."

* Almost one-fourth of the men inducted into the Army need immediate dental care.

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