I had a tooth pulled today, which is not a pleasant thing, but I've survived worse. Its pretty amusing, that despite years of science and practice, when push comes to shove, the solution to difficult dental issues is the same as it was 100 years ago: yank it. The tools haven't changed much either. Its about the same pair of pliers as they used before, just sterile this time. The drugs are better too, for which I am thankful.
Actually, I was thinking that dentistry is not much more advanced that auto body work. Little problems can be ground out and covered over, and on critical joints you can x-ray or use other non-destructive tests to check integrity, and you've got various coatings to help prevent rust. But in the end, you junk it if the problems are too bad.
Just recently out of the lab is laser drilling, which replaces mechanical grinders, and can be used to zap decay areas more precisely and with less good material loss. But the exciting stuff is still to come: toothpaste that reverses decay, enzymes that fight plaque buildup, and laser polymerization which could allow doctors to reformulated the tooth dental shell to be harder and less vulnerable to decay.
Of course the holy grail of dentistry is still cavity vaccines and tooth replacement through cloned tooth buds. Maybe some day I'll have my lost teeth back.
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Tooth decay and the future.
I'm not sure how I did it, but I managed to go from dental implants to urban houses made from steel shipping containers (in just a step or two).
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