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 ...
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.
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 ...
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...
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...
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?
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
"An accountable care organization (ACO) is a healthcare organization that ties provider reimbursements to quality metrics and reductions in the cost of care"
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.
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 ...
> 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.
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.
Whatever progress it may provide, I am certain that dentists and dentists' associations will slowly and surely entomb any process that reduces the sum of their individual annual incomes. I believe Adam Smith called it "the invisible hand" (w/o explicitly noting that the "invisible boot" is jammed into the "invisible customers"' collective asses).
It's so sad that most dentists optimise for billable revenue, even at the detriment of long term patient health.
Fillings for example always degrade and need repairs after X years. Drilling and filling even the smallest cavity puts that teeth on a lifetime progression to bigger and bigger fillings, eventually a root canal, eventually an implant.
Cavities, on the other hand can be arrested (stopped), and if small can even be remineralised. Yes, most dentists don't tell you that!
Careful monitoring and patient education on the other hand can lead to permanently keeping that natural teeth, as our teeth are living and can heal.
My personal lived experience: a dentist told me I must fill 2 cavities six years ago. I got a second opinion. That dentist told me I should wait, focus on oral care, chew xylitol gum, and use a toothpaste with novamin.
Both cavities have "arrested" and need no restorative work.
Disclaimer: Not a dentist. Listen to your dentist you trust, and get second opinions if you have doubt.
Novamin toothpaste has been life changing for me. Cannot recommend highly enough. A tooth that was deteriorating and the dentist wanted to cap is now fine enough for them to simply keep an eye on.
I just started using toothpaste with nano-Hydroxypatite after a recommendation from a friend. Obviously I can't say much about its effectiveness long-term. But it feels amazing. Feels like there's a protective layer over the enamel - hopefully there actually is!
If you're in Australia and struggling to find toothpaste with Hydroxypatite, Chemist Warehouse stock "Healthy Care Sensitive Propolis Toothpaste". So far, highly recommended.
I’ve had similar success with toothpastes containing “nano-hydroxyapatite” Amazon has several good ones.
I also have 2 kids, the youngest (4 yr old) had cavity issues which required intervention and then we started using the hydroxyapatite toothpaste and had no issues since.
I also headed down this path via looking for Novamin. I wish there was a reliable way to get it without the “is it fake” on Amazon. I’d gladly accept any reliable sources.
Sensodyne does not have Novamin in the USA(insert conspiracy theory here). You'd either have to import it from a reputable supplier, or try an alternative like Apagard or Biomin F(both of those have to be imported too, but are more readily available).
She said it works sometimes. I definitely like this conservative approach better than my last dentist's, who filled 4 teeth unnecessarily because his DIAGNOdent beeped once.
I'd be suspicious of those claims – anecdotal but, unless US doctors differ greatly, neither of those are secrets that have been withheld from me by dentists in 3 European countries.
In fact the second statement is surely the basis for most modern dentistry...?
(I said US there because it's an assumption that the US approach to dentistry may be different to rest of the world. From afar, seems more cosmetic focused with a lot more emphasis put on whitening/straightening/veneer/fixing procedures than over here)
Mineralisation of tooth is a constant process with a tug-of-war between pathogenic and protective factors [3:09].
If it's in the balance, of the remineralisation factors prevail, you can stop the progress of the cavity. But deeper the cavity, this is harder to achieve.
My dentist friend claims he makes far more money per hour from cleanings than from fillings. This is because most of a cleaning is done by a relatively lowly paid hygienist but still requires him popping in for 5 minutes and a filling requires him to be there the whole time.
That's really strange. Here in Norway I visit a dentist roughly once a year and usually only see my dentist if the dental hygienist has found a problem.
5 minutes may be a bit long for the US. I don't know if it's a legal requirement that the dentist pop in (to supervise) or because people will balk at paying as much without a Doctor appearing. I'm not aware of the dentist usually finding things that the hygienist missed.
My dentist simply put me on toothpaste with high fluoride (IIRC 8%?). Two caries remineralized over the span of about a year and I didn't need fillings.
Unfortunately high fluoride toothpastes require an RX.
Interesting, I knew of someone who also claimed they reversed a cavity by focusing on oral care, and drinking a ton of milk.
Personally, I had a chipped tooth in my early teens and it went away after a decade. I was also drinking about a gallon of milk a day, but I don't know if that's what really fixed my tooth. I wasn't actively doing anything special with my teeth to try to fix them. I just really like milk. The problem just seemed to go away on its own.
> Cavities, on the other hand can be arrested (stopped), and if small can even be remineralised. Yes, most dentists don't tell you that!
What is with this sentiment about evil dentists wrecking peoples' teeth prevalent in this thread? Any dentist will tell you that if you brush and floss daily and consume sugar responsibly, that your teeth will be healthy and happy for the vast majority of your life. A VERY small percentage of the population actually does this.
There is no big dental conspiracy to destroy our teeth. We do that just fine on our own.
> It's so sad that most dentists optimise for billable revenue
I've heard this so often as well as the more general statement that doctors optimize for revenue. I think it's nonsense and even dangerous. People are more likely to die from deadly diseases like cancer because they avoid doctors. The anti-vaccination movement is also very likely linked to this sentiment.
> Cavities, on the other hand can be arrested (stopped),
If they are really small. And even if, teeth with rough surface require multiple times more effort to take care of. (So you really need to chew a lot of gum) Only exception are deep holes, those you sometimes don't want to fill so the tooth can "breathe", at least for some years IIRC.
> and if small can even be remineralised. Yes, most dentists don't tell you that!
2 out of 3 dentists told me to buy remineralization tooth paste and use it once a week. Also I'm getting urged nowadays to go twice a year for tooth cleaning including professional remineralization treatment.
Disclaimer: Not a dentist either. I think medical advice should be taken from people that have actually studied that stuff.
> optimize for revenue. I think it's nonsense and even dangerous.
As with everything, there are caveats to the kind of doctor you are talking. The key distinction is that most dentists keep the residual income: the difference between the fixed costs and income. It can be a quite large sum and high % of dentists' earnings. So a dentist has a very strong incentive to increase it. Overtreating patients is the easiest way to do it since increasing the prices is not an option due to competition.
Who isn't keeping the residual income? It's the doctors who work only for a fixed salary. They can't earn more by overtreating. In fact, if they have less work, they are at profit since their salary is fixed. They don't care about increasing the residual income since they don't get it.
Orthopedic surgeons do the same thing. Inject steroids repeatedly, degrading joints in order to do joint replacements. And those joint replacements aren't great, so they need to be replaced periodically.
Consumers would beat a path to the door of the dentists that offered this. They would make tons of money. The dentists not offering this product would lose customers and go out of business.
I don't know. We see pharma companies killing one-time cures to not cannibalise recurring treatments, even if another company makes the recurring treatments.
I believe so too, it would also simply require too many good people in labs all around te world to not say anything about it. I find that highly unlikely.
That is one example that was interpreted by you to be valid for all other cases?
Seeing your other comments I think you highly trust the medical system.
Never trust blindly my friend.
Not exactly an example, but the pharma industry has shown a complete lack of interest in pursuing phage therapy, even though it could help solve the problem of antibiotic resistance, because phages cannot be patented.
If the profit incentive was removed (let’s say government paid same flat rate for a lifetime supply of treatment, whether it be a cure or a reoccurring pill) I have no doubt more cures would be discovered
Anecdotal, but I heard it from a reasearcher working in pharma that the company stopped developing a drug that cured some condition that another branch of the company had a treatment for.
Smith actually used the tendency toward collusion within trades as an argument against certain kinds of regulation (and corporations, to boot):
"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary."
> I believe Adam Smith called it "the invisible hand" (w/o explicitly noting that the "invisible boot" is jammed into the "invisible customers"' collective asses).
It is useful to actually read what Adam Smith said and understand it[1]. In fact, I thoroughly recommend reading Ricardo, Mill, Knight, Hayek, Keynes, and von Mises to understand the important conceptual battlegrounds in the history of economic thought.
Smith's problems were mostly about confusing value and price (and thinking there is a well defined, universal "the value" of something -- in this he is joined by Ricardo. Marx merely took those ideas and confused himself due to his lack of knowledge of linear algebra).
Note by "corporation" below, he is referring to trade associations. He is arguing, at the same time, against both licensing requirements AND subsidies for education at the same time (among other things).
He understood the nature of what you call the "invisible boot".
> People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible, indeed, to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies, much less to render them necessary.
> A regulation which obliges all those of the same trade in a particular town to enter their names and places of abode in a public register, facilitates such assemblies. It connects individuals who might never otherwise be known to one another, and gives every man of the trade a direction where to find every other man of it.
> A regulation which enables those of the same trade to tax themselves, in order to provide for their poor, their sick, their widows and orphans, by giving them a common interest to manage, renders such assemblies necessary.
> An incorporation not only renders them necessary, but makes the act of the majority binding upon the whole. In a free trade, an effectual combination cannot be established but by the unanimous consent of every single trader, and it cannot last longer than every single trader continues of the same mind. The majority of a corporation can enact a bye-law, with proper penalties, which will limit the competition more effectually and more durably than any voluntary combination whatever.
> The pretence that corporations are necessary for the better government of the trade, is without any foundation. The real and effectual discipline which is exercised over a workman, is not that of his corporation, but that of his customers. It is the fear of losing their employment which restrains his frauds and corrects his negligence. An exclusive corporation necessarily weakens the force of this discipline. A particular set of workmen must then be employed, let them behave well or ill. It is upon this account that, in many large incorporated towns, no tolerable workmen are to be found, even in some of the most necessary trades. If you would have your work tolerably executed, it must be done in the suburbs, where the workmen, having no exclusive privilege, have nothing but their character to depend upon, and you must then smuggle it into the town as well as you can.
> It is in this manner that the policy of Europe, by restraining the competition in some employments to a smaller number than would otherwise be disposed to enter into them, occasions a very important inequality in the whole of the advantages and disadvantages of the different employments of labour and stock.
> Secondly, the policy of Europe, by increasing the competition in some employments beyond what it naturally would be, occasions another inequality, of an opposite kind, in the whole of the advantages and disadvantages of the different employments of labour and stock.
> It has been considered as of so much importance that a proper number of young people should be educated for certain professions, that sometimes the public, and sometimes the piety of private founders, have established many pensions, scholarships, exhibitions, bursaries, etc for this purpose, which draw many more people into those trades than could otherwise pretend to follow them. In all Christian countries, I believe, the education of the greater part of churchmen is paid for in this manner. Very few of them are educated altogether at their own expense. The long, tedious, and expensive education, therefore, of those who are, will not always procure them a suitable reward, the church being crowded with people, who, in order to get employment, are willing to accept of a much smaller recompence than what such an education would otherwise have entitled them to; and in this manner the competition of the poor takes away the reward of the rich.
I hope someone works on recovering UOX (Urate Oxidase)[1] gene resurrection. It disappeared in one of our predessors making us prone to gout and excessive fat deposition[2]. Recovering this gene will treat both at the same time.
I think you have misread the second paper. Mendelian randomization can be a confusing technique.
>Uric acid wGRS was not associated with fasting serum glucose, HbA1C, waist circumference, or BMI. On the other hand, waist circumference was causally associated with all the components of MetS including uric acid.
Here's what's happening: some genes are known to be associated with elevated uric acid. Other genes are known to be associated with increased waist circumference. Because several different genes are considered, it is assumed that the "side-effects" of these genes can be neglected; the failure of this assumption is called horizontal pleiotropy, and I don't feel confident assessing their methods on this point. MR is generally considered to provide a better degree of causality estimation than longitudinal data, because the genetic factors can be considered "prior" to other effects.
The authors find that the genes associated with uric acid are associated with worse cardiovascular symptoms, while they are not associated with other symptoms of metabolic syndrome; waist circumference genes are associated with all of the symptoms of metabolic syndrome. Also, the effect of weight circumference genes on uric acid levels is significant, while the effect of uric acid genes on waist circumference is not (a strange asymmetry, but I guess it makes sense).
So what the study really shows is that elevated uric acid appears to contribute to worse blood parameters. However, it doesn't contribute much to central adiposity.
I found the Slate Star Codex article about uric acid interesting [1]. The bit about this gene:
> About ten million years ago, the common ancestor of apes and humans got a mutation that broke uricase, causing uric acid levels to rise. The mutation spread very quickly, suggesting that evolution _really_ wanted primates to have lots of uric acid for some reason. Since discovering this, scientists have been trying to figure out exactly what that reason was, with most people thinking it’s probably an antioxidant or neuroprotectant or something else helpful if you’re trying to evolve giant brains.
Maybe it functioned as a pheromone somehow (or pheromone precursor) and was aided by sexual selection: stinkiest mates were more attractive and reproduced more. Hehe.
Or might make your flesh pungent and not tasty to predators. The 'stinkiest' fish in the world[1] has high levels of urea (so high that its toxic, and while not uric acid these two molecules are related and both are options in metabolic pathways for processing ammonia) and before eating, hákarl needs to be dried in ice sheds in the artic circle for 3 months. Even then it's acquired taste.
Still, it seems unlikely primates were hunted by some unknown predator in such large numbers, for evolution to select for those with slightly more pungent flesh to deter such predation, but ... who knows? :P ;) xx
Well, not to say that evolution is perfect by any means, but I feel like genetics are very complex and reintroducing that gene could have other side effects.
It codes for one protein, and experiments have turned it on and off in other animals. Turning it off benefited humans by increasing the amount of fructose stored as fat during a time when climate change reduced the availability of fruit. In light of our ridiculous modern caloric intake, turning it back on isn't likely to lead to problems.
Kratzer, J., Lanaspa, M., Murphy, M., Cicerchi, C., Graves, C., Tipton, P., Ortlund, E., Johnson, R. and Gaucher, E., 2014. Evolutionary history and metabolic insights of ancient mammalian uricases. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(10), pp.3763-3768
The article linked says it causes new teeth to grow in rats and ferrets, and that pugs and dogs are next. It doesn't however talk about targeting that growth to a particular place.
I know you're joking but theres actually people who would pray for a treatment exactly like this. The elderly in particular. Over time all your teeth go.
When I'm 60 I wouldnt mind them just ripping them all out if I could regrow them in 3 months.
I would pay for this and I am 33 and have 5 root cannals fixed. Maybe 3 tooth without fillings. It runs in our family... I also didn't have the best dentists growing up in eastern block. Almost no rentgen on basic fillings or microscope on root cannals, only amalgam filling except front tooth. Now I am in process of redoing badly done fillings with cavities under fillings. Al so I have two teeth taken out because my dentist didnt properly explained to me they could be fixed... If I lived in the middle ages, I would look like a 60 year old with no teeth.
> The elderly in particular. Over time all your teeth go.
This was the view of dentists before WWII. Both of my grandmothers had all their teeth pulled before they were thirty when there was very little wrong with them. "You'll lose them anyway, why not get a nice set of dentures?" They both regretted taking their dentists' advice. My octogenarian mother grew up in a more enlightened age and she still has her teeth. Tooth loss is not inevitable.
Yea, I remember seeing a picture on reddit years ago where a squirrel, feasting on soft human trash, his teeth didn't wear down and grew outwards in concentric circles until he presumably starved from now not being able to chew even the softest of foods. I don't want to look up the photo, it's sad, but I think it was legit.
At first I read your comment as saying "feasting on soft human flesh" and had some very serious questions about the benefits of helping that squirrel fix its teeth again...
That’s interesting. I wonder if the teeth thus formed are recognizable/classifiable as molars/incisors/canines. If so, that could shed further light on the development of the normal teeth.
The issue with periodontal tissue as I understand it revolves around a relatively complicated protein scaffold that binds the gums to the teeth.
Growing tissue like gums is relatively straight forward -- we do something similar with skin for burns but the actual physical structure that bonds the soft tissue to the hard teeth is complicated to produce and apply in practice.
I highly doubt this is intentional, but I wanted to point out a little fun play on words here: USAG-1 written down looks a lot like "usagi" (兎), which in Japanese means "rabbit" – an animal known for its teeth, among other things. :)
Maybe not that long. I'm 41 and have dentures. 18% of people 33-45 have them. 3% of people 18-33 have dentures.
I've got a full denture with implant posts on the top, and a partial on the bottom. It's not just a "given" that teeth will hold out till retirement age.
> They found, with animal studies, that suppressing the gene USAG-1 by using its antibody can efficiently lead to tooth growth.
And we're sure that suppressing USAG-1 (uterine sensitization associated gene-1) is safe?
Since this has "uterine sensitization" in it, it seems like it may affect more than teeth!
Just from a quick glance, this says its involved in pregnancy.
> Given the remarkably tight restriction of its expression, USAG-1 may be involved in the onset of endometrial receptivity for implantation/sensitization for the decidual cell reaction.
There's the possibility that localized suppression would be possible. Even if not, any scientists working on this will be well aware to check for potential health complications before human testing was even started.
And that's also why clinical trials are staged. Some things are harmful to humans that aren't harmful to rats, mice, dogs, monkeys, or other test animals. So a few people enroll in stage 1 trials, which mostly just try to look for obvious toxicity. This will start with a few people, going to a few hundred at most. Stage 2 trials try to figure out dose response: how much of the treatment do you have to give to get a given response. This stage is usually a few thousand people. Stage 3 trials try to figure out if the treatment actually works, and if it has any noticeable safety concerns. Most of the time it doesn't work or has safety issues, but human trial data is notoriously noisy, so it takes a LOT of samples to get a recognizable signal. This stage usually has over ten thousand people. After a treatment is approved it keeps getting monitored for safety.
Something like "growing teeth" is more obvious than many outcomes. But the safety issues may not be.
My current dentist arrangement involves getting free cleanings (and consequently a general dental health checkup) as long as I keep the dentist's ancient Macbook operational. I dread the time he retires.
these guys found a polypeptide that can repair enamel but they aren't very well known https://www.curodont.com/ edit: correct link for the enamel thingie is this -> https://www.curodont-professional.com/. I remember seeing some papers from them justifying this, but cant' find them
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 ...