Here's a weird news story that probably escaped your notice, what with all the Luigi Mangione news coverage drowning everything out. A couple of weeks ago, a 70-year-old New York woman got caught practicing dentistry in her apartment kitchen in Long Island. The woman, Gladys Serrano, did apparently have some sort of a degree in dentistry from El Salvador, but her conditions were cramped and unsanitary. She was not certified to practice dentistry in the U.S.
This shouldn't really be surprising. Yes, some people turn to backwater dentists because they're undocumented and fear exposure, but more commonly, people simply can't afford dentistry anymore. People are so desperate for dental services they'll turn to anything. Sure, certain dental colleges take in patients for free in order to gain training and experience, but there's always a long waiting list. Tooth pain, more than anything else, will drive someone to absolute madness. They will seek help literally anywhere, even some little old Latina living in a shoebox flat in Hempstead.
Perhaps that's why a similar case cropped up in Rolling Meadows, Illinois, where a young woman was caught practicing dentistry without a license after someone noticed the posts she made on social media, advertising her business. She turned herself in.
Or then there's the case of a woman in my home city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who was caught doing the same thing. According to the state's dental association, this sort of thing is rare, but how rare could it really be when three cases of it crop up within months of each other?
Bootleg dentistry is apparently a booming underground business, and that's made possible because official dentistry has been priced out of the market, and has been for a long time. A simple tooth extraction could cost thousands, and for people caught between being able to afford rent or groceries this month, relieving the pain caused by a cavity is out of the question. So they suffer abscesses which lead to heart disease and other complications which will likely cost them much more money down the road than it would have if they could only have gotten preventive care in the first place. If they manage to live that long, that is.
Either that, or they turn to some old church-lady who pulls teeth when she's not attending the bead-and-button show. I hear she cuts hair, too.
It's expensive to be poor.
Had Mangione shot a dentist, we might all be paying closer attention to this. But oddly, dentistry is considered adjunct to healthcare. This dates back to the dark days when dentistry was practiced by, of all people, barbers. (No kidding! Look it up. This is why a barber's pole has a red stripe spiraling down it. To symbolize the red blood of a tooth extraction!) As such our backwards medical system regards dentists and opticians as separate categories from health care, accessories even, as though they had nothing to do with one another.
People have a right not to suffer tooth pain in agony while working a dead-end job. They have a right to be able to see clearly too, for that matter. (Though it seems myopia is more an ailment of the affluent, these days, doesn't it?) If we ought to be in full revolt over access to healthcare, how much more should we rebel against a system that wants to inflict us with severe mouth pain, day after day, month after month, year after year?
The wealthiest man on earth recently threw a large stone into the gears of the U.S. Government, just to keep a few billion more in his pocket.
It seems a shame we can't do the same thing when it comes to matters of our own extreme suffering, even of life & death.
Eric
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