And God Said, Let There Be Gold

We bow to no one in our admiration for science and our appreciation for all the benefits the scientific community has bestowed on us. This goes all the way back to Marconi, Farraday and Atwater Kent, whose genius culminated in our being able to enjoy today the spectacle of three talk show participants with opposing views exchanging spirited spittle-enhanced opinions all at the same time on a 60-inch TV screen.

In our own profession, scientific research has lifted us from treadle-operated handpieces that only lasted as long as the operator’s calf muscles held out, to high-speed, turbine-driven instruments that survive as many as six sterilization cycles.

Thanks to the efforts of dedicated scientists, practitioners have the option of addressing faulty occlusal grooves with a $40,000 laser, an $8,000 air abrasion unit or a $2 disposable diamond. The choice of restorative materials is so diverse and in so many colors that G.V. Black would have wept for joy.

With the most recent development of an ergonomically designed toothbrush handle and the universal acceptance of the Bend-a-Brush, it becomes apparent that science has probably taken us about as far as we can go. Any further progress in the field of dentistry will most likely come from people with MBA degrees.

At least that was my feeling until just the other day when a feature story in the Los Angeles Times headlined "Struck by ‘Golden Miracles’" convinced me that we are on the cusp of a whole new era in dentistry fueled by a Higher Authority.

Read on: Orangevale, CA -- "In the heart of the Sacramento Valley, where 49ers flocked to mine a mother lode of riches 150 years ago, Christian believers are proclaiming a new and godly gold rush: The Holy Spirit, they claim, is miraculously transforming porcelain crowns and silver fillings into gold."

Divine dentistry is apparently taking up the Torch of Alchemy and running with it, if you can believe Pastor Rich Oliver at the Family Christian Center. He is only one of an estimated 500 million charismatic and Pentecostal believers worldwide who make up Christianity’s fastest-growing segment according to the Times article.

A recent CBS-TV poll reported that nearly 80 percent of Americans believe in miracles, even in today’s scientific environment. This would explain the public’s purchase of lottery tickets when the odds of winning are 500 trillion to one. These are the same people who believe a parking place in an upscale mall the week before Christmas will open for them. There is a fine line between faith and a belief in miracles. In the past few decades, we may have not lost faith but transferred it from God to the medical profession. If so, there are signs of a reversal.

Among certain churches whose members stress ecstatic expression in terms of miracles, healings and prophetic intuition, "gold teeth have become the latest and flashiest form of supernatural phenomena attesting to God’s power." In Pastor Oliver’s Orangevale congregation, one Jan Rosenberg said God had changed her amalgam to gold to bolster her spirits after a deep bout of depression.

The report does not mention whether the gold came in the form of a crown that was affixed with heavenly cement nor will Ms. Rosenberg’s own dentist confirm that the event actually happened.

Despite a gathering storm of silver-to-gold claims among believers, Michael Shermer, president of the Skeptics Society (motto: You’ve got to be out of your mind!) summarily dismisses them as a "classic urban legend." He says, "Of all the things going on -- cancer, war, disease -- God is busy changing fillings? That’s the best He can do?"

We, as dentists, must keep an open mind here. Pooh-poohing the existence of miracles may not be in our best interests. If the sporting world can embrace a Dennis Rodman and people keep buying Kenny G albums, miracles are hard to deny. Our concerns are more practical. For example:

* If we place a three-surface amalgam and, before we can submit a claim to the insurance company, some prayer-intensive activity changes the restoration to a full gold crown, can we claim for that instead without inviting a scrutiny of our records by authorities? Is there a lab bill involved here?

* Or, say, we cement six anterior PFMs and, while standing back to admire our esthetic handiwork, Divine Intervention zaps them into six gold crowns. What then?

* Will pre-authorization forms bypass insurance companies altogether in favor of church approval?

* If a dentist places an amalgam and by dint of transmogrification it changes to gold and fails within five years, exactly who is liable for replacement here? Or is failure not an option in this case?

Seems to me we are going to have to alert our patients to the potential problems of just willy-nilly requesting celestial upgrades without reference to procedure codes.

In the meanwhile, dental circles are anxiously awaiting any concrete evidence that a three-unit bridge has manifested itself in one of the faithful. This may change everything.