Ethically Compromised

Copyright 2003 Robert E. Horseman, DDS

It’s been a bad day. Once again, you’re questioning your mental state back 15 or 20 years ago when you first decided to become a dentist. The “grass is greener” syndrome begins early and outlasts your hair and your figure.

You know you have little or no talent for dropping balls in cups or hoops or contacting them with bats. You realize that you have no apparent skills as a thespian, even though this is not a requirement for recognition. You can sort of carry a tune and can detect a beat if there is one, but could never humiliate yourself performing an original piece, even though you can play a guitar as badly as the current crop of strangely coifed adolescents.

What’s the problem, then? It’s the money, right? The obscene salaries paid to these high school dropout game players, these scenery-chewing hams majoring in pretense, these tone-deaf, lyric-deficient defilers of “real” music – that’s what’s sticking in your craw.

Admit it, you wet-gloved, appointment-driven, HIPAA-confused masked denizen of the 8 x 10 operatory. Now, repeat, “Life Is Not Fair.”

But see that pinpoint of light at the end of the tunnel? There is a Way Out wherein you can capitalize on your meager assets without having to learn anything new. Well, maybe this one thing:

When I was young, my father drove a 1937 Plymouth four-door sedan, colored brown. It was the most embarrassing car a 17-year-old kid could be seen in other than a Nash Rambler. Each September in those days, Ford, Chevy and Chrysler made a big whoop comparable to the Second Coming out of announcing their new models. Searchlights fingered the skies, and the populace flocked to dealers’ showrooms to gape at acres of chrome and tail fins more suitable for a Boeing 747. It was an annual rite we wouldn’t have missed for anything despite the fact that my father never bought a car there. He believed that only suckers paid full freight when the inevitable depreciation was just around the corner.

Sometime during the next decade, car manufacturers suddenly twigged to the fact that with this much interest in new cars, “Why don’t we – like Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney – PUT ON A SHOW! Charge $10 to get into it, and they will come!” And they did. Not Judy and Mickey, but the salivating public who saw nothing wrong with paying to queue up and swoon over that new car smell. Thus was born the concept of “We want desperately to unload these machines, so we will charge you money to come and be given the chance to buy one.”

So now it’s your turn, Doctor. St. Appolonia Pharmaceuticals wants the dental population to embrace its new posterior composite One-Step All-Purpose Deluxe Superior F-91. F-91 is the revolutionary improvement over its predecessor, the One-Step All-Purpose Superior F-90 and thus warrants the “Deluxe” appendage.

Apollonia’s own labs, staffed by skilled technicians and supervised by the Head of Marketing to ensure no bias, have determined that the new composite is “10 times more resistant to coffee (instant) stains than other leading brands.” Further, the caries-inhibiting ability of OADSF-91 when tested on in-vitro chicken beaks has been clinically proven to be more efficacious than similar testing on rats fed Krispy Kreme Doughnuts by other leading composite manufacturers.

Apollonia is on a roll, and it wants to put on its version of a show to acquaint dentists with the obvious advantages of the new, improved product. Of course, there will be a fee! What’s good for General Motors is good for the country, a proven fact.

Here’s where you come in, Doctor. Apollonia Pharmaceuticals will ante up to $150,000 per annum, offer the use of the company Lear or, if the CEO isn’t using it, the Citation III to jet between shows. You may be accompanied by one (1) Significant Other and will be put up at five-star hostelries. Best of all, you don’t have to use or even like the product, although that would be a plus. All you have to say is that “in your hands” this is the best thing that’s come down the pike since the last one. Is that too much to ask? Apollonia thinks not.

Only one thing: You have to be a recognized authority, a clinician with some chops, or, at the very least, photograph in such a way that you look like somebody who knows what he’s talking about. That’s your problem and you’d best hop to it; the field is getting crowded already.

Unethical, you muse? Is George Foreman unethical? Michael Jordan, Joan Rivers, Jason Alexander, Tatum O’Neal, Cal Worthington and his dog Spot? Maybe the grass IS greener. Knock off those cheesy Yellow Page ads; we’re professionals here – Apollonia is waiting impatiently because One-Step All-Purpose Deluxe Superior Quintessential F-92 is already on the boards.