August 2010


cloud of verbiage in which HTM 01-05, governance, protocols, pathways and the Care Quality Commission feature prominently. Snapping at my heels like Bill Sikes and his Bulldog, is the General Dental Council. The mystery deepens. A system that was supposed to encourage


prevention, which has done the opposite. Emergency measures that were supposed to carry the government to victory, which at the last minute failed. A new government elected on the basis that it opposed that arbitrary medium of dental exchange, the “UDA”, which has so far given no indication that it is to be discontinued, or what might replace it. Yet the architect stays on, twisting, writhing, as slippery to grasp as the


fog which held London in its grip, choking, confusing and concealing the landscape from its powerless inhabitants. And all of this wrapped in a spider’s web of intrigue and political patronage, constructed from links forged at meetings and at dinner parties, at the Department, at the Primary Care Trust or Health Board, in government, and on the Local Dental Committee. Meetings at which nothing is said. Leaders with no ideas behind which


to unite. Civil Servants with more power than Ministers. A breakdown in meritocracy, in democracy. Freedom of Information requests that are not free and give no information. Commissioners, egged on by the Department of Health, spending the


dental budget advertising on petrol pumps. Larger commissioning bodies. Smaller commissioning bodies. Larger. Smaller. My head spins with it all. Holmes, while taking advantage of the smoke caused by a departing train


to enter his clandestine haunt, might have said: “Things tend to some end, Watson, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end?”


I need a holiday, and so do you. I will give some mind to it in the autumn. Things will be clearer then.


PS. If you are ever at Baker Street Underground, by all means have a look at the entrance to Holmes’ offices. But there is no point questioning the staff because the secret of that door has long since been forgotten and the contents were cleared out years ago. Only three keys remain. One belongs to a direct descendant of Sherlock’s older brother, Mycroft. One is kept at the Lost Property Office, Baker Street, hidden in plain sight amidst a collection of lost keys so vast that no unauthorised person could ever identify it. The last resides in a draw on my writing desk and I am looking at it on


my blotter as I write these words. Would that it were the key to the New Contract! But I fear it may take another generation to unravel that particular mystery.


Letter


No place in dentistry for homoeopathy SIR – Having recently read your journal (July 2010) I was appalled to see the article by Mr Wander on homoeopathy. In homoeopathic remedies there are no active ingredients at all! If anyone can remember basic chemistry from school and the use of Avogadro’s constant, then it can be shown that a patient would have to take several thousand gallons of these solutions to even imbibe one active molecule! Homoeopathy is faith healing and therefore in a profession such as ours


where we should be practising evidence-based treatments, there is no place for it. As for the argument that “if the patient is happy and it does them no harm then it is okay”, I’m afraid this does not wash because these patients are being charged for this service and are, at the same time, being denied evidence-based treatments. Our general medical colleagues have just voted very resoundingly to


remove homoeopathy from the NHS and to discontinue its teaching within the NHS: this really should speak volumes. I would encourage all colleagues to read a book called Voodoo Science: the road from foolishness to fraud, written by Robert L. Park – this book totally debunks homoeopathy (among others). We cannot be seen to be endorsing what is basically a belief in “magic” and


for which there is no acceptable peer-reviewed evidence. I do not wish to cause offence but in a profession that is meant to be based


on good evidence-based science, there is no place for “religions of belief”. Rob Wakefield Driffield, Yorks.


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