Dental woo
From RationalWiki
Dental woo consists of quack practices masquerading as dentistry, unfounded beliefs that some dental health practices are harmful (particularly, water fluoridation and mercury amalgam fillings), and patent medicines for dental health sold on the health food store market.
The patent medicines include tooth powders and mouth rinses containing "atomidine", a specially prepared iodine trichloride solution apparently invented by Edgar Cayce in his channeled readings.
Mercury amalgam fillings are the subject of a great deal of woo floating around on the internet and elsewhere. Quackwatch has a complete article on the subject for those interested.[1] Some quack dentistry practitioners have diagnosed all manner of diseases, from arthritis to chronic fatigue syndrome, as being caused by mercury fillings and/or root canals, and have prescribed the unnecessary replacement of such dental work for their patients. A related bit of woo is practices claimed to detoxify the body of mercury after mercury fillings are replaced, including eating large amounts of the herb cilantro. This claim is baseless, although it does have the side effect of tasting good.
Other dental woo includes magnetic devices claimed to relieve toothache, and "dental charts" claiming to show relationships between the teeth and other parts of the body (similar to iridology for the eyes and reflexology for the feet).
L. Ron Hubbard went them all one better by claiming, in Dianetics, that tooth decay can be caused by "dental engrams" resulting from being spoken to while under anesthesia at the dentist's office. (Hubbard believed that "engrams" resulted from any person being spoken to while asleep or unconscious. Somehow, if this happens in a dentist's office, the engrams which result are "dental engrams" that will cause your teeth to rot. Really. We're not making this crap up.)
