Would you permit other dentists to force you to refer your best patients to them?  How about allowing other practitioners to dictate how you perform routine procedures on your patients?

I feel confident that your response is “absolutely not.” 

In that spirit, let me urge you not to let other dentists fight your fight, either.

A committee of the American Dental Association has proposed new guidelines that will make it virtually impossible for most dentists to continue offering their patients oral conscious sedation.  It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been providing OCS or what your safety record is. The ADA proposals seek to require that all dentists meet onerous and unprecedented new educational and live patient training.

If the ADA gets its way, by December 2007 you might be prohibited from offering your patients oral conscious sedation.  In fact, the fate of all OCS dentists and their patients will likely be sealed in the next several weeks.

What would that mean to those loyal patients who rely upon you and OCS to alleviate their fear and anxiety?  I suspect many of them would stop seeking necessary oral health care altogether – negatively altering their health and life expectancy.

Hundreds of dedicated dentists just like you have already heeded our call and written a protest letter to the ADA.  (We are asking all dentists to send their letters to our address below so that their correspondence may be recorded and delivered en masse to the ADA.)

Your personal protest letter is vital to our efforts. 

Remaining silent is effectively handing over your dental license to the ADA’s control.  Rather than permitting you to decide what is best for your patients, your silence conveys that authority to a small, power-hungry group of ADA committee members, most of who don’t even offer their patients OCS. These few ADA bigwigs would love nothing more than to let your silence be counted as a “vote” for their position.

Don’t let your patients, your colleagues or your conscience down. 

Set aside a few minutes today to express your disapproval of what the ADA proposes.  Write it in your own words – typed or handwritten.  Your letter needn’t be long nor eloquent.  Just sincere. If you need inspiration or would like to see what other dentists are writing, just look around the www.team1500.org web site where we have posted the remarks of other dentists as well as recommendations on how to craft your own letter. Letter Writing Guidelines 

We need your letter in hand no later than Monday, February 12, 2007.  No one else can or will execute this responsibility for you. 

Letters must be mailed to:

ADA Protest

c/o TEAM 1500

P.O. Box 3714

Beverly Hills, CA ostalCode>90212ostalCode>

Address your correspondence to: 

Dr. Stephen K. Young

Chairman, ADA Council on Dental Education and Licensure

Remember, time is short, so please write today.

-- DEAN ROTBART