Contents - IADR/AADR

increasing by about 20 million people a year. Now it is up to about 1 1/4 million people a week, which means
that the increase in the world population this year over last year will be about 70 million.
Although it is a major factor, population growth, of course, is not the only force responsible for this
growing demand. Rising levels of income and education represent other powerful forces.
DENTAL DISEASES ARE HEALTH PROBLEMS
More and more, the public is perceiving dental diseases as health problems. These attitudes have been
shaped in large part by the high quality of the work of dental scientists and the steady communication of
research findings to the public. One measure of rising expectation and demand is the prediction that dental
health insurance may cover as many as 30 million Americans in 1975, as compared with only about 6.5 million
today.
As recognized health problems, the dental diseases are included in the new concept that fires the social
consciousness of the country—of health as a right rather than a privilege. Needless to say, if everyone were to
exercise this right, dentistry would be literally unable to meet the demand.
I believe that the growing climate of public expectancy, coupled with the practical need to exact the
greatest benefit from limited professional, scientific, and fiscal resources, must eventually lead to the successful
integration of dentistry into total health programs.
THE GOLDEN AGE OF DENTAL RESEARCH
The promising contributions of the dental sciences—what Cliff Dummett termed the "Golden Age of
Dental Research"—have been stimulated by many physical and biological scientists who have joined dentistry's
ranks. Much more may also be accomplished by aligning educational and care aspects more closely with the
broader field of biomedicine.
One of the most important issues at present is how to team the scientific community with those who are
primarily responsible for the health care—dental, medical, and other—of people. Although doing your own
thing is the currency of the day, it is essential that you extend your creative thinking beyond traditional research
interests and contribute ideas for the design and development of the educational and health delivery systems that
will make it possible to bring services to those who need them, especially to children. Prevention and care in the
early years will obviously reduce the need for service and the toll of disease and expense in maturity.
The harvest is indeed great and the laborers few. I need not remind you of the staggering dimensions of
dental diseases and disorders. Tooth decay and periodontal disease are virtually universal. For example, the
United States Army currently finds that every hundred inductees require 600 fillings, 112 extractions, forty
bridges, twenty-one crowns, eighteen partial dentures, and one full denture. If we examine the problem of
malocclusion, we find that not fewer than one-fifth, and perhaps as many as one-half, of school-age children
INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR DENTAL RESEARCH (IADR) – THE FIRST FIFTY YEAR HISTORY PAGE 265