Prevention of Dental Caries (Tooth Decay): Should we be Content With Our Progress

Abstract

Some of us may remember the prevalence of dental caries from the 1950’s, 1960’s
and during my dental career infancy, the 1970’s. Caries free individuals, child or adult, may
well have qualified as an endangered species. Early television advertising toothpastes portrayed
children gleefully boasting only “having two cavities this check-up.” The premise that one
could conceivably experience a lifetime without decay might have at best been considered
fantasy if not merely ludicrous. Neither dentists nor patients readily believed rumblings of a
soon to be available vaccine to virtually eliminate caries would materialize. The true skeptics
lamented that even if a vaccine was developed and found effective, much of the population
probably wouldn’t make use of one.