Dentistry Uncensored with Howard Farran

How to perform dentistry faster, easier, higher in quality and lower in cost. Subscribe to the podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dentistry-uncensored-with-howard-farran/id916907356

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Howard: it was just a huge honor and a privilege for me to interview my buddy for years and years Dr. Michael Yar Zuk: he's a general dentist in Red Deer Alberta Canada who hit the global headlines when he purchased John Lennon's rotten molar for a Genesis record what most people didn't know was he had published a tell-all book titled confessions of a former cosmetic dentist to assert his position against the overtreatment that had become rampant in the profession within weeks of striking marketing gold of a lifetime the local Dental Authority crushed his book with a publication ban his professional journal started with buying and embezzled mol practice moved through the cosmetic rage time is an elected board member and is ending with a brutal war against the provinces Dental Authority could you be the next victim of abuse of power his book is on Amazon it's called confessions of a former cosmetic dentist by Markel's Michaels Zook don't even think about an extreme smile makeover until you've read this book this book is designed as the cure for any dentist with venereal disease a play on veneers if you are a newly graduate dentist or have an interest of being a cosmetic dentist you will benefit from the hard-hitting humor in this critical review the weakness of being too focused on the guest for the perfect Smile are exposed and the author questions many of the philosophies of care that can lead to over treatment a dental patients the book discusses alternative practice styles that may add to your practice success and expose the Achilles heel of your competitors that can be exploited if you have a dentist colleague that needs an extreme makeover exorcism or a patient who has smile wreck SIA this can make the perfect gift warning and this book is too graphic for the general public and it should not be read by laypersons unless prescribed by their dentists due to concern for the Dental Association the book should only be purchased and dispensed by licensed dental professionals thanks so much for coming on the show today buddy how are you doing well I'm surviving how about you you're an amazing and I remember when you bought John Lennon's tooth I mean my gosh that was on every single newspaper magazine I mean what would year was 

Michael Yar Zuk: that it was 2011

Howard: how big would that has to be the biggest dental story of all time wouldn't have to be I mean I'm serious by metrics what was that not the biggest dental story of all time yeah the dentist has killed somebody like a president or something

Michael Yar Zuk:  then I guess this is probably going to be it right what what I mean the only other story that came close to it was when a dentist shot a lion Cecil the lion oh that's right that's right yeah and I still think yours was bigger than that sorry which story do you think was bigger Cecil the lion or John Lennon's tooth I think it's you know I'm hoping that mine was a little bit better I've kind of melted a little bit more with different stories off of the stupid tooth but it's just you know

Howard: yeah every and every time I think of creating um I've almost created the biggest dental story of all time just to beat my buddy but I just don't know if I should go to the zoo and shoot a penguin or a giraffe III don't know what to shoot can you help me pick the animal that would get the most out rage I think you'll beat me someday but you you um III give you fortitude it's common that every tribe looks the other way I mean they do it in all their scandals whether it be you know you know of all the scandals from take sex scandals I don't care if it's a church or at Penn State or Hollywood or people just look the other way and you're in a big dental profession two million dentists it's it's 5% of the healthcare budget and you didn't look the other way you did not like what you were seeing in cosmetic dentistry and extreme smile makeovers and you went public with it how was that decision did it make your life more comfortable or more uh more stressful

Michael Yar Zuk:  well it made it more exciting I guess I it's  probably easier just to stay quiet and just you know talk with your colleagues and maybe you know badmouth somebody who you think is butchering somebody else and maybe snicker in the back of a seminar and say you know this wouldn't fly you know if the dental board heard about this but personally I would you know rather be the one that speaks out and writes about it and takes the heat for being the guy that that squeals and you know there's  only a portion maybe five or ten percent of dentists who could be in that gray zone that they're pushing the limits and and really should be called out on it but you know ninety ninety nine percent of dentists are not going to say anything about it right okay well 

Howard: okay a quarter of my viewers are still in dental kindergarten schools so they don't even they don't even know what you're talking about so succinctly explain it to someone who's twenty years old and just met the clinic floor this year for their first prophy 

Michael Yar Zuk: well you know even it's starting to happen in dental school too but I'll just refer I mean you remember the I have not I have heard I've had enough article by a dr. Gordon Christensen and Yuri published it in dental town and this was in you know 2003 where he was talking out about you know concerns with over treatment of cosmetic patients and you know this butchering of healthy teeth to make them look perfect in the eyes of you know at least you know the profession when they're looking in magazines that you know people see if they're super white and perfect the underlying problem is here you're harming the teeth by cutting them down and if you're if you're right in dental school right now you're probably not going to be being taught these kind of things just yet although some dental schools might have certain mentors that are really big into cosmetic dentistry and it might actually be starting to be pushed with dental students that have quarters to meet to graduate maybe you have to produce fifty thousand dollars in dental work and and you might be being told to do a person's full mouth when really they don't need it and

Howard:  Gordon I'm you're right we published that in dental town I just looked it up that was um Oh September 2003 has is the problem getting better is it getting worse where is the problem now and and how what kind of impact has your book had on it

Michael Yar Zuk:  well I booked I came out with my book in 2010 so I was kind of you know saying well my dental Authority itself had had republished Gordon Christensen's article and a proud they probably published it in 2003 here for and it likely you know spread across the profession I was a bit of a warning shot to say hey we've got a problem here we can't trust all these people teaching those things at seminars it's not always legit a lot of times it's teaching us to do things that are well within the malpractice zone and my book again it came out in 2010 by 2011 in November which was the same month I bought the tooth so I basically started getting some calls from the press of course and I would say you know dentist author of the book buys this tooth right and so I was the book was getting a lot of attention on Amazon but then the authority contacts me and says you got to pull this book who tells you  got to pull the book the Alberta demo authority the complaints director said basically it harms the integrity of the profession by you know calling out these dentists and I use the term veneer Nazis so they didn't like the term Nazi which again is yeah at the time you recall the Soup Nazi was big and I was kind of just you know doing the play on words and I wanted to get do something use a term that would instantly you know signify that this is not nice stuff that they're doing 

Howard: and let's be frank and the same you're the same guy who bought John Lennon's tooth you have always had a genius flair for marketing

Michael Yar Zuk:  I mean you know I mean you're I mean so it is what I needed a little hook and it did get picked up by even the New York Times did a little blurb on it so you know it had the potential to go big and but I said listen I'm gonna pull the book that's fine I spend a lot of time money getting it all set up I went on some tours to learn how to push the book but I said okay fine I'll pull the book but even though I pulled the book I still had inquiries from a Canadian show called Market Place which is kind of like 60 minutes in the US and they came to our office and they actually interviewed me there on the same day a patient had come to me for a second opinion and the daughter there was a 15 year old girl she was told she needed all her teeth capped because she needed she had sensitive teeth and she was told she had no enamel on her teeth well this 15 year old girl had perfectly good teeth they were just a little sensitive so since the nine two things so you can imagine if she had all her teeth drilled down for Cap's what kind of gross abuse that it would have been and I just knew that day that it is crazy not to talk about over treatment it is you know unbelievable and you know the profession dental theory would have watched that program and they had no comment you would have thought we would have contact me and said who the hell is this dentist he wants to butcher this 15-year old girl but they never did that and a little bit later 20 20 the producers for 20/20 called me up and said hey there's some information in your book it's talking about orthodontists and how now they claim that they're growing jaws you know the Herbst appliance how position is the job board well they were again claiming that it grows a job well in fact you're just posturing the job forward and many orthodontist don't believe in that home posturing well look at now Invisalign is moving into that are they really growing jaws or they just making me taller by making me stand on my toes you know it's a lot of this stuff is a lot of height and patients are paying for this and they might think that they're saving their kid from jaw surgery but maybe they're just getting charged an extra couple thousand dollars and spending time in an appliance that is causing more nuisance than it's worth well

Howard: you know it's it's kind of funny because when I got when you and I we both graduated dental school in 87 or 86 I was 86 yeah her 86 and I was at he said you're from University of Alberta right and I was University of Missouri and you would go to these cosmetic courses and the first thing I noticed that if your only tool is a hammer everything looks like it now so somebody come in with all these crowd of teeth and they would file them all down for a crown and you're like ah but you would notice that that's not what they would do if their daughter had the same problem if their daughter had the problem they sent him to the orthodontist and had braces and then they were showing you how to do intentional root canals because there's so much crowding I'm like whoa whoa you you don't do this for anyone in your family and and we just cringed but then over the years you start seeing the cosmetic dentist started adding orthodontics and Invisalign unrolling the teeth and and it just seems like the the best most conservative is to straighten the teeth with orthodontics aligners and then bleaching and for a while there there was this mad rush to just file everything down and put these veneers on which you call venereal disease another great marketing genius that I would have never thought of in a million years but these young kids and then when you would see these guys hey that's not gonna look good in ten years they would stand there that that deal and try to blame it on you oh well you didn't bond it right or you didn't have a rubber dam or you didn't use it the way I did it and every time you said there was a problem that there was like no no you have a problem in my hands this is beautiful work so without naming of who these false gods who claim they walk on water what did these cases look like 10 years later to the young kid that's in dental kindergarten school it doesn't seem this we've seen up for three decades right 

Michael Yar Zuk: as you know and to back up the venereal disease thing I guess there's a UK dentist who speaks out very vocally and I believe you you might have profiled something about him dr. Martin Kelleher Oh in the UK and he he doesn't mince words he goes he he talks very openly to the profession that you know this butchery of patients under the you know the cosmetic umbrella just was unacceptable so you know I won't claim that I've come up with all these school weird words but the point was teeth whenever they're chopped up they get weaker they break off they snap off they need to be pulled there's implants I mean these patients I just saw a patient who's 90 years old she had about 10% wear on their lower incisors I posted it on on one of my Facebook pages like maybe confessions of a former cosmetic dentist for example just a little bit of where she's 90 years old but if I cosmetic dentists had seen her in the 90s and veneered the teeth probably half would be dead or they simply snapped off so you know we got to think um you can imagine 15 year-old girl getting her teeth capped when they didn't need them or veneered it just starts a process where you know every 10 15 20 years they're being cut off perhaps by a different dentist may be the first ones conservative but the the worst whoever the worst dentist is in the in the patient's history is going to be the one that perhaps set them over the edge you know it could be the first dentist they see that that over cuts the teeth I try to do as little drilling as I can and you know combining whitening tapas bonding and orthodontics to me is like the most conservative way to do Dentistry and arm dr. TIFF in the UK tiff granny he does the same kind of thing that I do here and in Alberta and it's just you know it's a different way of doing dentistry and it to me if a new dentist doesn't learn this they're crazy no you should be treating we're very conservatively when I went to these rehab courses you know the full mouth reconstruction we justify doing a full crown when a patient has lost 20% of their enamel from the tooth grinding but then you end up grinding away all the enamel so you know how is that conservative I would I would argue that that's insane 

Howard: but you know a 20 we think so much like I'm you mentioned a tiff cur she BES out of them he was a podcast number 100 the future of aesthetic orthodontics what if I'm just an amazing man so so basically when I got out of school I would the first oh the first 90 year old Dennis I ever met on therefore his name it was a George Rui in st. Joe Missouri and his son George ory jr. was a dentist his son George Murray the third was my roommate in dental school and I said to him just innocently curious which tooth lasts the longest do you think you know young mind he looked over me goes the one that dentist never touched first you do a filling then that 10 years later that needs a crown 10 years later that needs work it out ten years later that needs extracted then you're gonna do a bridge then 10 years later each into those braces just don't touch the tooth do anything you can't not to touch the tooth and get the patient to change your behavior so that the tooth doesn't need touched so when so when you just intentionally design a procedure that just takes a bunch of healthy to structure and sticks it at a pencil sharpener and files it all down there's like where the hell did this come from right well

Michael Yar Zuk:  if you go to okay who's paying for this seminar who's promoting it and if you need raw a few short lines and you find that the dental lab is making all these crowns and veneers that you you're told you need to do and suddenly rather than a patient not needing any crowns or veneers they need all their teeth veneered you know to me it's a conflict of interest that a dental lab would be sponsoring these courses and and it's crazy the American Dental Association has this aserp certification of education that they get paid every year to give points to these certify these courses and then all the state and provincial dental boards will use that as okay what's under the ABA cert program so that means it's it's okay well they don't actually look whether it's okay or not they just basically rubber-stamp and collect the money and these dentists going to the courses the more they go to some of these courses the more dangerous they get and so patients might think wow this this this dentist has gone to this institute they've got all these different levels there they actually you know maybe teach it at the Institute it might mean that they're the worst dentist you can possibly see what if they what if they were taught a program like I I can say neuromuscular dentistry has actually been banned as a approach in Manitoba and Ontario Canada so that tells you something that neuromuscular dentistry is just kind of an approach where they you know pulse the the jaw with these electrodes and it's been going on since the 60s but it was a very a friend's approach but it also has been used as a justification to do a form of the crowns because you couldn't have that bite naturally without building up all the teeth and so you have a dental lab promoting a seminar that teaches dentists to use a funny bite that they can only get if they do him up form out the crowns that pays the lab and you know this has gone on for many years in fact in dental school I had one of the Guru's in our University of Alberta he actually hooked up with the program in Las Vegas that you know he helped promote this program and it's kind of scary that I knew him you know before I was a dentist and in his use of the approach he would use an a splint and then he would erupt the teeth into that different bite instead of capping the teeth so you know he wouldn't make the lab filthy rich he wouldn't make the dentist filthy rich because he was just using a little orthodontics but it's been twisted - now that the patient starts with North otic and safe in three months they're you know maybe they would have gotten better by themselves whether treating a headache or something and suddenly it's the patient is sold up to a mouthful of crowns so it goes from maybe $4,000 to $60,000 and it's you know a slippery slope once you've got all your teeth capped you get that cycle of root canals complications teeth breaking off for some chipping and there's there's been a lot of lawsuits now so there are our malpractice lawyer and I recall your interview I think was the six specialists right you know and and some one of the the prosthodontist on the in the discussion openly talked about that and I recorded that because I thought this is this is gold whatever she was saying is exactly what listeners need to know about whether they're the public or new-new dentists or even old dentists who are maybe caught in a rut and they think well you know they're wondering you know maybe they're not doing the right thing and some of these dentists are are at the point where they want to sell their practice as you know corporate dentistry is coming in and they're buying up the most profitable dental offices so if the big corporations don't really care whether the dentist is crowning every tooth in the person's mouth all they want to know is this practice making money and they might not know that this practice is being set up for a massive malpractice lawsuit

Howard: so what is the website that they should be going to I mean you have you have a website confessions  of a former cosmetic dentist you have you have my gosh you have killer toothache yeah private dental org you have your own dental office Bower dental what would  my homies are if what would website should they be going

Michael Yar Zuk:  to get more of this information you know yeah in the thing that that would be scary to the public the confessions of the former cosmetic dentist I try to show patients that that have been victims of this type of treatment and Alberta Canada I have a Alberta dentist lobby calm for you know I'm lobbying the Dental Association to change it has not taken a website what's that one WWE dot L Berta dentist lobby calm how many websites you have oh I have quite a few I but into them it's a good place to put information okay well

Howard: first I'm going to stop right right here because I'm you know humans are social animals I mean we just went through the holidays a lot of us bitter tongue when you're at the dinner table in your crazy uncle or aunt or whatever saying something and probably a lot of them are thinking okay I'm in a small town in Texas there's only 20 dentists of my deal what was the personal repercussions of your fishing drinking charcoal and buddies in your Red Deer where you live and then how did that spill over to the big city up the street how did this affect you personally you mean with writing a book or with fighting with the demo Authority well just making something where most tribes look the other way in Hollywood and Penn State and churches and religions and you're in a small town you're in Red Deer Alberta Canada and you said you open this up to the whole world and I was wondering and then down the street from you this cowgirl well actually you're in between Calgary and Edmonton what would would did the local Dental Society thinking of one of their boys I'm going international with this story 

Michael Yar Zuk: well I think not too many word that that's real I mean Alberta is a hot spot are the biggest lab in in in Canada is actually the promoter of neuromuscular dentistry and the it's just a hundred miles south of me so hungry yeah they they tried to get me into this years ago and I just knew it wasn't the right thing to do and  a lot of dentists are still using that approach and you know they  obviously don't think that it's wise for me to be saying that some provinces a ban this approach and the demo authority doesn't think it's smart that I say that the dental authority isn't protecting the public well the authority waits for a patient to be butchered before they step in so how is that protecting the public they authority what they did to protect the public was they banned the term cosmetic dentist they banned before-and-after pictures for a while so they didn't want people to see you know you could have ugly teeth and then you can't have a very attractive teeth to me that was insane that wasn't protecting the public that was just limiting information and so I have you know a major fight with the authority itself just saying hey you guys you're approaching this completely incorrectly you're not educating the public that this is actual a problem and you know they  will pick a dentist and then internally make them you know pay dearly for the process of being an example of someone who did for example veneers instead of straightening the teeth and you know you get a few endodontic complications but in one case in Edmonton apparently a lady dentist she supposedly spent her whole life savings and about a million dollars fighting to keep her license because she did six veneers because the patient wanted it we was told he should get braces but he still insisted she do the veneers and she did them and then they went after so you know you know it's just who was that yeah it's just a dentist up in Edmonton it you know to me it was a crime against the profession against the patient got eleven eleven thousand dollars and the lawyers they obviously made over a million dollars in fees you know you get lawyers involved and they can't figure things out very quickly and it is very scary how how little things like a book they were trying to suspend me for five years for writing this book and no patient complained but I got in this turf war with local orthodontist or two and they didn't like that hey I was offering you know quicker orthodontic treatment and that was my answer to you know instead of doing instant ortho with veneers I thought a shorter term and braces would be more attractive to patients and they were loving it but and even though it's popular across the world now quicker ortho treatment in Alberta Canada it's a crime and you can't advertise it so you know now I said listen if you're gonna go after me for this you have to go after the orthodontist too that advertising it and the same ones that we're complaining about me actually a few years later they start advertising quicker or go to and now this brings up the topic of orthodontic manufactures so how many times have you heard you know a certain bracket will make your treatment faster I mean 30% faster according to the  companies were making self ligating brackets so that is apparently exaggeration and may not even have an effect so we were buying all these fancy brackets when perhaps they were not doing anything extra and in the UK as you may know the  demo authority actually went after the bracket company daemon and said you can't make these advertising claims but in Canada Alberta Canada they go after the one little dentist is a GP and  said you can't advertise quick or treatment it's as simple as that so you know it's why not go for the head of the snake instead of the little peon who's at the bottom

Howard: this is the new year and just August of 2019 you and there was a press dentist continuing education linked to over treatment of unsubscribing patients PR 

Michael Yar Zuk: yeah over treatment of unsuspecting patients yeah can

Howard: I can I read that that press release sure dentists author of the banned book confessions of a former cosmetic dentist says dental patients often had whole mouths over drilled by Dennis taught neuromuscular dentistry at dental lab sponsored continuing education programs to Canadian provinces have now banned the neuromuscular technique for treatment of headaches and full mouth reconstruction and more are expected to follow dr. Michaels Zook suggest all dental boards and colleges across North America should consider similar action to address the concerns of over treatment by many experts in the field the Alberta dentist has been fighting for change in the dental profession applauds Ontario and Manitoba for finally making a stand Zook says the problem has persisted for over two decades because of a close relationship between large Canadian data lab a dentist seminar series based in Las Vegas and the Dental Board and college in Nevada and Alberta he says the authority now Berta tried to cool the program by policing advertising but this failed to protect the patients and address the root cause this is truly a story of cross-border abuse for dentists from out of state being encouraged to fly their patients for drilling lessons in las vegas based on a neuromuscular philosophy that many say has been used an excuse to do a lot of unnecessary dental treatment he says malpractice coverage would usually not extend outside the dentist's home province or state and both the dentists and the patients were likely unaware this technically put them at a greater risk the whistleblower says his warning to the Alberta Authority was ignored and many continue to be harmed by unnecessary procedures to this day one of dentistry's biggest advocates against neuromuscular dentistry dr. Pete Dawson passed away in August but not before he made many statements warning Dennis not to use his technique based on the use of a TENS unit that presumably pulses muscles into the perfect bite dr. Edwin J's Inman a San Francisco dentist lawyer specializing in dental malpractice refers to the seminar series on his website until suc that he had handled a large number of these cases the lawyers website states over treatment with excess number crowns is tempting for some since crowns are the big ticket in a dentist profit statement victims of over treatment related to neuromuscular dentistry are comparing stories on Facebook support groups including one named Tina's bill proposal and are taking action including and recording confrontations with dental boards that seem to neglect their concerns and proposals to state regulators including governor's sisal akan Avada to force dental boards to address victims concerns and expose dental conflicts of insurance dental patients who feel they have been harmed by unnecessary procedures should consult with their local dental authority or malpractice book and ebook discussing dental over treatment may be found at confessions of a former cosmetic dentist so were you used to be a former cosmetic dentist yeah I mean that was an area that 

Michael Yar Zuk: I had interest in and and I had taken the ascetic continuum at UCLA and and I heard dr. Frank Speer do one of the presentations and his presentation really really caught my eye and I thought this guy knows what he's talking about so I I became a you know a follower of Frank spear a lot of his his courses and you know I just combined what what I learned from him with some orthodontics and kind of toned it down a little bit with using composite instead of crowns and I just found something that works for me and I just turns out it's a lot like Tiff's approach and in the UK which i think is I think the way of the future and it's  hard to imagine anything will you more conservative than just giving a little whitening bonding

Howard: let's go back to the let's try to think we're to even get into this but let's let's start with the Nevada Board because you sent that out and then a lot of actions and I mean there's threads on dental town about this so will you explain the Nevada board sack

Michael Yar Zuk:  well my understanding is is that the governor had made him made the decision to look into the Dental Board and the complaints about the Dental Board involves corruption and lack of concern about over treatment of patients that kind of thing there were a lot of insiders you know they would pick and choose who they did the investigations on and almost no dentist's got in trouble and I think it was a lot of influence from one of the programs in Las Vegas and one one victim in particular he he decided hey I'm not gonna take this bullshit anymore and he went in there and and he recorded you know how they mistreated him and they basically just shut him down and he had been to some something like twenty to forty or fifty dentists in that area and when you see a dentist who has a certain philosophy they will usually refer to another dentist who does things the same way and not to for example a specialist who might do it an alternative way and might inspire you know a lawsuit or something so you know again it's an example of how a victim finally you know made a stink and you just need to have the higher authority above the demo ports to finally take action and that's exactly what I'm hoping for in Alberta Canada as well because Alberta is oak long overdue for a overall and the same kind of thing happened in British Columbia where the BC Dental Board was audited and they had to be changes so you know I would just say that any any Dental Board starts to kind of do things however they want to do them they get there friends you know special jobs they hire their own kids they start you know any anyone that they don't like they tend to squeeze out so I was on the Dental Board they didn't like that I was a pro marketer and they they kind of gave me the cold shoulder and edged me out and they sued me to try to shut me up as well so they they sued me for nine million dollars while also trying to suspend me for writing the book for nine million the Alberta general authority but was it isn't

Howard: I mean did that stress the hell out of you I mean did you have a hard time sleeping did your wife did it did it affect your marriage where your wife's wondering what is my husband doing to our future I mean yeah I know that it was

Michael Yar Zuk:  it was a stressful time I mean you're thinking that we did win the lawsuit hit you from that much would it hit me I don't know what when did the lawsuit break out I think they were suing me just as they were trying to run me into you know the disciplinary process they were trying to coordinate the discipline I'm pulling my license at the same time they're suing me in court for defamation and also I reported you know some inappropriate activity of a former president that I witnessed and  they got him to sue me too so they were trying to you know hit me with as much as they could to shut me down but it just made me more inspired to look at more things that they've been doing and I've actually just got a massive list including you know all these conflict of interest for example many board members have ties to big corporations that we had no idea when they were running to getting it onto the board we had no idea that they were linked to a big gentle corporation and so basically right now we've got old boys trying to control the system and we've got dental Corp guys trying to run the system and so they're working out the dynamics but they're really only doing things for themselves and I still see the patients being left you know out for whatever happens to them and if if some something goes wrong you have a lawyer handling their complaint who knows absolutely nothing about dentistry and how does that make any sense you know if you call 911 you expect to get referred to you know I have have a paramedic that knows how to resuscitate you show up well what if you had a lawyer show up instead just to me these people have been - used to just calling the shots they think they can do whatever they want but you know I brought up the point of dental sedation as you know that's a you know even more serious topic than a full month of drilling when kids are dying in a dental office because the dentist is trying to fix her teeth and monitor their vital signs you know there's a problem and that's been happening across North America well it happened in Edmonton Alberta a few years ago when a little girl five year old girl had brain damage because of the sedation process and I had six months prior to that I had warned the Health Minister that something like this is going to happen and I didn't even get a response and they you know the bottom line is yeah there's a problem with the way sedation was done and recovery nurse didn't even have her proper certification and she just led a child she unhooked the the child after the dental procedure and the patient stopped breathing and where was this at in Edmonton amber earth wall and so that of course became a lawsuit she she's learning to speak again I think she's learning to walk again as well but the dentist basically had to you know he retired there's no way he would ever work again and they spent $330,000 investigating and discipline for him he was already retired so pulling a license from a retired dentist doesn't do anything and the patient got $0 from that investigation to me it's an example of you know who's making the money it's the lawyers and the consultants and a lot of these consultants are over old boys that are I've been done been you know acting as a jurors for 10 15 20 years and milking the system and just allowing these bills to add up so it helps the retirement patients are getting 0 

Howard: so what about the what about the other attorney you have a very famous attorney on this PR deal you have Edwin I think it's toothed attorney calm or something

Michael Yar Zuk:  yeah he's from San Francisco yeah he's done multiple cases and he said he's actually I think worked with the prosthodontist in your interview and so he's he's very familiar with the neuromuscular cases and I it's kind of sad that you know all these things gets handled quietly what is his site the tooth deter a tooth attorney right yeah so this is a easy periodontist is he not that sounds right 

Howard: so this is a very older been around block a former practicing periodontist dr. Zinman has dedicated his career to advocating for patients a strong standard of care more than law he is authored 10 edited dental textbook chapters 20 journal articles including the Journal of the American Dental Association and several regular columns to top-tier professional publications dr. Zinman also lectured at various audiences buh-bye so with a strong academic background over 1500 successful cases and community support dr. Zinman associates are left or the de facto team to successfully settle all your dental malpractice case this guy's a legend would does have you met him have you talked to him

Michael Yar Zuk:  I talked him on the phone and he encouraged me to keep you know talking speaking out about this problem and you know we we can make a change if we if we making a big enough stink and I think now victims are networking online and they're you know I I get contacted all the time like I had a message from Australia and a woman's daughter was being treated with this approach that has been taught in Las Vegas and her daughter was in a lot of pain and having trouble and I just said you know you can you can look at these different options and so you know when when seminars go global you know the the wrong approach can quickly hurt people anywhere in the world so it's it's pretty pretty scary and I guess it comes back to you know what are these programs are they are they core material are we learning that right process a that doesn't hurt people or for example like you know rezulin that not rezulin it is that that that endo right right it was a when they come mixed I get a perch up with methyl methacrylate okay so it was a poorly designed root canal filler and it's been taken off the market as far as I know but it looked great on the x-rays but it would leak they would fail and I guess when the top endodontists in north america was promoting the project I mean then suddenly he disappears memory that was I think was a former president of the endo Society but I won't get into names but let's just say that how many people got this type of endo treatment and was there a widespread notification like why didn't all the demo authorities let us know I mean what happens to the patient do we get a refund I get it it's a it's a PR nightmare and we accept new products too easily all these Gentle get gimmicks that may or may not work to me a root canal filling better be pretty damn good so before it's something on changing to a new product and just because you hear about it on the seminar I think a dentist really has to you know bite their cheek because a lot of these seminars really gets you pumped up and that's why there there being hell is to get you to buy the product that they're talking about and that's that's you know you have to kind of back up a little bit and just say well you know maybe this isn't the you know really legitimate material that we should be listening to you a hundred percent

Howard: so again my homies listen to you should they go to the website private dental dot org so they go to Alberta Dennis Lobby calm should they go and where should they go next well if 

Michael Yar Zuk: you know I'm on dental town I just I make comments there all the time I love ya you're an amazing man I mean really are but I get in trouble there all the time to you know what do you mean when you say get in trouble how do you how do you get in trouble well you know I may I might say things that upset people or you know opposed to many things sometimes but you know it depends on a person's interest i I'm not really helping dentists with marketing that much anymore I'm focusing you know most of my activity right now is trying to you know change how the dental profession is is handling this problem of censorship you know I'm you know I I can't even speak out about problems in the profession without getting sued or you have a threat to my license I mean this is you know I'm looking at whistleblower protection I'm trying to get the Health Minister to step in and crush the dental authority and divide it into Association and and the college separate them it's you know I'm more of a political activist at this point I suppose and you know I'm I don't have a lot of time to waste you know helping a dentist get a few more new patients with my toothache logo or something like that right 

Howard: so where does this come from we you know was where do you why is it so important for you to right this wrong and leave the dental profession better than when you found it was did this come from Eagle Scouts your mom where does this come from

Michael Yar Zuk:  well I think most of us you know want to make the profession better and you know whether I do a few extra fillings or not did that you know there's other people that can do that as well or better but there's not a lot of people that are crazy enough to speak out about something that's going to get them you know a lot of trouble from their peers so that's just something you know I don't have a problem with with sticking my neck out and I'm over the hump so whatever they think they can do to me I I think I've got a little more armor than the average person in this profession so you know I've raised you know my dad spoke out about problems he mixed politics and religion and we lived you know through a time where they would get him fired for speaking out and things like that and he would get sued for speaking out so I guess I guess if I'm if I'm not getting sued or not trying to kick me out of town and I get I just feel I haven't pushed I haven't spoke the truth yet well you you 

Howard: you have a big threat on dental town so dental town has 50 forms you know fillings root canals crowns one of them's the International Forum and under candidate you have this big thread it's like ten pages long petition to replace the ad a and C complaints director with the dentist what is that what is all that about well about 

Michael Yar Zuk: you know about the same time I started getting in trouble about with my marketing is when they had hired this lawyer to take over a the complaints director job which was handled by a senior dentist at the time but my my opinion is the former's former executive director had a bit of a professional jealousy about against someone else in the profession who had had a minor complaint and he saw an opportunity to hire a lawyer who didn't know anything of dentistry and he could use her as a as a gun and and just make this dentist life miserable and it wasn't me but you know basically once you hired that lawyer into the position of trying to be a dentist police dog I just set up this cascade were little problems like a broken wooden wedge that happens to dentists all the time i dentist was fighting for his license if an implant fails it can be professional misconduct i and as you know implants fail all the time and if if your dental office personnel commit dental fraud and get some money behind your back if they if they have they're basically embezzling your practice you can get in trouble and suspended for what your staff are doing because you're supposed to know what they're doing even though it's behind your back so you know i'm just the point was they put someone who's not qualified to to be the complaints director and i just like she's been in there 10 years and she's caused just terrible things to happen in our profession we we just don't know what we're doing we're scared to speak out she is she's basically almost bankrupting any dentist she looks out and looks into there was a record case i think he they find him for like five hundred sixty thousand dollars just recently and again those another case of sedation dentists the three hundred we heard a thirty thousand dollars and i think my case she'd spent two hundred seventy thousand dollars going after me and my book and my advertising and no patient victims I mean I'm talking she wasted you know probably three dentists lifetime dues chasing me for my stupid little book and you know what is wrong with this profession when you know they're trying to you know sue you and suspend you and just it's just insane oh I think yep Oh simple as that and do you and 

Howard: another thing that's out is that that root cause documentary that was on Netflix do you see anything kind of in the atmosphere with a dentist doing this root cause doing that what was your thoughts on root cause 

Michael Yar Zuk: that was the one about saying root canals cause cancer mm-hmm okay yeah there's still again there's a holistic group of dentists again kind of a fringe group that that's supposed to be illegal like you can't say you're a holistic dentist in Alberta but they're if you google you know whatever red deer or Edmonton or Calgary holistic dentist you're gonna hope get a whole list of them and they're gonna talk about their approach as being special and of course you know you're going to get those people that think they get scared by watching those shows and they're gonna look for a holistic dentist which again they're pulling good teeth that you know maybe the root canal isn't good and it could be retreated but in general they're gonna pull a tooth is still serviceable and they're gonna put in the implant so you know again it's a bit bit of a wacky you know approach that the dental profession is not addressing we're just letting this happen and more patients are getting their teeth pull and you know I I'm even more concerned about the the rage that implants are so damn perfect and people are getting all the teeth pull they're getting implants thinking that they're gonna last forever well we all know implants don't don't last as well as teeth deal so we're going back to the you know the 50s where they used to pull teeth that were crooked and make dentures for people that still had a good teeth and we're going back to that now we're you know getting implants and dentures and not giving teeth a chance

Howard: yeah the pendulum is really swinging I remember when we got out thirty years ago you and I did we did everything to save it to be three months scaling and imprecation and all this things and then out of nowhere people just started saying nah forget all that you know how you treat gum disease with with sunshine and forceps and pull these things and put mirakl implants and they did that for a decade and then they found out now they start seeing that that pendulum swung way too far to the other side but what I always watched was exactly what did the individual patient say to me and what did the individual dentist say to me versus what he did to his hygienists and wife and kids and children and I've always found that the patient wants to save their body part they're not Pro amputation and the the the periodontist would would go to the greatest links to save his own teeth and his wife's teeth and his hygienist teeth but some of them not many but some were quick to just say ah screw it for there so when you see people treating other people differently than they treat themselves that's the first red flag well that's it 

Michael Yar Zuk: yeah that would be a sign that you know that you can't you know they're being just whatever you call it they're not being truthful to the patient but they're there's also the dentist that gets sucked in so bad that they'll do the the worst thing to their own your own teeth right you  have all those cosmetic dentists that didn't need veneers but they're walking around with veneers because they got hooked him and I and when I went to these courses I started getting you know self-conscious too and I was thinking maybe it's time to finger my teeth but I'm just glad I didn't 

Howard: so do you think um do you think when you and I came out of school we were less incentivized to do this as opposed to children coming out of school today with 285 I mean a quarter million dollars in debt do you think they're gonna be more economically incentivized to go do something that might not be that you know that too aggressive yeah it's kind of it's kind of like the military I mean the military they they always play off that these are Patriots who volunteer really I see a ton of advertising I see military jet flyovers and all these sporting football events and it'll be huge Super Bowl and then going to the pores of the kid and saying would you like some money would you like to go to college and follow me and then the next thing you know he's a killer he's at least somewhere killing people so do you think do you think this um I don't think the military should be advertising during Super Bowl when I go to a movie theater how would you like it if we had to start with the flag a military flyover and the flat Pledge of Allegiance I mean that that does not look like a healthy society I don't I think you should get completely out of supporting events but do you think that academia by taking their eye off costs and productivity and still taking eight years to make someone a dentist and then kicking them out with two hundred eighty five thousand dollars of student loans because they don't have one eye on the customer and one eye on cost do you think that that kid's gonna be more incentivized to do more aggressive behavior like

Michael Yar Zuk:  yeah of course yeah it's I never really think about it that part of it too much but in general yeah if you have a if you or a quarter million dollars you're gonna want to pay that off as quick as you can because these these people that go in dentistry they usually want you know a sports car a nice house the usual things and they're gonna be getting that you know ten years later than when when we would when we graduated when things were when we got out of school with a thirty thousand dollar debt right so they're way too expensive and that's a problem then that gets set up for being working for a dental corporation who's going to just you know perhaps offer to pay your some of your student loan and then you're gonna be having to make them money - right so all these over hordes and these these issues will will have an effect on treatment planning I mean what we would hope that dentists have some ethics but that's not something you necessarily can always be taught if you take an ethics course it doesn't make you ethical right so

Howard: so what were you at now where where what's next for my buddies look

Michael Yar Zuk:  well I guess I'm you know currently appealing to Court of Appeals to try to get a new tribunal I'm fighting for my license and I'm probably they're they're trying to suspend me for advertising rules that they have since revised and you know I you know I'm I just think it's it's insane to be me for writing a book about a problem they know is a problem and so I'm just trying to you know assert my right to free speech and and stand up to bullies and you know anyone who wants to argue if you know getting in a turf war is dangerous I mean you know the orthodontist they don't want GPS to do ortho and then suddenly now there's there's companies doing or through the mail and some of them are linked orthodontists you know it's just a big mess well let's

Howard: let's talk about that the the biggest case of 2019 had to be smiles directly so you saw that from where you're sitting what did you think of that how did that with you well

Michael Yar Zuk:  to me it's it's silly that you know a company can bypass the typical protocols that we're forced to you know we take x-rays who see the patient make sure they're healthy and suddenly they can just the patient takes their own mold and and and bypasses all that I just think the Dental Authority has not done enough to you know protect the public and they should  somehow try to block it but

Howard: but it's kind of interesting because it almost sounds like health care is a sacred cow I mean in business I mean orthodontics is $6,500 and then here's a technology that said you know what let's get this down to 2,500 and to do this we're gonna have to change all these things so they come out with something 2500 so it's four thousand dollars cheaper how do you form a moral compass to know if that's better or worse I mean and they do it in cars they if I go to Target and buy a blender the axes actually have ten blenders at Target for ten dollars 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 so it's a perfect price elasticity where price has a very elastic effect on demand this means the individual when I go in there to buy a blender they don't know how serious is Howie's blender gonna be do you just want the lowest cost the highest quality so why do you have price segmentation at General Motors was chevy pontiac buick olds cadillac why do you have it in housing with a mobile home an apartment two bedroom three bedroom five bedroom so in orthodontics how do you put a moral compass on price elasticity of do you want to pay the mercedes $6,500 and have a doctor hold your hand all the way through it or $2,500 and you do it yourself 

Michael Yar Zuk: well I mean to me it's we already had that the choices we had a general dentist to use you usually would be cheaper than a specialist and you would have different specialists competing and so you know they were in a certain area you would have competition and of course some people want to pay a premium and see a specialist and that's great and others want to save some money and they they're willing to have compromises in there you know we have more more options with ortho than we did in the old days we had you know now we have shorter term ortho and that's can often be a very affordable choice and you know in the UK they've got in on em and appliances that are just removable little devices too and so they you know me I'm at the Inman aligner would tiff yeah okay yeah so there's things like that and you know you can kind of mix and match different things and I  just think letting companies get into the healthcare business that that bypasses the important part of knowing that that there's nothing in the bone that the tooth there's no gum disease there's no tooth decay there's cases where you know the  patients are going to obviously lie and say yeah all up-to-date and the trays are going to be made on compromised teeth with the consequences and that's already happening so tough tough

Howard: are you glad you did all these wars are you are you glad you did this or do you wish that you would never gone down this 

Michael Yar Zuk: well I think you know people that that just buckle over and just stay you know I wish I would have said something you know say for example you're a Catholic priest and you know that there's a bad priest in here in your area and you just say well we're not supposed to say anything because you know that's just something it gives us the church a bad reputation I I think it's it clears your conscience a bit to be able to let it out there even though you know maybe you get whacked a little bit because of it but I think you know there's people like you who provide the same message but usually you know in the humorous way and dentists or you know laughing and enjoying it but when you go to the patients and you say hey I know dentistry is not perfect and there's a problem with the profession that's a different level so yeah I understand that yeah I won't have a lot of people wanted to sit beside me at a dental meeting but I'm just not that kind of guy that needs to have everybody to be a friend 

Howard: it's so it's so complicated it's just humans but I I think it's funny when people you know my oldest sister is Catholic nun so they  know this church scandal that it happened in Penn State it happened you know it's just a human deal I mean it's a when this less sex scandal came out people were saying it was in Hollywood say are you out of your mind it's Hollywood it's business it's everywhere it's wherever humans are and at least one out of humans one out of a hundred humans is off the charts too aggressive something's seriously wrong with the least one out of a hundred I mean I think the data shows that clearly hell one out of a hundred people kill someone when's the last time you killed someone pretty rare yeah it's a it's a rare event for me too I still have not done that one so uh it is what it is but I think what we've learned in history is that you need checks and balances you absolute power corrupts absolutely and we have to have transparency and so we've agreed that we all need to be when we were watching the Super Bowl we're all looking at the same scoreboard there's no debate in the stands we know there's two teams we know there's referees and we know there's a scoreboard and whenever someone starts covering up the scoreboard there goes transparency and everybody that um promotes transparency they never want it for themselves they just want other people to be transferring the board trying to get you to shut up and not publish and not talk you know that what that's obviously wrong and then you need competition and a lot of these people don't want competition they want to eliminate their competition with lawyers and boards and you know they go to the government and get barriers to trade and tariffs and all these things like that but it's the same old story for 5,000 years we need to be more transparent we all need to be looking at the same scoreboard and if we do that it'll be healthy and as usual you'll find out that the game has been going great it's only about 1% of all the humans in the last 5,000 years that have caused all the noise and turmoil and i'm i applaud you for having the guts and the fortitude and then the to do this i mean i've seen some of your tweets and i'm just saying god I thought I like to bring trouble on myself I mean I'm almost booking a seminar the other day in this guy says now now if you show up now we're you're gonna wear a tie and it has to be totally g-rated nice okay well I'm not coming then you know I'm not gonna come I'm not gonna buy a suit just for you but I think that people listen to us because they might not agree with this they might not like it's um I think we're annoying but at least they know when Zuk and how we are talking we're telling you what we truly believe they're we're not we're not keep we're not pulling any punches this is dentistry uncensored like it hate it whatever this is what too old fifty seven-year-old boys I've seen in the jungle you got it and I I it's an honor to be in the same dental jungle as you it realizes feeling's mutual all right buddy have a great day and I'll see you soon on the message boards thank you for your 5,000 posts on dental town you really are a legend thank you very much all right have a great day