Nixon, Laughlin & Chase on American Dental Association and Dentistry

How are you?
Good to see you, Dr. Chase.
How are you?
Good to see you.
Come on over and sit down.
Have a little chat.
You sit here, Dr. Chase.
One of your conventions in San Francisco.
Yes, and we're quite... You know, I spoke to him in 60 at the Walmart store.
You certainly did.
Remember, that's the time we preempted the crew shop.
That's it.
And I...
It was the finest you spoke off the cuff, and I've said ever since it was the finest address I ever heard anyone make in my life.
And you spoke at that time, just got up there and spoke off the cuff to us, and it was really...
Tell me, you're West Virginia?
Yes, I'm from West Virginia.
I should say West by God.
West by God.
Yes, yes.
And what town?
In Clarksburg.
Clarksburg, Clarksburg, Clarksburg, and Central Park, West Virginia.
With that in that respect, would you not say that the American industry is the best in the world?
Is there any country to compare this to?
There's no country.
The best industry is the best in the world, I would say.
He saw, Dr. Chase was with us on a Russian trip.
But they, of course, they're healthy people.
They're strong.
But our stuff is, our art is so much more sophisticated.
I didn't know.
Did you go look at any of that?
Yes, I did.
I've done a study at one of their institutes there.
It's very disappointing.
But that is true.
Is it?
I think they're doing some good research.
electronics applied to dentistry.
There was an article in the paper yesterday about some anesthesia, some electronic device that they attach to the ear, and the other end to the grill, and it seems to induce a certain amount of anesthesia.
And when I was there, they showed it to me, and they said it works about half the time pretty well.
But their dentistry is awful.
I mean, it's just cruel for a dentist to pull a tooth when he doesn't have to.
I went to Florida once and I...
Dr. Chase has been my dentist for my entire life.
I got a terrible toothache.
I went to the dentist, and it was horrible.
I mean, I had a bad amnesia.
One of these guys, you know, his business was poor.
He just gave me a shot and yanked it out.
Dr. Chase was furious.
He said, I'm sure you'll pull it, too.
That's right.
Remember when that happened?
You still got the hole.
No, you don't have to.
Mr. President, this is yesterday.
I spoke my 55th time this year.
And I have been speaking all over the nation against the Kennedy-Gibbous bill since I've been working for you all the way.
We certainly could endorse your health program.
We were hopeful.
Our board of trustees, I think maybe it was last year or somehow, we voted to endorse your health bill, providing they would include a dentistry for the children of the indigenous people of this nation.
That ought to be done.
It certainly should be done.
I thought maybe I might be right here now, but...
Honestly, you have such a chance, let's just check that out.
To me, the most... Because I, you know, I didn't have very poor dentistry when I was a kid.
And, of course, you would think you'd have a hell of a problem when you get older.
But you just got to have punishment.
You agree with that, wouldn't you, about punishment for kids?
They can't afford it.
That's right.
But why do you need clinics for them?
Well, we're addressing ourselves now to the prevention, and of course, we would hope someday that we could see fluoridation mandatory in all the states.
Yeah.
We've definitely documented this, Mr. President, that 60% of the people, children from Memphis, they want to play fluoridation.
Fluoridation.
Yeah, it makes 60% of us.
But the job version of this, I don't think it's quite a political issue anymore now.
It was ridiculous, ridiculous.
Almost.
Why is it that you have, for example, I have a friend who goes to the Florida, his mother is many trees and so is he.
She was born in the Canary Islands.
Well, that's in here.
You know what, we're...
Some of us, my mother died at 93.
She had a tremendous physical body.
She had her teeth when she died at 93.
She lost some.
That's very unusual.
Yeah, that's very unusual.
Of course, I don't believe there's all this question these days of saying environment is everything, or it was.
But that, in the 60s, now we're beginning to find that inheritance makes a great deal of difference.
Not only physically, but in the brain.
This idea, for example, you didn't like white men.
We can talk about this in a private way, but there are differences.
Well, of course, we're teaching, too, in our schools now, Mr. President, we're teaching oral hygiene, diet.
Diet has a tremendous effect.
This is the things that have a lot to do with it.
Fluoridation of our water, diet, proper
prophylaxis treatment, seeing your dentist record.
There's no reason in the world today, with the knowledge that we have, we have the finest dentistry in the world, why anyone should lose their teeth during life.
Do you have enough dentists?
Yes, sir.
I personally feel that we have enough dentists in the present system in which we are working.
Now, there is a difference, Mr. President, between need and demand.
Now, if everyone in this nation would demand dentistry that needs it,
We wouldn't have enough.
But this is not true.
It never will be true.
I think we have a mal-distribution of them in this nation.
I mean, they're all big cities.
They're too much of a big city for the price.
Not enough of the country.
Not enough of the South.
Midlands.
Well, you take Miami Beach, for instance.
I'm North Adonis.
I imagine there's orthodontists living that perhaps are just barely making a living because they want to climb it.
But there are some areas that they could use orthodontics.
Now, what we have to address ourselves to in this
particular time, we have to address ourselves to get to areas, and we have to address ourselves to the rural areas and see that health care is available for these children.
Yes, please.
No children in the street.
And see that it's available for them.
Ken, is this adequately even reflected in the input in our document?
At least we're enabled to talk about the difference.
Let me tell you, there are several things that are involved here.
First, good dentistry has an enormous psychological effect.
An enormous psychological effect.
I think particularly for girls, I think you take care of them.
So they grow up with lousy teeth and so forth.
So I'll sum that up.
Although man can overwrite it, he can look a little other way when he loses hands.
But believe me, good dentistry, I'm not going to tell you that you're an artist, but I can speak for myself.
I don't just mean enough so you can chew.
That's terribly important.
But dentistry ought to take care of you so you can look nice.
You wouldn't know this if this was one of Dr. Chase's creations.
But when I was playing basketball, I was.
Shouldn't have been playing.
Somebody would have taken a basket and put an elbow in there and knocked the tooth out of you.
So this is a bridge.
I have one of those caps.
30 years.
30 years.
As a matter of fact, this is 1959.
30 years, then it would be 29.
When you first came to film.
Yeah, that's right.
But I lost this 40 years ago.
And this was put in.
When I first came to Washington, I'd had some work on telephone, and I knocked it out.
Dr. Joseph, I went to see him, and I was still in the Senate.
And that was in 1955.
Mr. President, that was there when you were in Congress.
Yeah, I know.
Not the Senate.
No, the House.
That's right, the House.
That was 25 years ago.
We've had to work on it now.
My whole point is...
good ministry, particularly in the upper mouth, it affects your speaking and your appearance.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
And therefore, we have got to do a better job on that score.
May I just say one thing that came to my notice just yesterday evening?
I think at the present time at Georgetown University,
I forget exactly, but I think several thousand applicants to get into the freshman year.
And there are 140 chairs available in the dentistry.
In medicine, I think there's something like 11,000 applicants to get into the freshman year.
I don't think they have enough schools.
Well, that's it.
The schools have to be built.
Their company is terribly expensive.
But I think you're right.
But the other point is,
Are you, are the dentists doing as good a job as some of the doctors are now doing?
And I know you don't like group work and the rest.
I don't like group work either, I'm not a person.
But in, at least in,
And seeing that work that doesn't need to be done by a dentist can be done by technicians and the rest of it.
Now, maybe that's true of a doctor.
Many doctors do a hell of a lot that a nurse can do.
But with a dentist, I agree that dentists have got to do the work you do to a technician.
Even cleaning.
You don't even like to like cleaning, do you, Earl?
Sometimes you do, Earl.
Well, if you're so special.
We are investing ourselves in this very thing, Mr. President.
We are trying to expand the use of auxiliary personnel, but we don't feel that auxiliary personnel should cut soft and hard tissue, prepare cavities, do injections, and do anything.
And this is the thing that I've been fighting against Kennedy's proposal.
He wants comprehensive care for everybody in this nation, which I think would bankrupt this nation.
The difficulty is that it would have created a demand that you couldn't fulfill.
And the whole system would break down.
We wouldn't have physical resources, nor would we have demand power to build.
You've got to move the supply side as fast as you move the demand side.
What we'd like you to consider on this, this will be in your go-around at our next Congress, is the program for the kids included in your program.
And it's costly.
But we would like to have an opportunity to negotiate something that we think
Mr. Cole is my expert in this field, and you're here in Washington.
Yes, sir.
You talked to Cole about it, and you got to get your board and your convention to take it up.
You can also extend my greetings to the convention, so I remember speaking to him twice.
I certainly will.
We're hopeful.
Every time that I go to my dentist, my favorite story is,
He says, you know, when I go in, I see a picture of you smiling.
It makes me more proud of my ministry.
Good story.
Paul?
As I have traveled, I'm sure you'll connect to the airless, but as I have traveled through the nation, I feel that 95% of my profession, because I have been well-received,
And every time when I spoke, and this is my 55th time, I brought your name into this thing, saying that we're hopeful in our president, Mr. Nixon's health program, that we include dentistry for the poor children in this nation.
We can support it 100%.
I would say that 95% of the professional people, the dentists, and a lot of physicians,
But 95% are lack of movement.
I want you to know this.
And I feel this, I've felt this.
You know, you get a feeling as you go out, because I've got a lot of friends who have, and I get a lot of, I get this feeling.
I've never, I've never, in my 55 visitations, I've never had one person
You must be talking to the right audience.
Let's just say one thing I think is important, and I told the ALA people this, and they might even get the message here, but a professional organization like yours, kind of totally easy to use, the best thing you can do in terms of your public image is to talk as you are talking about helping these poor kids.
Because the average person thinks that the dentist who is basically in the establishment, which you are, or the doctor who is in the
or the lawyers of the ABA are only joined together for selfish purposes, to keep out others from competition, and that they don't care about people.
You do care about people, as your conversation indicates.
Have your convention adopt a resolution indicating your concern about them.
We've done this very often.
We're constantly doing this.
I know you do, but it helps.
I've known many dentistry doctors, though I know quite a few.
But they do a good job.
And also, dentists like doctors do a lot of free work.
You have to.
Somebody can't.
And you don't get the credit for it.
I don't think there's really a health crisis on this nation.
I don't feel so.
I don't think there's a health crisis right in this nation.
I don't know of any place that someone can't get a emergency treatment or they can't get a dentistry.
I like to use the word physicians and dentists myself.
But I don't think that there's any particular place that I have been, and I've been all over this nation, where dentistry, if people want it, can't get dentistry.
Let me ask you a question.
How about Negroes?
Are they potentially, or is it just something that's not their vision?
Do you see all the schools in this nation?
Yes, we have, of course, Howard University.
But are they good?
Potentially.
Negroes can do well.
I want the honesty.
I don't know.
I haven't seen.
How about Mexicans?
Well, now, let me just show you that it doesn't work that way.
In Miami, there are some Cubans that have come over that have done extremely well.
There's a difference there, huh?
The Mexicans over Cubans.
I think there's another difference there, Carl, and that is that a very much higher percentage of those Cubans
were either trained in India or .
The Cubans had an enormous drive.
It was a forecast rule, I think, too.
The school down here was a pretty high class school.
Yeah, as compared to Mexico, which I think that's their problem.
But on the Negro side, I don't think the dedication there has been a loser for you.
I've been talking to some of the members of the board.
Howard?
No, the board.
There's a ton of examiners in the district here, and they've always complained about the poor quality.
Oh, it's been very tough.
I think it's been very tough.
Well, I tell you what, we've got to give those people, they've got to get a chance.
Well, we ought to go out there.
We've done it.
We've had to come out and get more of them.
accepted in schools throughout the country.
It's almost .
Well, that goes for pretty well.
See, this election process he's talking about was how many?
12,000 for 150.
They test him to tell, I think, .
We are a favorite, even though I feel it's lowering the standard of .
I know, of course.
Let me try that again.
Japanese, Chinese, is good at it.
You know what they used to think on that point?
I was reading, speaking of genetics, a recent study which, and I don't say it's true, but it's done by a very controversial label, Harvard-Matterson.
Anyway, he made this study of IQs, and this puts us in our place as Caucasians.
The top level are the Orientals.
The Japanese are Chinese.
The Caucasians are second.
And the Browns are third.
And the Blacks are fourth.
Was that published?
It was published and then it was fired.
No, no, no.
You wouldn't do that?
No, it's quite true.
This is done on the basis of an enormous number of studies.
But now, what does this mean?
If you tell the brown and the black he's destined to just go straight to treatment?
No, you don't tell them that.
You simply say that the way I look at it, you see, I have a different theory about this.
Sort of a combination of genetics and environment.
What are the oldest civilizations?
What is the next oldest?
Well, it's really the blacks.
It's probably the whites, but we aren't very old.
In Western Europe, we were still eating each other, you know, and they had a great civilization in China and Japan.
Then the blacks.
My God, they're very close to the savage business, you see?
And so it just, when we talk about these things, we're just talking to the panther, we talk about it and say, well, if we just give them enough education, the same opportunity, all of a sudden they are going to be equal.
It's not going to happen.
What's going to happen is that over a period of time, they are going to...
They may develop the potential, but it's going to take, we're not talking in terms of five years, or 10 years, or 25, we're talking in terms of hundreds of years.
Now, you must not tell us, talk to Gail Sayers in here, he's a great guy, doing a marvelous job, making a lot of money in private activities.
He's exceptional.
He'll make it with anybody.
And there are many, of course,
Thank you.
that aren't any better than the forest we grow.
But the point is that, generally speaking, we have to realize that there are differences between people.
And it's just wrong for us to deny that, because we don't help the problem.
Don't you agree?
And there was this Harvard professor, I think it was in Pierre, too, who published something on that subject.
And he was criticized for having said that.
The doctor showed him a plaque.
Mr. President, this is not a very good picture.
This is a reminder of a little, when you spoke at our meeting.
Isn't that something terrible?
This was our president's cardinal, but this was
Dr. Phillips, he was president, said Cardinal again.
Cardinal, that was the president.
Of course, that's a terrible picture.
Of course, this is just a negative, but I picked this up.
I thought it might be interesting.
But I thought that that was, I remember that I was sitting, I was sitting here, I was sitting here in the House of Billings, and when you came in there, I never will forget for as long as I live,
You just got right up there and right off the cuff, you gave one of the finest addresses I ever heard in my life.
I never forgot.
I told people, the finest speech I ever heard, you made.
But I wasn't any one of the results of that speech.
And right after that speech, I got a call from who was who.
Because you mentioned my name.
Oh, that's right.
That's Dr. Chase.
I told that story about the smile.
They said more than that.
Anyhow, they stuck me in.
Andy was one of the great guys.
The big line that they quoted at that time from your speech, I can't remember if it was, the Russians had just
I want to give you a little memento.
The presidential seal is in that flag.
Here it is in your conference.
I would love to have a picture.
I am so delighted and happy.
I'll do everything I can.
Well, I used to be about six years ago, but I've had two operations on that line.
I'll give you the golf ball.
I'll take the golf ball.
They own Wilson, too.
Mr. Wilson, isn't he gone?
Mr. President, take care of your business.
Mr. President, I hope in your next term of office, and I realize this is serious, that you might be able to again address our possibility.
Would you consider this?
Would you consider this?
Thank you, Mr. President.

Nixon, Laughlin & Chase on American Dental Association and Dentistry

AI Summary

Audio

Transcript (AI-generated)

NARA Description

Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on October 17, 1972

Cite this conversation