10. Teeth
10. Teeth
| JIM: | How's your toothache? |
| ANDREW: | It's gone, thanks. I went to the dentist last night and he took care of it. |
| JIM: | Which tooth was it? |
| ANDREW: | The last one on the upper right-hand side. It has a huge filling in it now. |
| JIM: | I hate having my teeth filled. It's not just the pain I hate. I hate the sound of drilling. |
| ANDREW: | So do I. I'd rather have a tooth pulled than filled. |
| JIM: | Have you ever had one of your teeth pulled? |
| ANDREW: | No, but the one the dentist just filled will have to come out someday. He says it can't be filled again. |
| JIM: | Teeth keep causing trouble, and nobody really does anything about it. I can't understand why. |
| ANDREW: | They can put men on the moon, but they can't keep people from having trouble with teeth. |
| JIM: | Why can't they transplant teeth the way they transplant hearts? They can give some body a different heart. Why can't they give him different teeth? |
| ANDREW: | I've heard they're working on that. My dentist says they're working on tooth transplants right now. |
| JIM: | On second thought, I'm not sure I'd want to eat with some other person's teeth. |
| ANDREW: | Well, that's not how it works. The idea is to develop a plastic tooth that can be put into the hole where your own tooth came out. |
| JIM: | Really? What makes it stay there? |
| ANDREW: | So far they haven't tried it with people, but they've made it work with baboons. |
| JIM: | Do they hook the plastic tooth to the teeth beside it? |
| ANDREW: | No. The plastic tooth is made with plastic roots, and after a while the gums grow around the roots, so the tooth can't fall out. |
| JIM: | Are you making this up? |
| ANDREW: | No! Seriously, somebody at the Georgetown University Hospital in Washington has been working on it. |
| JIM: | Well, it sounds like a good idea. |
