[HN Gopher] Teeth as time capsules: Soviet secrets and my dentis...
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Teeth as time capsules: Soviet secrets and my dentist grandmother
Author : Petiver
Score : 59 points
Date : 2024-10-04 21:36 UTC (5 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| lynx23 wrote:
| Rather longwinded personal intro, followed by
|
| due to the war, my grandma was allowed to become a dentist
| without actually going to medical school!
|
| YAY! What a horror story.
| watt wrote:
| That explains quite a lot about dentistry in USSR
| riehwvfbk wrote:
| It explains your bias and preconceived notions.
|
| One could read the story as "people had to do what they had
| to in order to survive and help their fellow humans". But no,
| you choose to focus on "Soviet dentistry hurrr" without
| knowing a thing about it.
|
| The article is also guilty. It talks at length about this
| book with a story of horrible torture that is entirely made
| up. Essentially that book is a collection of every stereotype
| and conspiracy mashed into one. The modern-day equivalent
| would be a book about how QAnon and Pizzagate are real. But
| no, the author says "the book is a lie, but Russia is bad so
| it's justified", missing the obvious: the book is trash.
| supermatt wrote:
| Clearly you didn't read the article. The grandmother was in
| Poland.
| throw3638 wrote:
| It is called holocaust denial, and crime in many countries
| including Poland. A#hole!
| supermatt wrote:
| What are you on about? The GP said that it explains
| dentistry in the USSR - Poland wasn't in the USSR.
| eadmund wrote:
| Well, roughly a third of pre-WWII Poland ended up in the
| USSR and remains part of Russia today:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Poland
| jhbadger wrote:
| And a fair chunk of pre-WWII Germany ended up in Poland.
| Poland basically moved westward, losing parts in the east
| and gaining territory in the west.
| aguaviva wrote:
| _Poland wasn 't in the USSR_
|
| But large chunks of it did become part of the USSR, as
| the article points out very clearly:
| Zosia grew up fatherless in Vilnius, which between the
| wars belonged to Poland and was called Wilno. On 1
| September 1939, she was just about to start her first
| year of medical school when Germany invaded Poland.
| Sixteen days later, the Soviet Union joined in, and
| quickly took Wilno, along with most of Poland's east. A
| month later, the Soviets gave the city to Lithuania,
| which had coveted it since the end of the previous war.
|
| As the sibling comment also points out, though it is
| mistaken in the implication that these lands were
| inherited by Russia after the fall of the USSR. In fact
| they went to Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania (first as
| Republics within the USSR, then as independent
| countries).
| supermatt wrote:
| The grandmother received her qualification in Warsaw,
| which is part of modern day Poland and has never been
| part of the USSR - so her qualification explains nothing
| about dentistry in the USSR - as per the comment I was
| responding to. Warsaw itself was in
| ruins. A great portion of the country's doctors had been
| killed, and there was a desperate need for medical
| professionals of every kind. The intensity of this demand
| led to a certain loosening of standards in training. This
| relaxation was even more pronounced in the sister
| discipline of dentistry. Instead of going to years of
| medical school, all Zosia had to do to become a dentist
| was endure a short practicum and pass a test. The test
| was a set essay, on the "role of the mouth in the beauty
| of the face".
| aguaviva wrote:
| You are correct, and I wasn't reading too carefully.
|
| The snippet at the end does touch on Soviet dentistry
| directly, however.
| tombert wrote:
| Very tangential, but interesting enough story:
|
| My dad grew up the youngest in a relatively poor family in
| Montana with four kids and a father that drank most of their
| cash away. My dad really needed braces, but they couldn't
| afford to pay a dentist, so my grandmother got a part time job
| as a dental assistant and paid very close attention to the
| process of installing and removing braces.
|
| After a few months, she "borrowed" the materials required for
| braces, and installed them on my dad, and removed them about a
| year later. Apparently it worked out fine, my dad's teeth are
| alright.
|
| Obviously, things going "alright" is more a matter of luck than
| anything else: there's a reason that people go to dental
| school, and they were fortunate that there weren't any
| complications, but I always thought it was amusing that that's
| how my dad got his teeth straightened.
| mncharity wrote:
| > they were fortunate that there weren't any complications
|
| I long ago saw a proposal for a country-scale medical
| training system designed for graceful upgrading. A highly
| experienced nurse, wishing to become a doctor, just learns
| the delta, rather than restarting from scratch. Similarly for
| a community heath worker moving into nursing, etc. And a
| different proposal, for automated support and oversight of
| community health workers' hard-to-take-well cervical-cancer
| screening photos, integrated with ai-filtered city-based
| expert consults. And then there's patients who become single-
| disease domain experts.
|
| So looking forward, perhaps we could imagine a human-
| computer-hybrid setup where a grandma training and executing
| with oversight was gracefully supported? Especially if haptic
| vr becomes widely available.
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| Ask an experienced cosmetologist at a salon how many of their
| clients come in, wearing a hat or scarf, asking them to
| rescue a home project going awry.
|
| And then scroll around Google Maps to see how many nail and
| hair "salons" are running in someone's private home.
| Hnrobert42 wrote:
| WARNING: article is only tangential related to teeth. I gave up
| skimming halfway through. There were a few mentions of the
| effects of jail and torture on teeth.
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