Unpublished letter responding to Professor Staehle’s review of “Holistic Dentistry”

Letter to the editor not published because it was deemed “unusual”

Ganzheitliche Zahnheilkunde in physischer, psychischer und metaphysischer Sicht, Hüthig-Verlag, 1997, 4th edition,

in DZZ 53/1998,

in which he already denounces dental exorcism. Hence its current relevance, with a request for publication.

I am pleased that Professor Staehle, 13 years after the first edition appeared (then published by Haug), is now devoting his attention to the fourth revised edition of the above book, even if he seeks, almost reproachfully, to appeal to the new publisher's (Hüthig's) conscience not to disseminate such ideas. (Note added in 2000: Through his position (power) in the so-called scientific world, he succeeded in having Hüthig yield to his pressure and hand the series Medizin und Ganzheitliche Zahnheilkunde back to the “alternative” publisher Haug. By now, of course, all are under the Thieme umbrella.

He had in fact hinted that he would advise the publisher's science-loyal authors to stop publishing with Hüthig. And that is called freedom of the press!)

Controversy between conservative and progressive views has always existed; during the witch hunts, those who departed from the established order were silenced by every means, and not merely gagged.

It is reassuring that today's scientists proceed more subtly than the inquisitors, so that those affected today need not fear for their physical well-being.

Some of Professor Staehle's remarks, however, suggest that he has not read everything, or perhaps has not understood it. (Note added in 2000: This particularly concerns his renewed “arguments” about dental exorcism.)

It is understandable that he perceives holistic dentistry as a possible threat; nevertheless, one should be entitled to expect that a critical discussion does not suppress facts, such as, on focal processes, the scientific investigations of the Vienna school around Professors Pischinger and Kellner, or the Münster school around Professors Hauss and Junge-Hülsing.

In the international literature invoked by Professor Staehle, chronic jaw osteitis and its effects are indeed described and known as NICO (neuralgia-inducing cavitational osteonecrosis) after Professor G. Bouquot (School of Dentistry, West Virginia University). (Note added in 2000: As a university professor, he is probably a fool like the other professors mentioned above, excluding Professor Staehle, of course.)

He also fails to acknowledge that as early as 1996 (GPW 2/96), Lechner was able to demonstrate that 99.6 (!!) % of the bone defects he identified through physioenergetics (arm-length reflex) as chronic jaw osteitis could also be found histologically. Thus an error rate of only 0.4% (!!). What orthodox scientific method can achieve such results?

“One might smile at some passages” ... of his review “... were it not that the bitter reality” ... “calls for critical consideration” (quotation from Staehle).

In this sense, his pleasant wordplay and escalation of the term dental exodontism, otherwise used in connection with focal processes, into “dental exorcism” is something to smile at, but no more than that. (Note added in 2000: Today he has not only abandoned all “good taste” but has again demonstrated his lack of scientific rigour when he writes in DZW 3/00 that diagnoses based on complementary methods and the surgical interventions derived from them “symbolically serve a ‘liberation from the bad and evil’” and constitute “a perversion of our culture's concept of medicine that could scarcely be surpassed” (quotation). What outrageousness and presumption, by which he does precisely what he always denounces in the so-called alternatives: stirring up emotions. I ask myself: what image of the human being (of the patient) does the scientific guild hold? Apparently only that of statistics and test-tube results, where the individual does not count, particularly not the patient, but only “our culture's concept of medicine”; that, of course, is not perverted.)

Does Mr Staehle really believe that the assessment of specialist content (here holistic dentistry) should not be left to the relevant specialists? Would he prefer his scientific views to be assessed—without consensus within the field—by barbers, for example?

As a reader, I am surprised that Professor Staehle gives thought to the holistic training Rossaint completed in addition to his scientific studies.

However, I must correct a small point here (I know him personally): nowhere does he state, as Staehle writes, that he has “passed through various training s t a g e s” (quotation from Staehle), and he himself already used quotation marks around the word “initiate” to make clear that these are people who understand something about a subject.

When Mr Staehle states that holistic treatment of gingivitis consists solely of urine therapy, I must again conclude that he has either overlooked the other options listed, failed to acknowledge them, or does not wish to do so.

The formulation “A patient in whom the doctor, in turn, diagnoses a fistula is in reality merely ‘afraid to let go of blockages’” (quotation from Staehle) likewise unfortunately suggests that Mr Staehle, in his effort to save traditional orthodox medicine, does not wish to recognise or accept the additional possibility of a psychologically conditioned background.

One can only speculate about his reasons when he has taken the other examples of psychological backgrounds cited merely from a table in the book.

It is also something to smile at (see above) that Mr Staehle reads from this book that the practitioner treating foci exposes himself to great danger through “inconsistent elimination of foci” (quotation from Staehle).

Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses.

(P.S. 2000: Why does Staehle not write in the same sensationalist manner about the tens of thousands of deaths each year from side effects of medications that are, of course, scientifically validated, or about iatrogenic harm from unnecessary operations in conventional medicine? Conventional medicine as the sole saving faith—what hubris.

Staehle's attacks strongly recall the time of the Crusades, when attempts were made to force those of other beliefs into the “correct” faith. The reason then was a threat to Christendom; does Staehle see science under threat today? It will probably take 800 years this time too before the Church's successor, science, apologises for its actions.