[parliament32]

Contrary to popular opinion: our ancestors survived just fine without dentists for a very long time. Yes, you risk dying, but it's less likely than you think -- your body is pretty good at fixing itself. Wisdom tooth extraction and braces and whatever new money-extraction-technique-du-jour will come out tomorrow is probably not necessary.

Anecdote: when I was a kid, I used to visit a dentist who would always "find" 5-6 cavities every year. After a few years my parents took me for a second opinion elsewhere, and it turned out those cavities weren't really there. Ever since then, I've somewhat distrusted dentists... When I was in my early teens, I was told I needed braces. I declined, and two decades later, my teeth look straight and are fine. In my late teens I was told I needed my wisdom teeth extracted... I declined, and same as before, my teeth are fine now almost 20 years later.

My personal stance now is: avoid processed sugar (for teeth and health in general), brush your teeth, and go to the dentist if something hurts and don't go away within a few weeks. Otherwise dentistry is pretty scammy as a whole.

[wikibob]

Our ancestors with good teeth ate zero sugar, zero processed starch. This is so difficult in modern society as to be essentially impossible.

Sadly yes, dentistry has extremely poor, or rather non existant oversight. The answer however is to extremely carefully select your dentist, and get second opinions. Not to ignore dentistry.

[parliament32]

Ignore it, no, but the industry has "fads" which are very questionable. Effectively every single dentist will insist you need to come in for "cleaning" every 6mo-1yr... yet there are plenty of people like me (either by choice, or lack of dental insurance or whatnot) who haven't been to the dentist in a decade or two and don't have any issues.