Straight Teeth and Misaligned Interests: Courtrooms Are Crowded with SmileDirectClub Litigation.

SmileDirectClub markets, manufactures, and delivers clear plastic dental aligners directly to the consumer: no dental office necessary. This well-known business strategy-cut costs by cutting out the middleman-has in several instances caught the attention of state dental regulators. While the dental boards consider some of SmileDirectClub's practices to be violative of state dental practice law, the corporation has fought back in federal court, charging dental regulators with antitrust violations and with denying SmileDirectClub its constitutional rights.The Supreme Court, as noted by SmileDirectClub, has insisted that a self-regulating state professional board is not itself the state, so a board's actions might be subject to federal antitrust law. In the SmileDirectClub cases, however, state regulators have acted as required by state legislatures and as expressed in state dental practice acts. The boards' activities here are therefore cloaked in the states' immunity to antitrust litigation and should be treated deferentially by federal courts. Furthermore, judicial review of the substance of every regulation to which SmileDirectClub objects is inappropriate under principles of constitutional law. In the interest of public safety, courts should permit state dental regulators to fulfill their mandates and ensure that all dental providers comply with state health regulations.

The mitochondrial channel VDAC has a cation-selective open state.

The mitochondrial channel VDAC is known to have two major classes of functional states, a large conductance "open" state that is anion selective, and lower conductance substates that are cation selective. The channel can reversibly switch between open and half-open states, with the latter predominant at increasing membrane voltages of either polarity. We report the presence of a new functional state of VDAC, a cation-selective state with conductance approximately equal to that of the canonical open state. This newly described state of VDAC can be reached from either the half-open cation-selective state or from the open anion-selective state. The latter transition implies that a mechanism exists for selectivity gating in VDAC that is separate from partial closure, which may be relevant to the physiological regulation of this channel and mitochondrial outer membrane permeability.

Origins of the extraction controversey in American orthodontics (1880-1910).

Extraction of permanent teeth in the course of orthodontic treatment remains controversial. Today, opinions vary widely as to how frequently such extractions are necessary. Many dentists appreciate, however, that in the 1920s and 1930s, orthodontists virtually never prescribed extraction. The movement to abolish extraction therapy in orthodontics really began in the late Nineteenth Century. Led by Edward H. Angle, this "New School of Orthodontics," despite an explosion of activity during the first decade of the Twentieth Century, did not rapidly succeed in its mission. During the period considered in this study, dentists continued to extract teeth to treat orthodontic problems and even many experts in orthodontics continued to vociferously defend this practice. Claims of the extremists, whether in favor of or against extraction, did not benefit from true scientific evidence. Dentists based their theories on experience or mere conjecture. The situation today is not very different. Before taking an unqualified stand on the issue of extraction, one should realize that, historically, such stands have proven unconvincing. The fashion of a period may favor one side over the other only for the situation to reverse in the next period.