I think the idea of an assistant scaling teeth is proposterous! Especially when you consider there WILL no matter how you put it, be hygenists who lose their jobs to assistants. This also takes away from the level of care and the personal nature of seeing a hygenist. Knowing you are seeing someone who has been through a college course and is thouroughly trained is something patients believe and expect to get.

Let's not turn dentistry into a McDonalds where you don't even need a degree to do something, you just graduate from school, take a few training courses and you're a certified manager. With fast food, people expect that! But in a proffesion where a level of professionalism and integrety is believed to be had, where dentists are actually called Doctors, let's if anything raise the bar!