I'm a mechanic that got wind of the proposal for dental assistants to beable to be trained on the job to place fillings and what not.  I'm against this.  Just as you wouldn't want someone who was taught on the job to be working on your car, over an ASE trained and licensed mechanic, I want to know that the person fixing my teeth has has as much training as possible.  It's hard to find a dentist that you can trust anyway, but then to wonder if my filling is going to come out or if my crown is going to fail because I wasn't sure if the person doing the work was properly trained, no thank you.  We both work in fields, me automotive mechanics and you dentistry, where the trust of the public has been decreased.  I think as the board of dentistry, you'd want to do everything you could to build confidence of the people, and you do that by making sure those you license are properly educated and trained using uniform standards, which you can only regulate through some sort of accredited teaching program.

Yours truly,

Frank Fisher