A dentist posting on the Dentaltown Message Board credits TEAM 1500 with being “instrumental in making this an URGENT issue, which helped to jump start general dentists and the AGD to take notice and prompt action…even if one does not agree with their tactics.”

The dentist also asks what percentage of donations to TEAM 1500 go to pay for the “time and talents” of its Director, Dean Rotbart.

Here is how Rotbart responded:

In its ADA News article of May 4th, the ADA wrote:

"At its April 26-27 meeting, CDEL voted to approve several modifications to the proposed revisions based on some 1,500 comments received during the open-comment period -- some opposed and many supportive of the revisions to the guidelines."

First, note that TEAM 1500 has sent the ADA roughly 1,200 comments opposed to the revisions and have the documents to prove it.  That alone should help dentists understand how disingenuous the ADA is being TO ITS OWN MEMBERSHIP when it states that "some opposed" the revisions, while "many" were supportive. 

By my count those opposed had to outnumber those supporting by at least four-to-one.  Probably more!

Let us say, for the sake of argument, that the ADA is correct and our news release was "a total distortion of the facts."  (In case you wonder, I don't think it was that close to perfection.) Does that mean that the ADA should go forth and lie at will to its members about this issue and about TEAM 1500?  I don't follow the logic.

In its ADA News article, for example, the ADA states that "many major dental organizations supported the proposed documents and offered helpful additional changes."  Note, however, that the ADA names not one major dental organization that supported the proposed documents as originally proposed.  Not one.

Yes, TEAM 1500 is a bull in a china shop.  We were designed to be that way, because only by breaking lots of ceremonial glass can we get the entrenched powers of the ADA to do what is right for all dentists and all their patients, not just the few ADA insiders who set this absurd agenda.

As for my compensation, if I succeed in protecting the rights of ALL general dentists to offer oral conscious sedation without unnecessary interference, I will have earned every penny that the hundreds of individual donors to our cause have entrusted with TEAM 1500.  I couldn’t do what I do without their unwavering support.