Should You Worry About Getting AIDS From Your Dentist?

Probably not, but the government is moving to protect patients and restore their trust in the medical community. Even so, it pays to be prudent.

Mary Lynne Desmond thought she had found the perfect dentist. Philip Feldman, a graduate of the School of Dental Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, had an engaging manner and seemed meticulous. Soon Desmond, a fourth-grade teacher who lives in Coram, N.Y., and her two children, husband, sister and brother-in-law all became Feldman's patients. "But in the last five or six years, he changed," Desmond recalls. "He did three shoddy root canals on me and even left a drill bit in one tooth." Now she has a lot more than a few botched operations to worry about. Last week state health...

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