Dentures May Soon Be a Thing of the Past

WASHINGTON -- As long as there are hockey players, there will be niche markets for false teeth. But the real news about the future of dentures is that there isn't much of one. Toothlessness has declined 60 percent in the United States since 1960. Baby boomers will be the first generation in human history typically to go to their graves with most of their teeth.

And now comes tooth regeneration: growing teeth in adults, on demand, to replace missing ones. Soon. This may be the last generation of third-graders to think it hilarious to say, "Your teeth are like stars -- they come out at night."

It turns out that wisdom teeth are prolific sources of the kind of adult stem cells needed to grow new teeth for you. From scratch. In your adult life, as you need them. In the near future. According to the National Institutes of Health.

For thousands of years, losing teeth has been a routine part of human aging. That's over. "We're there, right now," says Pamela Robey, chief of the Craniofacial and Skeletal Diseases Branch at the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, part of the NIH. "A lot of people will go and never lose a tooth. With good health care and proper habits, there's no reason to lose a tooth."

The introduction of cavity-preventing fluoride into drinking water and toothpaste is viewed as one of the 10 greatest public health accomplishments of the 20th century, right up there with vaccinations, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Leslie Seldin graduated from dental school in. "When I was growing up" -- in the '50s -- "reaching the teen years you'd develop enormous amounts of decay," he says. It wasn't until the '60s, when most baby boomers were growing up, that fluoridation really started having a major impact. By the '90s, "if new patients came in that were young people, under 30, you really were surprised if you saw significant" cavities.

Fundamentally intact teeth, plus the increased attention paid to gum disease that can loosen them, have brought about a transformation.