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February 3, 2006
Editor’s Desk
by Aaron Selbig, insurgent49

      It’s been an unfair week here at Insurgent Headquarters.

     What do you do when you have a toothache?

     If you’re like me, you pop a bunch of Ibuprofen and hope it goes away. And then, when it doesn’t ... you go to the dentist. If you have health insurance, then your worries are confined to the pain and discomfort of sitting in the dentist’s chair. If you don’t, then at least you still have options. As long as you live in an urban area like Anchorage or Fairbanks, there are neighborhood clinics that will take care of your dental needs at low cost.

     Now what if you have a toothache, and you live in, say ... Kivalina? There is no dentist in Kivalina, and the closest one is in Kotzebue, a 150-mile (and costly) flight away. And you can go ahead and book that flight for two, if it’s your child who has the toothache. As unpleasant as a flight to Kotzebue with a screaming child sounds, that’s about your only option.

     There must be a better way.

     The Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, with the approval of the State Attorney General’s office, has been providing another option to rural Alaskans in need of dental care. Expanding on the same program that provides hundreds of health aides statewide, they are sending dental aides out to Alaska’s remotest villages. These aides receive two years of training, and are proficient at filling cavities and performing extractions, among other things. Dental aides have proven to be invaluable in places like Kivalina, where there is no dentist.

     Not everyone, however, is happy with this arrangement.

     Last week, the American Dental Association filed a lawsuit in Alaska Superior Court against the Consortium, seeking to bar dental aides from working in rural Alaska. Fearing an infringement on their territory, they even sent their president, Dr. Robert Brandjord, to testify that utilizing dental aides in Alaskan villages is ... unfair?

     “We believe that Alaska Natives are being placed at risk, unfairly and unnecessarily”, he said with a straight face, “by nondentists doing irreversible dental surgical procedures”. Dr. Bob, by the way, is from Minnesota, where the rate of tooth decay among children is NOT twice the national average, as it is in rural Alaska.

     So as not to be construed as unfeeling racist monopolists, the ADA does have a solution to Alaska’s problem. They have offered to send dentists to rural villages for two weeks out of every year.

     Two weeks.

     So there you go, citizens of Kivalina, you’re all set. As long as you and your children are able to schedule your toothaches during the two weeks that an ADA-sanctioned dentist is in your village, you’ll be just fine.

     This lawsuit by the American Dental Association is the most compassion-less action we’ve seen here at Insurgent Headquarters in a long time. They are going out of their way to brush aside the concept of patient care in favor of ... what? ... their own stature as dentists?

     I’ve got some news for you, Dr. Bob. Nobody anywhere schedules toothaches and Alaskans don’t like outsiders coming here to screw up a perfectly good solution we’ve devised to a uniquely Alaskan problem. Sending dental aides to our villages is working out just fine, thank you, so you can take your flawed reasoning and your lawsuit back to Minnesota.

     Or ... if you’d really like to press your point, perhaps you and your family should fly out to Kivalina and spend a year learning what life is like in rural Alaska. Don’t worry, I’m sure the folks there would accept you into their community. You’d be just fine.

     As long as you don’t get a toothache.


















   






Regards,
Aaron Selbig
Editor, Insurgent Media AK
- Columnists -

Editor's Desk
by Aaron Selbig

Red Alert
by Soren Wuerth

Alaskan In Exile
by Neil Zawicki

The
Bramble Bush
by Kevin Morford





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Copyright 2005 Insurgent Media. All rights reserved.
in-sur-gent (in sur'jent), n. 1. a member of a group which  revolts against the policies of its leadership.