Weston A. Price

Weston A Price

Weston A. Price (Born: Weston Andrew Valleau Price) (Newburgh, Ontario September 6, 1870–Santa Monica, CA; January 23, 1948) was a prominent dentist known primarily for his theories on the relationship between nutrition, dental health, and physical health. He founded the Research Institute of the National Dental Association, which later became the Research Section of the American Dental Association, and served as its chair from 1914-1928.

Price published a book detailing his global travels studying the diets and nutrition of various cultures, coming to the conclusion that so-called Western diet was the cause of many diseases and held that dental health - and consequently physical health - were heavily influenced by nutritional factors. This work received mixed reviews, and continues to be cited for controversial dentistry and nutritional theories. Price's dental research also fit into a broad consensus in the dental and medical community of the late 19th and early 20th centuries on the relationship between endodontic therapy and pulpless teeth and broader systemic disease. These ideas formed the basis of focal infection theory during this period and led to the mass extraction of teeth rather than the use of root canal therapy. This application of focal infection theory fell out of favor starting in the 1930s, and it is not currently considered viable in the dental or medical communities.

Price's legacy has been taken on by the Weston A. Price Foundation, which bears his name, and the Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation. Both of these organizations, along with many in the growing natural health and holistic dentistry movement, continue to cite Price as the forefather of their alternative approach, which often includes opposition to root-canals. Skeptical commentators consider these approaches "dubious" and "pseudoscientific", and the research behind them "unsuccessful".

Early years

Born in Newburgh, Ontario, Canada on September 6, 1870 Price graduated from the dental college of the University of Michigan in 1893 and began to practice in Grand Forks, North Dakota but later moved to Cleveland, Ohio that same year.

Research

Technology development

Price conducted various research efforts to develop technological solutions to dental diseases. He invented and improved the pyrometer dental furnace for the manufacture of porcelain inlays that included the fusion of metal and porcelain. Price also researched improvements in producing dental skiagraphs in the early 1900s and developed special instruments for studying the effect of x-rays on cancer. Much of this work was presented at various professional societies in which he had membership. His work with radiographs include pioneering a new radiological technique for studying teeth as well as using radiographs to analyze endodontically treated teeth though his 1904 paralleling and bisecting angle techniques would not be become popular until the work of Dr. Gordon Fitzgerald of the University of California in the late 1940s.

Nutrition

Beginning in 1894 Price started to consider diet as the primary cause factor of tooth decay and in 1925 was attracted to calcium metabolism when he became an active student of nutrition. In the early 1930s, Price's research suggested "vitamin B" and mineral salts were important dietary components to prevent caries.

In 1939 Price published Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, a book that details a series of ethnographic nutritional studies performed by him across diverse cultures, including the Lötschental in Switzerland, Native Americans, Polynesians, Pygmies, and Aborigines, among many others. The photographic material and notes collection in this research "included over 15000 original photographs, 4000 lantern slides (about half of which are hand colored) and a library of strip film lectures."

In the book, Price claimed that various diseases endemic to Western cultures of the 1920s and 1930s - from dental caries to tuberculosis - were rarely present in non-Western cultures. He argued that as non-Western groups abandoned indigenous diets and adopted Western patterns of living they also showed increases in typically Western diseases, and concluded that Western methods of commercially preparing and storing foods stripped away vitamins and minerals necessary to prevent these diseases. His claims extended from physical degradation to moral degradation as well.

The 1939 foreword to the book, written by physical anthropologist Earnest A. Hooton, lauded Price's work for confirming previous research that dental caries were less prevalent in "savages" and attempting to establish the etiology for this difference. In 1940, a review in the Canadian Medical Association Journal called the book "a masterpiece of research", comparing Price's impact on nutrition to that of Ivan Pavlov in digestion. In 1950, a review in the journal The Laryngoscope went as far as to say that "Dr. Price might well be called "The Charles Darwin of Nutrition" while describing Price's documentation of his global travel and research in a book. However, other reviews at the time were less sympathetic with a review in the Scientific Monthly noting some of his conclusion went "much farther than the observations warrant," criticizing Price's controversial conclusions about morality as "not justified by the evidence presented" and downplaying the significance of his dietary findings. Likewise, a review in the Journal of the American Medical Association also disagreed with the significance of this nutritional research, noting Price was "observant but not wholly unbiased" and that his approach was "evangelistic rather than scientific."

A 1981 editorial by William T. Jarvis published in Nutrition Today, was more critical, identifying Price's work as a classic example of the "myth of the healthy savage," which holds that individuals who live in more technologically primitive conditions lead healthier lives than those who live in more modern societies. The review noted that Price's work was limited by a lack of quantitative analysis of the nutrition of the diets studied and the overlooking of alternative explanations for his observations including malnutrition leading to the lack of caries in primitive societies and overindulgence of the Western diet, rather than the diet itself, as cause for poorer health. The review makes the assertion that Price had a preconceived positive notion about the health of "primitive" people, which led to data of questionable value and conclusions that ignored important problems known to afflict their societies, such as periodontal disease.

Endodontics and focal infection

Price performed extensive research on pulpless and endodontically treated teeth in support of the theory of focal infection, which at that time held that systemic conditions including complexion, intestinal disorders, anemia among others could be explained by infections in the mouth. This theory also held that infected teeth should therefore be treated by dental extraction, rather than undergo root canals, to limit the risk of more general illness. His research, based on case reports and animal studies performed on rabbits, claimed to show dramatic improvements after the extraction of teeth with non-vital pulps. Price's research fit into a wider body of testimonials in the dental literature of the 1920s, which contributed to the widespread acceptance of the practice of extracting, rather than endodontically treating, infected teeth. to the point that Dental Infections, Oral and Systemic was used as a reference in textbooks and diagnosis guides clear into the early to mid 1930s.

By the 1930s, the theory of focal infection began to be reexamined, and new research shed doubt on the results of previous studies. One researcher in 1940 noted "practically every investigation dealing with the pulpless teeth made prior to 1936 is invalid in the light of recent studies" and that the research of Price and others suffered from technical limitations and questionable interpretations of the garnered results.

Three years after Price died a special review issue of the Journal of the American Dental Association confirmed the shift of standard of care from extraction back to endodontical dentistry. In terms of more modern research, Price's studies lacked proper control groups, used excessive doses of bacteria, and had bacterial contamination during teeth extraction, leading to experimental biases.

Legacy

Price's development of paralleling and bisecting angle techniques and suggestion of using radiographs for the evaluation of root canal work are still regarded as part of the beginning of a new era of dentistry.

Originally known as the Weston A. Price Memorial Foundation, the Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation (PPNF) was established in 1952 as a non-profit organization that serves as the guardian for the archived material from the research of Weston A. Price and medical doctor Francis M. Pottenger, Jr.

In 1994 George E. Meinig published Root Canal Cover-up Exposed which resurrected the outdated studies of Rosenow and Price, raising the concern that patients hearing about these studies might view them as new and reliable. A book review in the Annals of Dentistry critical of Meinig's book noted Meinig based his ideas entirely on Price's 1923 Dental Infections, Oral and Systemic, and that Meinig's book suffers from a lack of professional editing, makes unsubstantiated claims, confuses basic terms (such as infection and inflammation), and expands into areas unrelated to the main topic to the point the reviewer ends the review with the comment "I wonder how the serious researcher Weston Price would have reacted to the way his work has been presented." The review also points out that Price's work has been well discussed and has not been covered-up, and notes that although Price's theories were later supplanted by subsequent research that found endodontic treatment is safe and effective, his focus on the biology of teeth and infection is still relevant in more modern dentistry as some clinicians have placed more emphasis on technology and poorly tested procedures for the treatment of infected teeth.

More recently the Weston A. Price Foundation was co-founded in 1999 by Sally Fallon and nutritionist Mary G. Enig to disseminate the research of Dr. Weston A. Price. This foundation has been criticized by health advocates, such as Stephen Barrett of the Quackwatch website, on grounds that the core assumptions of Price's original work are incorrect and contrary to contemporary medical understanding. The Foundation has written a rebuttal to Barrett's claims. A review has noted that his work on primitive diets is still widely sourced by dentists who emphasize nutrition despite the shortcomings of this work.

Selected works

In a statistical overview derived from writings by and about Weston Price, OCLC/WorldCat encompasses roughly 10+ works in 50+ publications in 4 languages and 1,000+ library holdings.

This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by adding missing items with reliable sources.

• Dental Infections, Oral and Systemic (1923)
• The Relation of Light to Life and Health: Some Biochemical and Clinical Aspects (1926)
• Nutrition and Physical Degeneration: A Comparison of Primitive and Modern Diets and Their Effects (1939)

Journals

• 1914. "Some contributions to dental and medical science," Dental Summary, 34:253
• 1915. "Are Endamebae Important Factors in The Etiology Of Pyorrhea Alveolaris? A Study of Their Habits" The Journal of the National Dental Association Vol. 2, No. 2, pg 143-165
• 1918 "A Report of Laboratory Investigation of the Physical Properties of Root Filling Materials and the Efficiency of Root Fillings for Blocking Infection from Sterile Root Structures" Research Department Joura N.D.A. pg 1260-1280.
• 1925. "Dental Infection and related Degenerative Diseases" J Am Med Assoc 1925;84(4):254-261.
• 1930. "Seasonal Variations in Butter-fat Vitamins and their Relation to Seasonal Morbidity, Including Dental Caries and Disturbed Calcifications"; Journal American Dental Association, Vol. 17, May, Bulletin 103)
• 1930. "Some Contributing Factors to the Degenerative Diseases, with Special Consideration of the Role of Dental Focal Infections and Seasonal Tides in Defensive Vitamins"; Oct., Nov., Dental Cosmos, Bulletin 107.
• 1931. "New Light on the Control of Dental Caries and the Degenerative Diseases." Journal American Dental Association 18, 1189
• 1931. "A New View of Health and Disease Based on the Rise and Fall in the Levels of Life with Cycles in Vitamin Tides"; American Journal of Public Health, June, Bulletin 111.
• 1932. "Control of Dental Caries and Some Associated Degenerative Processes Through Reinforcement of the Diet with Special Activators" Journal American Dental Association Aug., 19, 1339–1369
• 1932. "Evidence of a need for fluorine in optimum amounts for plant and animal growth, and bone and tooth development, with thresholds for injury", J. Dent. Res. 12 545;
• 1933. "Additional Light on the Etiology and Nutritional Control of Dental Caries with its Application to each District showing Immunity and Susceptibility." Journal American Dental Association 20, 1648
• 1936. "Eskimo and Indian field studies in Alaska and Canada" Journal American Dental Association, 23:417

See also

• Thomas L. Cleave
• Robert Corruccini
• Albert Howard
• Robert McCarrison
• Michael Pollan

References

Sources

• Weston Andrew Price, Forewords by Earnest Hooton, Granville Knight, and Abram Hoffer (2004). Nutrition and Physical Degeneration (6th edition ed.). Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation. ISBN 0916764087. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Price, Weston A. Dental Infections, Oral and Systemic & the Degenerative Diseases, Vol. 1 & 2 (1923).

External links

• Review of Weston A. Price's book "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration"
• The first 21 chapters of "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration", with illustrations and photographs