Interviewed by Tom Mangan

Dr. Cliff Davis, driven dentist and formerly dangerous person.

His Web site is here.

Share the gory details on something you'll never do again but are glad you did it once.

Right after I left my first wife, I was a pure, unencumbered, nihilist. Not an antisocial weekend punk, not a depressive cure fan, not a quivering Morrison poetry-reader, just a driven existential nihilist. Driven to the end, whatever that was.

For about five years, I drank and I read. And drank. And read. And I had a big chip on my shoulder, to show the world how much I could drink, and how much I had read. Both tastes improved dramatically; I started drinking Bud Light and reading Flipside zine, and progressed to drinking single-malts & Guinness, and reading Nietzsche & Chomsky.

A particular champagne hangover cost me several hundred dollars and almost killed me. I was convinced I had been poisoned. In a way, I guess I was right.

I would go to bars and shoot down anything anyone said, while overtly outdrinking them and propositioning their women. A few fights ensued but I was mostly indifferent to threats of violence. I could talk anyone out of a fight while still clearly deriding them.

I teamed up with a grad student in my lab; we were the entire world. We pacted to steal something every time we were together. My old apartment had a working, stainless-steel, freestanding water fountain that I stole from USC one night. Unhooked it and wheeled it right past a security guard, into my car. We laughed away, drunk and scot-free every night.

One night, after stealing beer from a 7-11 with some glue-sniffing gang members in Highland Park, I was stabbed in the eye. They stole my shoes! I staggered home and gunned up -- my .45 in a belt-slide and a pistol-grip Mossberg shotgun under my coat.

I was drunk, bleeding from my eye, and very prepared to kill the guys who attacked me. After several hours of wandering, I couldn't find the house where I was cut up, so I buried the shotgun in a vacant lot and called myself an ambulance.

Fortunately a friend was doing plastic surgery at County Hospital in East L.A., and he sewed me up nicely. No actual eye damage, but some complicated deep-tissue injury.

Work was never the same after that, since the surgeon worked in my lab under my tutelage. That job lasted about four more months, and I was gracefully allowed to leave voluntarily.

Meanwhile my partner in crime nearly killed himself in an accidental sulfuric acid cloud while synthesizing several grams of LSD. He had undertaken an epic poem during the work, which ultimately was never completed (the work or the poem).

He lives in Arizona with his mother, on permanent disability and with around 10 percent lung capacity.

I started wondering if nihilism was really all that interesting, considering the price of admission. Nietzsche and Blake had been my PT Barnum! Having wrestled the tigress, I was ready for the egress... That was ten years ago.

These days, I'm back in "the world," marginally participating but still a fringe observer of our force-fed culture. I carry from those days a deep, mocking contempt for the rampant stupidity in our world (or, possibly, that contempt drove me to the nihilistic behavior), and I have no apologies for the petty crimes I committed or the people whose lives I interrupted. If they came away with a little of what I learned, maybe they're thanking me in effigy.

I went back and dug up my shotgun the next day; I named it "The Reverend" and it's still with me, as are many fond memories of a life I no longer feel compelled to portray. The silver lining -- I have a deep understanding of humanity's dark side through personal experience, and I can still easily hold my own in any drinking or pontificating contest. And good luck intimidating me -- I've surely beaten rougher foes.

I promised a friend I'd ask you about fluoridation -- his concern is that it's a form of government-imposed, involuntary medication. Anything to that, from your perspective as a dentist who (I assume) is up on the research on fluoridation?

Short answer: Fluoride kicks ass. There are NO convincing arguments against public water fluoridation.

Dentistry is the only profession which strives to put itself out of business, and the cynical general populace often has difficulty accepting this notion. Thus the paranoia about fluoride.

The fluoride phenomenon was discovered by a clever dentist around the turn of the century. In his community, some patients' teeth were stained with brown spots. The spots were unsightly but otherwise harmless, and fluoride in the patients' well water was determined to be the cause. Mind you, this was fluoride at levels of 3-10 ppm or more -- much higher than what's commonly added to public water supplies (1ppm). These spots are now known as "fluorosis." Even at 10 PPM, fluoridated drinking water did no known harm to folks, other than the brown spots.

The same dentist, puzzling over this problem, had an epiphany -- the people with fluorosis had dramatically fewer cavities than their "spot-free" counterparts in the same community. Was the same agent responsible for the fluorosis AND the decay-resistance?

Many studies, including the landmark Grand Rapids experiment published in 1945, have proven and re-proven without doubt that 1ppm fluoride in drinking water protects teeth, and that 1ppm fluoride doesn't cause any detectable harm to anyone, except for an occasional very mild case of fluorosis (remember, the fluorosis initially described was caused by fluoride at levels much greater than 1ppm).

OK, there's the natural history of fluoridation; here's the chemistry. It revolves around a few key principles:

1. Dental enamel is made up mostly of a mineral called hydroxyapitite (HA).
2. The surfaces of your teeth are constantly being dissolved & re-mineralized (on a microscopic level).
3. Decay begins when normal mouth bacteria eat sugar (you feed it to them when you feed it to yourself). Their sugar consumption releases acids, which dissolve the surface of the teeth. Bacteria don't eat teeth per se, but they dissolve teeth as they eat sugar.

So what? I'll tell you so what. As the surface enamel dissolves & reforms, fluoride can be incorporated into the HA crystals. HYDROXY-apitite (HA) can become FLUOR-apitite (FA), if there's any free fluoride around. FA is much harder to dissolve that regular HA, thus the bacterial acids are less destructive to a "fluoridated" tooth. That's the chemical fact of importance here. So a constant source of fluoride, even at very low concentrations, will dramatically harden and strengthen dental enamel.

And for pregnant moms, and children whose teeth are developing, it's even better -- the FA will be incorporated throughout the developing tooth, not just on the surface.

The notion that fluoride is a communist plot, or government conspiracy, is just a result of timing. Widespread fluoridation of public water supplies began in the early to mid-50s, when everything, including rock 'n' roll, was a communist plot to weaken or destroy America's youth.

Imagine, during the McCarthy era, being told that the government was going to add a colorless, tasteless, inexpensive mineral to the public water supply, and that this mineral would drastically reduce tooth decay. All you had to do was drink water right out of your own tap!

Clearly, the communists in our own homeland had infiltrated the public health operation, and were about to begin poisoning our water supplies (one of the "classic" atrocities of covert warfare)!

These days, there are probably more people who believe that Elvis killed JFK, than believe fluoridation is evil. Most objections to it today are from a libertarian standpoint -- people just don't want the government doing ANYTHING to them (or for them).

It's a shame, since this a rare example of something the government can do which is cheap, simple and useful, with no "price to pay" and no "freedom" to surrender to big brother. Just drink fluoridated water and get less cavities! It's exactly that simple.

Disclaimer: "Fluoridated" teeth are more resistant to specific types of decay, but fluoridated water is NOT a substitute for brushing & flossing, and fluoride does NOT eliminate the need for regular dental checkups.

What would you say is the least understood fact of the dentist's life?

Many patients can't (or won't) accept the fact that virtually all dental problems are easily preventable.

Patients complain to me that dentists are sadistic thieves, despite being told for the last 20 years that brushing & flossing will prevent further decay. Many patients seem uninterested in saving their own teeth; that, apparently is MY responsibility.

"You've got a problem on #30, there, Mr. Patient. Just a small filling; we can take care of it today."

"Dammit. I knew I shouldn't have come in today." [As if the cavity wasn't there until I told him about it!]

Most insulting to me are patients who shop for dentists, as if oral health care is a consumer product. People call all the time "How much you charge for a crown?" like calling Pep Boys for an alternator.

If you needed surgery, would you shop for the cheapest surgeon in town? Of course not, but folks don't blink about pricing out their dental work. (Here's where I point out that the "S" in DDS stands for SURGERY-- we are micro-surgeons of the oral cavity). It is especially sad because, with dentists, you often get what you pay for (i.e. you DON'T get what you DON'T pay for).

Already in my young career, I've re-done a lot of other doctors' "bargain" dentistry, and it's no bargain to pay for something twice.

I hate to see people taking their health so lightly just to save a buck or two. It's false economy of the most dangerous kind.

Now you can see why I tire quickly of patients' chronic innuendo that I'm getting rich off of them. Sure, dental work is expensive (but it's also preventable, remember?), but a typical dental office operates at around 80 percent overhead. That means your $100 yearly checkup puts $20 in my pocket. The other $80 pays support staff salaries, malpractice insurance, equipment sterilization & maintenance, rent, waiting room amenities, etc. just to keep my front door open.

Dentists are jokingly referred to as the bank tellers of modern medicine -- we handle a lot of money but very little of it is actually ours to keep. I wish more patients understood that, but since chair-time is money (4 to 6 dollars a minute!), a lesson in dental economics could start to get pricey!

But the bottom line is still the same -- do what I say to prevent tooth decay, and put me out of business! It's so simple.

What part of dentistry is purely art (vs. science)?

There's some art in the design & finish of a good restoration, but it's not a pure art because it's so laden with technical details. Although I derive great satisfaction from a job well done, it doesn't always feel like "art" when you're mired in the details of technical excellence.

On a good day, however, I often step back from a finished restoration, and in a tone of mock awe proclaim it to be [bad fake Italian accent] "byoo-te-fall." Patients love that I can step back for a moment and utterly refuse to take myself seriously.

So, they come back. Therein lies the true art of dentistry- patient interaction. The mouth is a psychologically holy place of the body, and to be in the chair can be trying for even the toughest of people.

Part of my job is to allay fears, and to listen carefully to what each patient wants from me... not everybody wants 28 perfect teeth and not everybody cares about bleaching and straightening their teeth.

I have a basic responsibility to help my patients remove disease from their mouth, and to try to educate them about prevention without insulting them. Past that, my ability to instill trust and confidence will determine to what extent I will be allowed to restore any lost function.

The art of dentistry lies in building and maintaining a good patient-doctor relationship, and a dentist's most important instrument is his/her interpersonal skills. Strangely, considering my rampant contempt for so many facets of humanity, I get along very well with individuals from all walks of life. Patients find it easy to trust my judgment and my skills, possibly because they haven't seen my Web site.

Let's talk cars: Tell us about the one you had the most emotional and financial investment in, and what you learned from the experience.

When I was 15 I bought a 1960 Ranchero from a guy up the street. By then I was heavily into cars, but was wrenching on other guys' stuff, since I was a broke 15-year-old.

BUT, now I had a car that was mine, all mine. I liked the way the Ranchero looked, with its rounded body. It had that funky coolness like a 1950s fridge you might still see in any gearhead's garage.

So, I took it apart. Shoved in a small-block Ford. Lowered it and upgraded the rear end to an 8-inch Ford. Stripped the cab and installed a Caddy power seat. Oldsmobile tilt/telescope steering wheel. Made my own door panels. Built-in ice chest under the bed.

I saw a speedometer in an old Lincoln that kind of looked like a thermometer, so the Ranchero's dash was dismantled and that very difficult installation was done.

All new wiring, I mean every wire in the truck. No kit, just me and a million spools of color-coded wire. I worked on the truck for two years or so without ever driving it, just tearing apart something different every day.

Needless to say, this project was taking its toll on the patience and budget of a 17-year-old. At the time I was driving a Vega that I had built into a respectable performer, but all the performance on earth doesn't make a Vega any cooler.

So I got the Ranchero into driving shape and had it painted bright yellow. Dumped in the weeds, with big-n-little Moon discs, it was unmistakably cool.

Then the real impatience started. I had to finish! NOW! I got frustrated & depressed, because I had torn apart every system on the poor truck, and most things were hastily reassembled just enough for the drive to the paint shop.

I gave up, and sold it to a local pot-head, who promptly drove my creation into a tree. He was OK, but "my" Ranchero was destroyed. What did I learn? I learned how to plan a serious amount of work, and how to do it in manageable segments. I learned those things by not doing them, and reaping a harvest of misery instead of satisfaction.

I also learned that NOTHING is as simple or as affordable as it looks, when it comes to custom work. I learned that cool cars are hideously expensive, especially for a high-school kid of modest means. It sucked scrounging for junkyard parts instead of buying new, but that also delivered a lesson: fabrication should be your last resort.

The KISS rule comes to mind: Keep It Simple, Stupid. Almost any exotic part you can imagine has already been factory-produced at some point. Do your homework, and you may be able to put a clean used factory part in, instead of cobbling something together yourself.

I think factory brackets and thingies add an air of understatement to a project. Conversely, when I see a car covered in custom aluminum and stainless crap, I just think the owner has more money than sense or taste.

That first take-apart car was a series of lessons. I still play with cars, and a few years ago I started another huge project that didn't go to completion. I thought I was ready, but this project was given away (!) when I started dental school.

I won't start my next take-apart project until I own a garage for it. Soon... actually the car has been in "planning" for a couple years already (see the lesson I learned?). It's a 1964 Lincoln Continental. The cars are beautiful, and to my knowledge no one has ever reworked a Lincoln.

I've gone through powertrain options, color schemes, wheel fitting, interior plans, without ever having the car taken apart. When that time comes, I'll be ready. I'll have the time, money and patience to enjoy doing things right.

On a more practical note, I think the Ranchero also taught me that upholstery and automatic transmissions are voodoo work, and should always be sent to specialists. Kids, don't try this at home!

Cars are the culprits in pollution, traffic congestion, paving paradise and putting up parking lots, etc. Think we'll ever get ourselves out of the car jam we've gotten ourselves into?

Cars aren't the only culprits in pollution, or even the major culprits. Even in car-dense cities like Los Angeles, industrial pollution far outweighs the contribution by automobiles.

Cars are a constant target for restrictions and regulations because individuals are less able to fight off government tentacles than are the large corporate polluters.

In California, for example, corporate polluters buy permits to pollute "by the pound," e.g. a fiberglass shop pays X amount of "fee" to dispose of X amount of acetone & resin. If they don't actually dispose of that much gunk, they are free to sell their remaining "right to pollute" to another business.

So, what if I want to build a hotrod car in Los Angeles that burns twice as much gas as a box-stock vehicle? Can I just pay twice the registration fee, for producing twice the pollution?

Can I buy part of a Hyundai-owner's "right to pollute," since his car uses less gas than average? Of course not. Individuals are not granted the same liberties as are businesses.

In fact, in California there are scant few mods you can make to your engine, and still pass the state "smog inspection" every two years. Not because of higher emissions, necessarily, but simply because you changed something.

To further drive home the point of separate criteria for individuals & businesses, many "commercial vehicles" are exempt from the inspections.

OK, traffic congestion. It's simply a matter of city planning & growth control. Los Angeles has lots of traffic, but the number of miles traveled every day is staggering. NYC has traffic, too, but with nobody really going anywhere. Los Angeles planned for traffic, NYC didn't.

Most cities these days tangibly encourage carpooling, as do many large employers. Parking problems are clearly due to irresponsible local government and poor growth control; this is evident in the Los Angeles community of Westwood, where retail businesses turned over at an embarrassing rate for 20 years, until the city finally opened its wallet and built a municipal parking structure. This single (albeit costly) device has markedly stabilized Westwood's boutique/restaurant economy in the past couple years.

The whole situation is also a little like laissez-faire economics -- when a place becomes too dismal to drive and park , people stop bringing in cars. But there's always gonna be solo drivers, which I only find disturbing with the cancerous, nonsensical spread of SUV ownership.

The actual hotrod/sportscar enthusiast represents only a teeny portion of solo-driver pollution, yet we are the most aggressively "controlled." I mean, the kid in the ported, cammed, nitrous-injected Honda still only burns half the gas of a soccer-mom, driving her kid around in a big, empty, 6,000-pound Expedition.

The short answer is this: sensible use of cars as useful transportation (carpooling, running multiple errands per outing, etc.), coupled with responsible local government (to provide adequate driving & parking facilities AND to control growth), prevents car overpopulation and resource squandering.

AND those principles should allow some leeway for the few of us for whom cars are a hobby and a passion. To that end, I hope we NEVER get out of the car jam!

What do you think of people who do "car art," who seem more preoccupied with the external skin than the internal mechanics?

I think art cars in general are pretty cool. You don't have to be going fast to have a cool car, it just needs to show some personal attention from you, so the car can make some sort of statement or impression.

Art cars are often fairly sophisticated in their construction. I saw a car once whose sculpted-foam body looked like a big silver shark, and its tail swept back and forth as it drove (swam?). That was sweet.

The "frozen bug" van has an empty VW beetle stuck on top, and it dispenses (you guessed it) big plastic bugs frozen in ice blocks.

There was an old valiant chassis at Burning Man last year, to which had been welded steel spars and mesh catwalks and rebar seats, in a very Mad Max-meets Dr. Seuss approach, with a four-man chariot-basket at the back, 10 feet off the ground, from which the chassis was driven by reins. Tell me that's not cool.

I don't like stickers or loud graphics on cars, for a couple reasons. I don't like the way we feel compelled to advertise for manufacturers, and this includes huge designer names on my clothes. I don't need the approval of bystanders who recognize the logo.

I also don't want to scream to anyone, especially police and car thieves, that I'm rolling lots of money and power down the road, so sticker-mobiles are for little kids, as far as I'm concerned. If I need to show off, I'll do it with some tire smoke, or a nice e-brake maneuver.

I also believe that "buying cool parts" and "building a cool car" are two very different things. These days you can mail-order a complete, running, registered hot rod, built to your specs. This only takes money; there is no creativity or ingenuity involved, and often, taste isn't even part of the equation.

They're the high-budget version of sticker-mobiles, their owners screaming for the validation they've purchased.

"Bought" cars belong in a wax museum; "built" cars belong on the pavement. Likewise, their owners.

The cars I've most enjoyed are the ones which have been fun to drive. This includes a carbed and headered RX-7 that was always sideways, a 120-mph Vega, a Dellorto-powered Suzuki Samurai with 6 inches of coil-over suspension travel, and even a stock 1963 MG Midget that couldn't go 80 m.p.h. falling out of a plane. Drive it as hard as you feel like, and when something breaks (it will), put in a stronger part and get driving again!

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