Quackery and fraud: understanding the ethical issues and responding.

A small number of dentists abuse their patients and the public trust in the profession by practicing quackery or fraudulent or questionable dentistry. Such practitioners can be classified as incompetent, as treating their patients as a means to personal fulfillment, as operating beyond their legal qualifications, or as being quacks, charlatans, or frauds. Ethical practice requires all five of these characteristics: informed consent, high benefit to risk ratio, competence, professional integrity, and reasoned scientific basis for care. Quacks and frauds place their own interests and judgment above those of their patients and the profession. Ethical dentists have obligations to act to protect their patients and the profession in their relationships with patients and with colleagues, as a profession in dealing with the public, and as a research community.