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Comment by Jeff_Brown | Hacker News Reader

The article linked says it causes new teeth to grow in rats and ferrets, and that pugs and dogs are next. It doesn't however talk about targeting that growth to a particular place.

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Just pull all teeth and let them regrow at the same time, of course. Next!

I know you're joking but theres actually people who would pray for a treatment exactly like this. The elderly in particular. Over time all your teeth go.

When I'm 60 I wouldnt mind them just ripping them all out if I could regrow them in 3 months.

Wouldn't they fall out like baby teeth do if new teeth grow under to push them out?

Great question, that might be even better.

Teeth aren't just pushed out. The roots are dissolved as the adult tooth erupts under the baby tooth. This treatment has a very long way to go.

I would pay for this and I am 33 and have 5 root cannals fixed. Maybe 3 tooth without fillings. It runs in our family... I also didn't have the best dentists growing up in eastern block. Almost no rentgen on basic fillings or microscope on root cannals, only amalgam filling except front tooth. Now I am in process of redoing badly done fillings with cavities under fillings. Al so I have two teeth taken out because my dentist didnt properly explained to me they could be fixed... If I lived in the middle ages, I would look like a 60 year old with no teeth.

> The elderly in particular. Over time all your teeth go.

This was the view of dentists before WWII. Both of my grandmothers had all their teeth pulled before they were thirty when there was very little wrong with them. "You'll lose them anyway, why not get a nice set of dentures?" They both regretted taking their dentists' advice. My octogenarian mother grew up in a more enlightened age and she still has her teeth. Tooth loss is not inevitable.

Really don't want to go through the process of having four impacted wisdom teeth removed again.

Don't rodent teeth grow continuously anyway? That's why they're always gnawing on stuff.

Yea, I remember seeing a picture on reddit years ago where a squirrel, feasting on soft human trash, his teeth didn't wear down and grew outwards in concentric circles until he presumably starved from now not being able to chew even the softest of foods. I don't want to look up the photo, it's sad, but I think it was legit.

At first I read your comment as saying "feasting on soft human flesh" and had some very serious questions about the benefits of helping that squirrel fix its teeth again...

Your teeth are growing a bit, too. (Otherwise they would be grinded down, too)

But this is about regrowing a lost tooth.

I'd just hope that the new teeth at least grow in the mouth

On my hands or on my johnson wouldn't be good.

People have been worrying about such things for centuries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vagina_dentata

Yup. Probably in a horror movie or two too. Unverified story here from a supposed complication of surgery: https://www.menshealth.com/sex-women/a19543991/vagina-teeth-...

Also, sharpened anti-rape devices.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-rape_device#Physical_dete...

Thanks for giving me nightmares tonight.

For your dreaming (dis)pleasure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=402xHwQGVsE

(Conehead goes to the dentist)

as long as they are only growing in your mouth, thats still a solution.

Now, having teeth grow om your body randomly, thats a horror movie

It's ... it's ... possible to get cancer in the teeth. If it somehow breaks off and gets into other parts of the body. :|

Also don't google teratoma, or "giant neglected ameloblastoma" :(

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