Cookey - This is a complete failure on the doctors part. This is what malpractice laws were intendend to address. Were I the patient in that case, I would be in court with the individual who failed to refer me to someone for evealutaion... (had he not aready killed me and then my heirs would be asked to continue in my behalf) and the doctor would lose. In the cases I have testified at, the very situation that you describe HAS occured, and those dentists are not just out money (via their insurance companies settlements, since they know these are not winnable), the insurance companies have twice - in cases that I have been invovled in - cancelled the docs insurance. In the US you cannot practice without it. They are essentially out of the dental business. In the UK things are different because of the nature of socialized medicine, and they have some protections from prosecution as a result.

Riley - dentists are trained in school about oral cancer and how to screen for it. That they do not, is not an issue of training, it is an issue of choice. Faliure to do a through screening is a failure to meet accepted standards of care. That the public has been ignorant of this, and that the dental community has let us down for decades, does not make the facts any different. This will change, even if dentists have to be litigated into making the change.