In this lecture, Dr. William M. Hang critiques conventional extraction‑based orthodontics, arguing that the pursuit of perfectly aligned teeth often causes significant facial collateral damage. He illustrates his point with two contrasting case studies: a boy from Orange County who, after having four bicuspids extracted to correct a slight open bite, experienced a posterior open bite, required multiple rounds of braces, and ultimately needed double‑jaw surgery to restore facial aesthetics; and a girl treated with the Biobloc/Orthotropics approach, whose facial profile improved naturally and who graduated with a pleasing appearance. Hang emphasizes that many orthodontic interventions lack clear, measurable goals and ignore the importance of oral posture, citing the work of Mark Møller and the referral from Dr. Josh Bernstein. He concludes that clinicians can choose between damaging conventional methods and facial‑forward, posture‑based treatments.
Chapters
What you see happen with, with getting straight teeth is there's a lot of collateral damage, like bombing in Vietnam with a B-52. You may get what you want, but you may get a lot of what you don't want. Today we have precision-guided bombs which focus in on something like this. And we go, bingo. And we get what we want, and that's it. But the trouble with orthodontics is we haven't figured out what we're— where are we going? Why are we going there? What will we— what will we see to tell us that we are there, wherever there is? Is the goal a worthwhile goal? And is there collateral damage that we've ignored while trying to achieve the goal? So here's a boy from Orange County you're gonna see right here. Now watch his face. He has a slight open bite, not a millimeter of crowding in either arch, but because of his open bite, the orthodontist takes out 4 bicuspids. Now watch. That's what happens between— right now as his face is changing. He's done with the orthodontic treatment, and here he is by the time he's a student at UC Berkeley. That's what he looked like after he comes to see me. He's already had braces on his teeth twice because he'd had the teeth taken out, everything retracted back, and he had a 3 millimeter posterior open bite on both sides. So, what happened? The same orthodontist puts him back in braces, uses vertical elastics to pull the teeth together, and he gets the teeth together. And what happens? He gets a 3 millimeter posterior open bite again. And he gets in the office of somebody in Berkeley, Josh Bernstein. How many of you know Josh? Josh sends him to see me, and I say, wow, this is great. You need surgery. I can't reverse this. So, he has double jaw surgery. Had he never had anything done, he'd have had a nice attractive face, and life would have gone on. If someone had dealt with the oral posture issue, like Mark Moller is trying to get people to do, The kid would have never needed orthodontics, for God's sakes. And that's what happened to his face, and so now he's had double jaw surgery to fix that, when he was a senior at UC Berkeley. I've kept up with him, and he's living in San Antonio, Texas now. Really nice kid. Contrast that with this girl right here, who's my patient from this— one of my early patients, and you're gonna see her face come forward like that. And by the time she's 18 years of age, here in a moment, she looks pretty good. She goes off to Boston University and she looks pretty darn nice. That's what BioBlack Orthotropics can do. So the point is, you can choose the face. You like the boy, you like the girl, your choice. Thank you.
