calcitonin4 seems to do an excellent job preparatory to dental blade implantation. Later on, the piezoelectric effect of chewing will further consolidate the implant.

Another element to consider is the immunological situation of implant candidates. A highly desirable procedure is a sort of immunological check-up consisting of an appraisal of adenosine-deaminase activity, an assay of immunoglobulins of the IgG, IgM, and above all IgA group, exploration of lymphocyte responses to concanavallin and phytohemagglutinin, some skin tests (BCG, DNCB, PPD), and the CEA test—the latter to signal the presence of a clinically occult tumor. In short, nothing must be left to chance.

Obviously, an aspect of prime importance is the durability of a dental blade once implanted in the jaw. Dr Per Ingvar Branemark, of the Department of Anatomy of Goteborg University in Sweden, has reported titanium blades still firmly rooted in the jaw of dogs ten years after surgical implantation; and he has been using titanium fixtures in human patients, to fix bone spints and grafts taken from the patient's leg bones for repairing their jaws after destructive trauma of tumoral removal ".

And now, Linkow! When I first met Dr Leonard Linkow in Rome I knew little about dental blades—only what I heard from my friend, Giorgio Gnalducci, who was one of Linkow's associates. He called me on the phone and said: "As President of the Carlo Erba Foundation, which played host to so many giants of science, wouldn't you welcome Linkow?".

My first impression about dental blades, as they were described to me, was that this invention was something of an imposition upon human nature. And I speculated that perhaps the meaning of Linkow's blades was also of a spiritual order. Modern man, with his feeble jaws and failing teeth, needs a titanium core in order to speak up—he can no longer mumble his acquiescence through nearly closed lips, so that his mouth hardly moves in speech. Modern man must speak aggressively, all his teeth showing—and glittering. Hence the importance of having good teeth to show, not only for esthetic but also for social reasons. And good teeth mean something fixed—not something re-movable, precarious, or obviously false. Linkow's blades thus solve a problem nothing short of existential. Borne of a lightning idea, some-what like Athena out of Jupiter's brain, they forever eliminate all manner of dentures, movable plates and such. Rather than a traditional, servile reconstruction, Linkow's idea is more akin to heart transplantation or the artificial kidney—things formerly unbelievable and yet very real today.

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