Abstract
Social medicalization transforms personal traits and experiences into work objects for health professionals, generating a progressive dependence on professional knowledge and practice. The present essay aims to discuss this topic in the field of dentistry and oral health, with emphasis on the present professional practice in Brazil, both in the private and in the Brazilian National Health System (SUS). We point out problems that are crucial to education and research, since this is a topic of great relevance and reach in professional practice and debate. Issues such as commercialization of practices, growing of dentistry specialties and of aesthetic dentistry, scarce research on care (and on the potential of technicians); "engines" of this process (biological reductionism, the power of media and marketing, manipulation of scientific legitimacy, abuse of prevention practices and overtreatment); and incipient exploration of supplemental treatment, are discussed. This exposition offers a brief general analytical approach, and some analysis and investigative development possibilities of the subject, both conceptual and empirical.
Medicalization; Oral Health; Dentistry; Public Health