 Congratulations to the American College of Dentists on its 100th anniversary. For me to speak to the college on this celebratory occasion is an honorable lifetime. Although I'm not a dentist, I've had the privilege of working with dental educators and dentists for most of my career. Several years ago when the college made me an honorary fellow, I felt as if I'd been adopted into the family. And now I feel like I've been asked to say the prayer at my family's Thanksgiving dinner. And everyone's come to my home. So welcome. Our executive director, Dr. Gonzales has called the ACD a guiding light. President Rawls, President-Elect Rouse and others have described the college as the conscience of dentistry. Dentistry stands or falls on the cornerstones of professionalism and ethics. And this college has ensured these cornerstones are firm and strong. If the cornerstones are professionalism and ethics, the keystone is leadership. And leadership is embodied in each college fellow. For 100 years, the American College of Dentists has led and modeled a covenant between the dental profession and the patients and communities it serves. This celebration is a promise to the next century. Today I'll use the concept of character described to dental profession, those who comprise it and this college. As you're aware, this talk was scheduled as a lecture for delivery on site. I personally find listening online much more difficult than listening in person. And I bet you do too. So to help you follow along, I've created seven subtopics and we'll reflect these subtopics in the slides as we go along. I'll begin with a memory from my youth and then I'll talk about the history of character in ethics, leading to some conversation about a crisis of character facing the dental profession. I'll speak of the virtue of humility and its importance to an ongoing dialogue about the profession. And I'll aim to make the case that some forms of self-interest are actually legitimate and we should seek them. We'll turn to the virtue of wisdom and how this college can pass wisdom forward to future generations. And I will conclude with some observations about the century to come. My comments require about 45 minutes and there's no intermission. Sorry about that. So let me begin with the remembrance. I grew up in the Piedmont region of rural Virginia. We drank water from a well that my grandfather dug with a shovel and a pick during the Great Depression. I never knew my grandfather. He died in 1943. I'm told he dug wells all over the country or all over the county to make ends meet during these lean years. I'm not gonna tell you that I lured a bucket into the well each time I got something to drink. By the time I came along, that wasn't necessary. But the point of the well is that we didn't have fluoridated water. We did have an abundance of Pepsi Cola in South Central Virginia. And during my youth, Pepsi slogan was you've got a lot to live. Pepsi's got a lot to give. Well, Pepsi gave me a number of various teeth. So when I grew up, I grew up well acquainted with my family dentist. And for obvious reasons, I didn't like going to the dentist. And that's the prize I bore from the jar at the end of the visit notwithstanding. Now I've only seen my childhood dentist two or three times in the past three decades. But what I remember most about him is not my experiences in the cheer. What I remember is a man who played ping pong with me. And he was an exceptional player and he tried to teach me to be one. He gave his Wednesday nights to teach a group of adolescent boys. And I think weekly we set new benchmarks for the shortest attention span. While he taught us, we schooled him in the virtue of patience. I remember him as a deacon and an usher leader in the church. He was my softball coach during my teenage years. And while he saw potential in all of us, I gave him no reason to suspect ever, like no reason that I would ever stand before the American College of Dentist. And I can only hope he seated when he hears about this lecture. My dentist treated my father, I gave him dental care for free, not because my dad couldn't afford it, but just because he was a close friend. He went on numerous mission trips to care for those who had no access to a dentist. So what I remember about my dentist from my childhood in my teenage years is that he was first and foremost an honorable man. Dentistry happened to be his profession. The way he practiced dentistry was the way he led and contributed to the community. He was, and I still believe is, a virtuous man. As a stoic philosopher, Zeno says of the virtues, his actions flowed from his character. So let's talk about the history of character. This would be a brief review of where the concept of character ethics comes from. My remarks are gonna be rooted in character-based or virtue ethics. Virtue ethics has a long history and has a history longer than any other tradition in moral philosophy. It dates back to the ancient Greeks and in the West owing more to Aristotle than anyone else. Virtue ethics also emerged separately in Confucianism, Buddhism, and other philosophies and cultures. And while it's true that these traits that we admire and respect in others, they vary from time to time in history and across cultures. What I find striking is the remarkable similarity. In brief, virtues are character traits, their habits, such as prudence or wisdom, justice, courage, hope, charity. These traits contribute to one's wellbeing and the wellbeing of others. These habits help us live good lives, treat others well and contribute to human flourishing in the communities and in the societies in which we live. One of the unique features of virtue ethics is this concern with the whole life, not simply decision making when something moral is at stake. Virtue ethics focuses not on principles and rules or processes for making or solving moral problems, but on the choices that become habits, leading to or in the case of vices away from a good life. One might say that the virtues are the character traits necessary for living a fulfilling life and a community with fellow human beings. Over the centuries, medical morality has fallen into primarily three central themes, character, duties and obligations. The character of the physician has been a consideration since the fourth century, since Hippocrates. Hippocrates is often considered the father of medicine. The primary texts read by educated physicians during the Renaissance were Aristotle's Nicomachian ethics and the politics and Cicero's on duty. You can look around, you can actually see them on my shelf right above me. These texts were used to inform the moral character of the physician. By the 14th century, medicine had a place in the universities across Europe and medical texts had proliferated. Gills or societies existed and the seeds of a profession were sprouting. The first official honor code appeared in 1803 in Thomas Percival's, it's a long title, medical ethics or a code of institutes and precepts adapted to the professional conduct of physicians and surgeons. Percival, a British physician and ethicist introduced for the first time in the literature the term medical ethics. Character remained a key focus in the dedication of this book to his son who was also a physician. Percival writes, the study of professional ethics will soften your manners, expand your affections and form you to that propriety and dignity of conduct which is essential to the character of a gentleman. The gentleman physician exhibited certain fundamental virtues tenderness, compassion, steadfastness and respect. So in focusing on virtue ethics, I'm not proposing a replacement for principles or rules to guide ethical decision-making and dental practice or in life in general. Virtue ethics does not tell us how to solve more dilemmas. Rather, character-based ethics brains our attention to the type of person who is most apt to show an interest in and a concern for a commitment to the application of ethical principles and rules to decision-making. Someone who's been very influential on me over the years is the late 20th century physician, educator and ethicist, Edmund Pellegrino. Influential in this way in understanding the application of virtue ethics to medical and dental ethics. He says, analysis cannot substitute for character and virtue. Moral acts are the acts of human agents. Their quality is determined by the character of the person doing the analysis. Character shapes the way we define a moral problem. Selects what we think is a moral issue and describes what principles, values, technical details are a determinant. So if we're gonna shape the character of the profession, we must first start with those who comprise it. That's a basic premise, something I'll come back to. But I've used the term character in the title of this talk to refer also to the dental profession. A profession such as dentistry is a unique kind of moral agent. It's comprised of a moral community of individuals who are moral agents. These individuals have specialized knowledge and they have agreed to use this knowledge for the good of others. The oaths, pledges made by those who comprise the profession of dentistry are in a sense collectively made and they reflect a bond of trust between the professional and the patient and society. Having read an advanced copy of the college's new ethics report, the new professionalism, which I highly recommend to you, I'm reminded that the character of the dental profession is threatened. We might say that the profession is experiencing a crisis of character or that some dentists are acting out of character. The ethics report describes many reasons leading to this crisis of character. For example, organized dentistry doesn't have the same influence it once had. Solo practices and the isolation of the profession for the rest of healthcare inhibit community, collegiality and dialogue. If you look across the profession the values of professionalism compete with those of the free market. I have more to say about that in a few minutes. The character of the profession is fragmented among those who comprise it like brickwork that's eroded and broken into pieces. The character of the profession is morally pluralistic with each piece and each group substantially setting their own ethical standards. So I'm gonna tell you a story. So when I first moved back to Atlanta from Washington DC, this is in 2004, I needed to find a new dentist. I received a recommendation of a dentist, someone who had graduated first in his class. He'd been in practice a few years. So I made my appointment and I went for my cleaning. He was complimentary about how well I had brushed, how well I had flossed and how well I had taken care of myself. But at the end of the cleaning, he informed me, rather nonchalantly, that I needed, now forgive me, I forget the exact number. It was either seven or nine crowns. So perhaps he still had a lot to give many years later. So he gave me that recommendation and I'm not a dentist, but I probably know several thousand dentists. Second opinions were easy to get. So I returned to Washington DC about a week later for business and I made an appointment with my former dentist. They've been eight months since I last visited the dentist's office and I went to see him and I said, so what has happened in eight months? I need seven crowns, nine crowns. And he quietly examined me and then he looked at me in the eyes and he said, if I were you, I wouldn't do anything. So your dentist in Atlanta suggested an aggressive treatment plan, more aggressive than I would recommend. And by the way, I think this is important, my Washington DC dentist happened to be a member of this college. So that was 16 years ago and I didn't go back to this Atlanta dentist even though I didn't doubt his clinical competence, nor that he probably made an A in his ethics course. As I prepared for this talk, I became convinced that one dilemma, one dilemma reigns supreme in dentistry's crisis of character. And that's the choice between economic self-interests and the professional commitment to the patient's interest first. You might say this is a conflict between self-interest and altruism. Altruism, the unselfish concern for others. Economics is the invisible hand that breaks the profession into pieces. Prior to the Renaissance, payment to physicians was considered on our area. So just like teachers or scribes or others in the learned professions, compensation was considered a gift. During the Renaissance, the relationship between physicians and patients started to become more transactional, that is based on a set of fees and in terms of engagement. But as late as 1918, Dr. Richard Cabot, who was a physician and a Harvard professor of clinical medicine, also a moral philosopher, advised his students this. He said, among the rewards which a doctor must not expect, must not expect is wealth. He says, I've known few physicians fail to get a living in medicine, but the number who make a comfortable income is equally few. Now that assessment has changed for physicians within the last 50 or more years, as it has for dentists, maybe it changed much longer than that. Now that the ethical bastions of the health professions are assaulted by the values of the free market should not come as a surprise to us. After all, there's a lot of money to be made. Four of the 10 fortune most profitable companies in 2020 are in healthcare. 18 of 25 US news and world report best jobs are in healthcare and dentists is at number two. It's often at number one. Orthodontist is at number four and oral and maximal facial surgeon is at number nine. Of the 10 best paying jobs, all 10 are in healthcare, the top 10 and four of the 10 are in oral health, general dentistry ranking number 10. There are a variety of factors that contribute to the attractiveness of these careers and a strong and important one is money. Adam Smith, the Scottish Enlightenment thinker and the father of modern economics is famously quoting as saying, it's not from the benevolence of the butcher, the grower or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. And the wealth of nations, Smith argues that the pursuit of self-interest and the free market benefits society as a whole. Many economists maintain that the human is homo economicus that is a rational maximizer of one's own self-interest. And I hope to make an argument in the next few minutes that a financial balance sheet is an easy scorecard. What's more important, infinitely more important is not the financial balance sheet, but life's balance sheet. From an economic standpoint, dentistry's history is as a cottage industry, which literally means a business run from one's home. Technically though, these colleges are also corporations. Most of them are professional corporations or like limited liability companies. And as we know, the shape of dental practice is changing dramatically. So corporate dentistry, the cottage industry is taking a variety of new forms from large group practices to dental management organizations and dental service organizations. And economic efficiency and profit are two of the reasons for this change. Private equity and venture capital are flowing into healthcare, including dentistry. Commercialism with an emphasis on maximizing profit is a threat to the moral character of the profession. So with reference to Professor Smith, a dentist is neither a butcher nor a grower nor a vaguer. His or her commitment as a professional is nothing less than a sacred covenant. A sacred covenant with a patient that puts self-interest behind the interest of the patient. That said, my personal story about overtreatment illustrates that self-interest is not a character trait unique to large corporate dental practices. Self-interest has always existed and it's existed in the cottage as well. Economic self-interest, whether it's in the cottage or whether it's in the corporation is the primary driver, I believe, behind overtreatment, malpractice, fraud, and other business dealings. With the intent to maximize profits at the expense of patients and the systems that support healthcare. Even the organized profession walks this tightrope between advocacy for the profession and advocacy for the patient. For at least two millennia, philosophers have debated whether self-interest is an innate trait of the human species, is altruism or beneficence unadulterated with self-interest, even possible. And I don't have the answer to this question but I think it's an important one. I think we must discuss and we must debate the related issues. The moral complexities facing the health professions today were unimaginable a century ago. But the ubiquitous dilemmas facing the dental profession today and maybe well into the future are not those of bioethics but what it means to be a professional and a profession. They are not the issues of rules and principles but the character of the provider and of the profession. So what are we to do? I wanna compliment and I wanna thank Dr. David Chambers for his work on the college's ethics report. This report, I'm quoting, advocates and ethics of engagement that establishes an ethical imperative to sit down and to talk with others who are affected by our actions. Dr. Chambers goes on to say, it's more than likely that dentistry will have to be redefined and we'll have to redefine what it means to be a dental professional, hence the new professionalism. Now, I read this ethics report as an invitation to dialogue. As we think about virtues and we think about character, I would argue that the virtue of humility is essential if individuals and organizations and as the profession and its stakeholders is as moral agents if they're to have this dialogue. In some sense, I believe humility is an anecdote to self-interest. But why humility? Well, humility is an appropriate attitude to knowing that we do not have all the answers. We don't have all the answers to the ethical challenges that are facing us. Humility is a pathway. It's a pathway to what the Zen Buddhist Shuru Suzuki called beginner's mind. In the expert mind, there are few possibilities, he says. Few possibilities in the expert's mind, but in the beginner's mind, there are many possibilities. Humility is necessary for learning. Humility says, no matter how smart I am or how much I've accomplished, I have something to learn from others. Humility sets aside self-interest so we can hear the interest and opinions of others. It seems to me, my opinion, but it seems to me that the college's new ethics report by beginning with listening to stakeholders begins in humility. If the dental profession and those who comprise it are to participate in the ethics of engagement, they must participate humbly. Knowing that they have much to learn. Secondly, humility recognizes that society has granted to the health professional the privilege, the privilege of special knowledge to be used for the care of others. Humility recognizes that the patient is vulnerable and honors that trust placed in the caregiver. Humility in the dentist and in the profession admits its gratitude and its indebtedness to others. Lastly, I would say humility is essential for empathy. Self-interest is blind to others, but humility sets aside self-interest so the provider can empathize and feel with the patient. It's an act of recognizing, understanding, sharing the thoughts and feelings of others. Empathy opens the doors to compassion. Empathy helps us act for the benefit of others because we vicariously put ourselves in their place. Humility is the virtue, empathy is the attitude and the act that flows from it. We live in a world in which humility is too little appreciating. Along with economic self-interest often comes what the American economist and sociologist Thornstein-Veblen called conspicuous consumption. Conspicuous consumption is the purposeful and public display of one's wealth and power. It's difficult to be humble when one knows so much and has so much. With the financial rewards that are possible in dentistry and in healthcare, I mean, is there any wonder that so many dentists and physicians find themselves on the hedonic treadmill? The virtue of humility helps us see the world right and every one of us is a debtor. And I would say we're a debtor even after paying off student loans. So I said I think some aspects of self-interest are legitimate. Let me talk a little bit about that. By introducing the virtue of humility, I intend to broaden the scope beyond how one practices dentistry to how one practices life. Remember the virtues are about human flourishing. And this broader perspective is where I like to take us next. As humans, we may be aptly called homo economicus, the economic man, but we also belong to the species homo sapiens. We are the sapient ones, we are the wise ones. Except for the universe itself, there's nothing more complex than the human mind. It contains somewhere around 100 billion neurons, each one communicating with thousands of other brain cells. More than a few philosophers have argued that our intelligence, our intelligence is the image of the divine and each of us. With human rationality comes a number of highly unique activities and relationships that are naturally good for us and naturally good for our species. Good for us physically, mentally and spiritually. I believe these goods are legitimate forms of self-interest. To take this point one step further, I would say and make the argument that we're morally obligated to pursue these goods, these types of self-interest because if we don't, we're deficient as human beings. What are they? They include things like friendship, citizenship, family, lifelong learning, physical fitness, spiritual exercises and other activities that contribute to our happiness and our wellbeing. They're good for us, but they're generally good for everyone around us as well. And obviously to enjoy many of these things, a person needs a certain level of financial means. But the virtuous person aims to look at all things in moderation, even money. The virtuous person replaces the financial statement that all too easy calculus for success with life's balance sheet. Far less precise, they're far more rewarding. So if we're to shape the character of the profession, we start with those who comprise it. But before thinking about the individual, I just want to make a few comments about the trend toward large corporate dental practice. I have a little insight. Unfortunately, I have a little insight into the next 100 years of the profession, but I think it is inevitable that large practices, DSOs, DMOs and novel forms of corporate dentistry that we haven't even thought about yet will grow significantly. Just look at medicine. In 2016, less than half of the practicing physicians and the US own their medical practice. It's really not difficult to imagine the disappearance of dentistry as a cottage industry. But I would say that large and corporate doesn't equate to an ethical. Last year, the business round table, that's a group of CEOs from America's largest companies, rejected the Friedman doctrine. Now, the Friedman doctrine is named after Milton Friedman, who's a 20th century Nobel winning economist. And it says that a corporation's only responsibility, its only responsibility is to its shareholders. These CEOs said no, and they refrained the purpose of corporations as stakeholder value, not just shareholder value. This means, among other things, that employee wellbeing, fair relationships with vendors and suppliers, and the community and environment are also the purpose and responsibility of business. Now, how this plays out is yet to be seen, but some corporate entities can and do exhibit social responsibility. They're corporations who aim for human flourishing as the end and profits as the means to that end. Corporations like other organizations or moral agents. Culture, corporate culture is the set of norms for how people behave, how they think, how they frame situations. Corporate culture affects the ethical decisions that people make who comprise that company. So what constitutes a virtue or vice is strongly influenced by what the corporation rewards. Now, keep this in mind when we think about this, almost 25% of new dental graduates are now choosing careers outside of their traditional solo dental practice. And in many cases, for reasons that include living a more balanced life, we can't blame them for that. But choosing one's employer is a decision that puts one's character at stake. As the contemporary philosopher Edwin Hartman has said, he says, if a strong organizational culture can affect one's character, then the choice of an employer is a most important one. That choice will in the end be, in effect, choosing which desires one wishes to cultivate. It's choosing a character. When we think about the challenges to oral health and in our nation, particularly access issues, it's arguable that because of resources and outreach, the corporate practice of dentistry, the large corporate practice of dentistry, offers one of the best means of caring for the underserved. The use of technologies and collaborative care with other health professionals may also advance more rapidly in these models. Now, does this mean we need to re-imagine corporate dentistry? Perhaps, but I believe the potential for ethical corporations to contribute to the flourishing of individuals and the communities, I believe that's limitless. So as the college practices the ethics of engagement, it must educate students and influence leaders who take their places in and with these corporate entities. Those are inevitable and even morally obligatory conversations. If we're concerned about economic self-interest in corporate dentistry, the college must act to shape the character of the business of dentistry through engagement with those who lead it. I even wonder, dare I say this, but at some point in the future, will the college have corporate members? These businesses would see their purpose as the flourishing of human beings, of patients and communities and profit as the means to that end. So allow me to return to my premise. If we were to shape the character of the profession, we must start first with those who comprise it. The Platonic Dialogue, Meno, abruptly begins with these questions. Can you tell me Socrates is virtue acquired by teaching or not by teaching but by training or neither by training or learning but comes to men naturally or in some other way? So after exploring this question in the dialogue, no clear answer emerges. Meno concludes with Socrates speculating that those who possess virtue possess it as a gift from God. Now it takes bravado to proffer an answer where Socrates failed, but I'm gonna try, you don't try humbly. The question is often asked, can ethics be taught? I believe the answer to that is yes. I mean, if ethics is defined as following rules, ethics can be seen like any other strategy. It can be taught, it can be practiced. It can even be practiced if the intent and the actor incongruous. The Greek root of ethics is ethos, which means character. If the question means, can we shape the character or the learner form a person of ethical character? I suspect we're falling short. We're falling short if for no other reason that character formation is not the purpose of ethics courses. The primary purpose of ethics courses is to answer the question, what should I do? Not what kind of person should I be? Shaping character is much harder than teaching principles and rules. When I ask people what has had the greatest influence on your career, I usually get a who and not a what. The who is often the teacher. Beyond my parents, particularly my mother, my who is a teacher. Although I had accomplished scholars as ethics professors during my time as a graduate student in philosophy, my who wasn't an ethics teacher. What I learned from him, what has remained and I hope matured over years, has little to do with the subject matter of the classroom, but it has everything to do with the aim of a worthwhile and fulfilling life. I'm talking about my high school English teacher and economic self-interest was never a priority for him. My teacher endeavored to help me answer the question, what should I do by answering the question, what kind of person should I be? The first question is more like a science. Well, the second question is more like an art. As a Supreme Court Justice, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. said, life is painting a picture, not doing a sum. In virtue ethics, one's choices are the paint strokes on the canvas of one's life. 11 years ago, I started a great books of the Western World Club. Getting together with these men and women every six weeks or so to discuss and debate timeless ideas is one of the greatest and deepest joys of my life. We've read from Homer to Hegel, they're all around me, from Euripides to Einstein. Two things that strike me as I reflect on this more than a decade long journey of the mind. First, the reading of this work is difficult. It's work, it's leisure work, but it requires a willingness to struggle with text that will easily defeat the reader unless he or she is committed. Now that commitment says that there is a diamond here to unearth for those who are willing to dig for it. Secondly and more important, a certain level of maturity that comes no other way than through life experience is required to understand some of these works. I think this is especially true for great literature. And I don't mean to say that we waste these readings on the young, but you just can't get it without having lived life, and particularly experiencing the inevitable suffering that the years bring. So when I was in high school and I read Herman Melville's Moby Dick, it defeated me, I set it aside. When I read it again several years ago, now in my fifties, it profoundly moved me. It profoundly moved me to consider my own encounters with that great white whale. So I'm speaking here of wisdom. If gray hair is any sign of wisdom, we have a lot of wisdom in the college. We spend our early years getting things done in our later years considering what was done and why we did these things and how all we did is led us to the lives we now live. I don't think there's an age at which somebody suddenly becomes wise. But I'd say by the time you're around 50, you've seen some things. When you were 25, a B on an exam was a major life crisis, but add two or three decades and one has a different perspective. The perspective comes from the tutelage of life's most severe teachers, an aging body, sickness, death, a divorce for roughly 40% of the US population, and for some, the terrible anxieties of parenthood. But hence the gray hair. Many in this college are well acquainted with the things that get dentist into trouble. So for example, according to Bloomberg, the amount of income necessary to exit the bottom 99% in 2017 was just over $515,000. Some in the college know from experience that those who aspire to great wealth in life are likely to be disappointed. Many know that greed is a rapacious God that devours your soul and leads you not only to make poor clinical decisions, but bad life choices. Some know what it's like to self-medicate and to fall into addiction to cope with a lack of meaning, purpose, and fulfillment in life. Many have been through these things and have picked up wisdom, only kind of wisdom that can be picked up along a hard scrabble road. Practical wisdom is about making the right choices and so is ethics and so is living a fulfilling life. Whether or not these experiences resonate with you, this college is filled with people of practical wisdom. Why not pass this wisdom forward? Pass it forward to a new generation of fellows whose hair is not yet gray. So how do we do that? First, I believe we pass on this wisdom not by abandoning dialogue about what constitutes professionalism. This dialogue's important and it must continue but by broadening the conversation, broadening that conversation to what constitutes a good life. Many members of the college are academics. While you didn't take a vow of poverty, you made a decision at some point in your career that maximizing income is not a core value. To you I say, tell your story. One of the central functions of education and more specifically moral education is to teach us how to reason in the right direction. Perhaps there's room for a turn to moral psychology and ethics instruction, a turn to the formation of moral reasoning including the place of desire, emotions, choice, character, contribution of the community and human flourishing. Perhaps we can find time to discuss with students and to learn with colleagues about these legitimate forms of self-interest that make for a complete and fulfilling life. Dare I suggest we add Dostoevsky and Tolstoy for the ethics curriculum. Secondly, let's not underestimate the place of role modeling and the character of the profession. Several years ago, I read an article entitled Vanquishing Virtue, the impact of medical education. In it, the authors argue that in North American medical education, we have an explicit commitment to traditional values or virtues of doctrine. These traditional values or virtues of empathy, compassion, altruism, and then there's a tacit commitment of behaviors grounded in an ethic of detachment, self-interest, and objectivity. What the authors are arguing is that we have an explicit curriculum with these virtues but what students see in their faculty are not these virtues, but something else, detachment, self-interest. Let's not allow that to be said of our academic dental institutions nor our organized professions. Students will remember you long after the coursework has faded from memory and colleagues will listen to what you do more readily than what you say. Thirdly, and related to role modeling, in my opinion, we need more heroes in dentistry. For too long, William J. Geis has felt alone on Dentistry's Mount Rushmore. Heroes are made, not born. They become heroes by making the right life choices. They create narratives and Dentistry's heroes can create the narrative of the profession. They are moral paradigms of the profession. So when one is faced with a moral dilemma, might we hope that that dentist will not only think about what principle or rule to apply, but might also ask what would, and you fill in the name, what would this person do? This role model, this moral paradigm, what would he or she do? I know there are countless heroes, people of deep character and commitment in dentistry and especially in this college. Let's tell their stories. Maybe there's a collection of biographies to come in the college's library. So back to all those crowns in my proposed treatment plan. I found a new dentist here in Atlanta, and when he first examined me, he said, said, if you were my brother, this is what I'd tell you to do. And then he proceeded to explain which teeth we would watch. And on my first visit, he gave me his card. He gave me his card and he wrote his cell number on the back of it, and he said, if you ever need me, call me. I must have looked at him as scant, so he must have been skeptical, and he looked at me and he said, I really mean it, if you need me, call me. About a year later, I needed one of those crowns. I broke tooth, I broke tooth on Christmas Eve. But he was there for me. When he retired, he sold his practice to another dentist and exhibits the same character and the same clinical competence as he. I've had three of those seven crowns or nine crowns since 2004, and believe it or not, just today, I was eating a protein bar just this morning and pulled the crown off. Hasn't happened in years, but I know who's gonna replace it. I have faith and trust in my dentist, not only his clinical competence, but his character. So I have a little idea what the next 100 years holds for dentistry, which is why I believe the ethics of engagement for charting and selling these orders is very important. Moral complexities will inevitably grow more complex, but I can't imagine a society in which we wish for dentists who are greedy, arrogant, dishonest, cowardly, and unfair. If history is any guide, history is any guide, and a century character will still count. A Swedish proverb states, the afternoon knows what the morning never suspected. I wonder if the founders of the American College of Dentists could have envisioned what this college would become. The 1920s was the first decade to have a nickname, the roaring 20s. It was also called the Jazz Age. It was a time of great prosperity, new music, silent movies. It was also a time of notorious gangsters and racism as a Ku Klux Klan instigated lynchings across South. The decade began with a nation exhausted by World War. And a global pandemic that killed more than half a million Americans in 1918 and 1919. It roared to prosperity and ended with a groan from Black Tuesday, October 29th, 1929, as a stock market crashed and the shadow of a decade-long economic depression fell. 100 years later, we find ourselves exhausted from another pandemic, our backs bent under the strain of a ravaged economy and our hands grasping to raise ourselves above racism and social injustice. As in the 1920s, so in 2020, the character of our nation is tested. Turbulent times call for the virtues. We're buoyed by hope. Through carriage we move forward confidently into this storm and with wisdom we will persevere and overcome as our character helps shape our better angels and helps us prevail against these challenges. So too these challenges will shape us as individuals, as a college and as a profession and as a nation for the century to come. Thank you.