Infectious disease in dental practice--professional opportunities and obligations

This article presents one author's view of the dentist's obligations to patients, to the community, to the profession, and to the principles of ethics in a highly troubling time of serious infectious diseases. It essentially is an optimistic view that, while the epidemic of AIDS will continue and tuberculosis may become a graver problem in certain health care settings, the dental profession possesses the education, ethical insights, and technical training needed to meet with grace and authority the challenges of practice in this era of infectious disease.