'Look, Mom! No cavities'

By Jayne Spencer

In 1956, Crest toothpaste, featuring a stannous fluoride compound patented by three Indiana University researchers, hit the national market. Royalties helped build the future Oral Health Research Institute in Indianapolis (see related story, http://www.iuinfo.indiana.edu/homepages/1121/text/dental.htm) and the toothpaste's "Look, Mom, no cavities" advertising campaign is imbedded in American popular culture.

Harry Day, a biochemist who lives at Bloomington's Meadowood Retirement Community and for whom the lecture hall in the Chemistry Building at IUB is named, had brought his knowledge of the nutritional value of trace elements to IU from Johns Hopkins University. After studying and working with the esteemed nutritionists on the faculty there, he arrived in Indiana in 1940 to begin a 36-year teaching career. He taught the first biochemistry classes to dental students on the Bloomington campus and became a mentor to one of them, a young man named Joseph C. Muhler.

Within six months of receiving his dental degree, Muhler and his mentor had convincing findings that stannous fluoride was protective against dental decay. It was at that time that the two were joined by inorganic chemist and new IUB faculty member William Nebergall.

With the financial assistance of Procter and Gamble, some 1,200 schoolchildren in the Bloomington public schools became the first study group for a toothpaste that was palatable and mated an abrasive cleanser with stannous fluoride. The year was 1951. Within the next year, the researchers had overwhelming evidence of success. The history of the product continues to write itself across the face of the globe.

Three years ago, Proctor and Gamble began working with Chinese officials to improve oral health in that country. A first step was to roll out a school-based oral health education program. In the United States, P&G's Crest school program is one of the longest running programs of its kind, reaching nearly 100 million people since it was launched in 1962. By the end of last year, the P&G school program in China covered 28 cities and reached more than one million schoolchildren.

For more on Crest in China: