This thesis examines advances in oral health and its care as seen by the author's and his co-workers' researches. These have disclosed wide variations in the community's oral health and in standards of care offered by the general dental service. The state controls dentistry, and the agents through which it effects that control are the General Dental Council and the Department of Health. Only those people who are selected to be educated and trained, and then registered according to criteria determined by the GDC, are allowed to practise dentistry. In order to keep their place on the register dentists are expected to 'maintain and extend their professional skills throughout their practising lives'. The studies made by the author and his co-workers, and others working in the same field, are reviewed; they suggest that advances in care that are desirable are not being achieved. The state has given statutory authority to the GDC to concern itself with postgraduate dental education. The thesis suggests, however, that its promotion of 'continuing professional development' (the process by which all practitioners (medical and dental) are expected to keep up to date) is not good enough. Its agents do not measure its results and therefore the GDC does not know if it is effective. Too little is known about outcomes measured by changes in practitioners' knowledge, attitude, opinion and, above all, of behaviour. Thus attempts to improve care, say by means of re-certification of dentists or registration of practices, are likely to fail. There are two matters of long term concern if the need to monitor, and thus control, dental care remains unrecognised. The first is the likelihood of further inroads being made into the profession's autonomy. This is inevitable if clinical and ethical standards are not lifted so that the public's faith in dentists is maintained. Evidence that dentists (like doctors) are not satisfying the state's aims for the profession may be seen in the steps taken by the present government to raise standards: it is to place more of the onus of control on the shoulders of the individual receivers of care; let the buyer beware. This political philosophy would claim that, when the buyer was the welfare state, control was so far divorced from the chairside that it was ineffective and quality did not rise hand in hand with scientific and technical knowledge. This leads to the second matter which is the see-sawing of two forms of control imposed on dentistry. Given that, as part of the National Health Service, dentistry aims to give everybody an equal opportunity to benefit from its services, will this be best realised in a welfare state or a market economy? Measures of quality and quantity made over long periods are needed if answers are going to appear. These educational and philosophical matters are examined in the thesis as well as the problems of how to control organisations. The part played by implementing the science of communicating information is also a prominent feature. A theoretical model based on which studies of continuing professional development can be made is presented. It is also suggested that, by applying relevant features of the model to lay people, it may improve their knowledge of how to prevent oral disease and the treatment they will be offered. Six studies are suggested which the General Dental Council might undertake to improve the current state of affairs.