The American dentist who won the Nobel Prize for dentistry in 2014 is now being paid $10 million for an unlicensed operation that removed a patient’s teeth and had them replaced by a Chinese orthodist.
Dr. David Bao, who is now the chief executive officer of Bao Tung Clinic in Shanghai, has also been awarded a $4.2 million medical fellowship from the Shanghai government.
Bao, 56, was paid an estimated $9.6 million for the job, which was performed on patients at a clinic in the Chinese city of Hangzhou.
Bao has denied that the operation was unethical, saying it was a legal necessity for the hospital to treat patients with the disease.
The Chinese government has said the procedure was done for medical reasons.
Bao said in a statement that he was unaware of any conflict of interest.
Dr. Baos said the treatment was done in accordance with the regulations, and the government would not force him to use any of his own patients’ dental work.
“The work was performed in accordance to Chinese and international standards, and I did not participate in any of the procedures,” Bao said.
“It was my decision, and my team is fully responsible for it.”
Baos has said that he did not know the Chinese orthodextrous surgeons had been paid by the hospital, or the patient, and that they had not informed him of their identity.
In his statement, Bao claimed that the patient’s health was at risk because he had not been told that the Chinese surgeons were going to perform the operation.
He said the patient was not at risk, and he was not aware that any of their colleagues were.
He said that the orthodists had been trained to perform orthodetic procedures.
Baos also said that it was not the hospital’s business whether or not Bao was reimbursed.
A spokeswoman for Bao did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A spokesman for Baos’s clinic said in an email that Bao had been invited to participate in a symposium in Shanghai.
The hospital declined to provide further details.
China has a long history of orthodic procedures that are not recognized by the international community, but the practice is now a standard in the country.
Dental assistants and dental surgeons are routinely paid by state-owned enterprises for services such as dentures, crowns, implants and crowns.
More than 30,000 orthodosists in China have been convicted of fraud and corruption since the start of the economic downturn in 2008.
In April, a Chinese court convicted the owner of a Beijing dental clinic of fraud for billing state-run hospitals for services they did not provide, and sentenced him to five years in prison.
