The developments that have already taken place, as well as those that are just over the horizon, in the fields of dental education, research, and practice have a mind-boggling effect when we try to evaluate their influences on our professional lives and the people we serve. Having an increased number of patients to care for will compel us to completely overhaul the dental care delivery system from its present form. As Zapp 48 observed, we shall have to reorganize our profession to deliver more care for more people, instead of designing a practice that is more comfortable to our own personal style. Changes in dental education may have to be even more dramatic and dental educators no less resourceful than those in dental practice to furnish professional and subprofessional personnel adequately trained and in sufficient numbers to man and efficiently operate dental health care facilities of the future. The contributions of dental research will continue to make the efforts of both the dental educator and the dental practitioner more effective. These coming events, which have already cast their shadows before them, do present a challenge, a challenge “to the profession's capacity for leadership and wisdom, for foresight and innovation, for courage to move in new directions, for removal of the restraining bonds of fear which forbid all change and canonize the status quo ….” 42 Sociologic, economic, and political events have already done some violence to the image of orthodontic practice as we have known it in the past two decades, but the metamorphosis that has been wrought will pale to insignificance when measured against what we may expect in the coming two decades.