Hey Oz.
I have been reading some of your posts, silently, but I have to say that some of the information you have collected and are presenting here is in fact misleading.
Please, bear in mind that I am a BDS. No bias intended here.
DDS/DMD/MD/PhD and equivalents ARE in fact doctorate degrees. I do not think that you are about to re-define education in the US and re-define the level of degrees awarded. Here is how simple it is;
The rule (not the exceptions as UOP or other fine schools) is that; in order to go on to a "graduate" level degree you must first posses a bachelors degree, in other words and in most cases, over 120 post-secondary education credits. 120. Now, if you are familiar with graduate studies here, you may already know that most professional
doctoral level degrees require on average completion of 80 credits before the degree can be awarded, which is FOUNDED upon your previous education (120 credits) at the undergraduate level.
Masters level graduate degrees are usually 36 credits or more, also following the same concept.
In this light,
you would have accumulated roughly 200 post-secondary credits at the Doctoral level (BS+MD) and 156 at the Masters level (BS+MS) as opposed to only 120 at the Bachelor's level (MBBS).
Now an interesting point to refer to here is that when I had my BDS credentials evaluated here in the US (
www.ECE.org ),
my BDS degree added to 170 US credit hours. However, it was not given an equivalence of a doctoral level degree (DDS/DMD) in the US due to the difference in level of education between the 2 degrees (post secondary level versus post bachelors level).
Now, although overseas degrees MBBS/BDS and the likes are actually medical degrees, and in most instances extensive programs with excellent training, the accumilated credits of your cumulative education would still fall short of a US equivalence of a graduate/doctoral level of education.
To sum up, MBBS and MD while very relative to one another are not the same thing, just like a BDS and DDS/DMD are not. I have to agree with you though that the scope of the courses completed and training endured in both programs leading to both degrees maybe very comparable, however, still not equal.
In this example,
PhD = Philosophy Doctorate (
Latin Philosophiae Doctor)
MD = Medical Doctorate (
Latin. Medicinae Doctor)
the main difference between both degrees is that one is research based, and the other is clinical based. Simply put. Both are doctorate level degrees. If you want to call it PhMD, then go ahead ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctorate
http://nsf.gov
I am also curious to know what level of education are you at now ? Are you a foreign dental grad, already in advanced standing or else wise ?
Why do you feel that you have to prove this to everyone so badly ?
Thanks.