Just how important is a wisdom tooth?

My 20 year old son has been complaining about his wisdom tooth for weeks and so we finally made an appointment to have it pulled out today. Upon the doctor’s examination and x-ray, it turned out my son did not only have one, but four wisdom teeth. The doctor asked if we wanted to extract only the one that was bothering him, or if we had wanted all four removed. As simple as this question sounds, it did however, put me in a dilemma. I was asking myself, just how important is a wisdom tooth? Am I rushing to have these teeth extracted, without much consideration as to the potential importance of keeping them, so that my son will no longer feel the pain?

Here is why I had to think about this question:

Researchers from Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science discovered that wisdom teeth contain considerably viable “starter” cells. The team gathered samples from wisdom teeth of three donors and used them to generated iPS (induced pluripotent stem cell). In some cases, the cells proliferated 100 times more efficiently than those derived from skin, and they were capable of forming a variety of different adult cell lines.

You can read more about this here:
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-09/asfb-asu091010.php

Finally, after a little discussion with my son of what would be the best thing, we decided to have all four teeth extracted. Putting an end to the unbearable pain my son has to endure had won out over any potential medical promise it may have in keeping any one of them.

I'm still not 100% certain if our decision to have all four teeth extracted was the best we could have done.

Please let me know your thoughts on this by replying.