Rich Murray: Haley: brilliant testimony to Congress on health fraud re dental amalgam mercury and Alzheimers Part 2/2 6.12.1 rmforall

[Guest guest]

Rich Murray: Haley: brilliant testimony to Congress on health fraud

re dental amalgam mercury and Alzheimers Part 2/2 6.12.1

Part 2/ 2 http://www.mercola.com/2001/jun/9/amalgam_safety2.htm

Leading Mercury Scientist, Dr. Haley,

Refutes ADA in Congressional Testimony

Boyd E. Haley Professor and Chair behaley@...

Department of Chemistry University of Kentucky

http://www.uky.edu/

The ADA, through state dental boards stacked with ADA members, has

instigated a " gag order " preventing dentists from even mentioning to

their patients that amalgams are 50% mercury. Dentists cannot state that

mercury is neurotoxic and emits from amalgams and that the dental

patient should consider this as they select the tooth filling material

they

want used. If a dentist informs a patient of these very truthful facts,

he

will be consider not to be practicing good dentistry and his

license will be in jeopardy.

Attacking a person's freedom of speech because he is telling the truth

and causing serious questions to be asked about the protocols pushed by

a bureaucracy (the ADA), makes me seriously question the commitment

the ADA has for the health of the American people.

The negative stand taken by many state dental boards against even

informing the patients about the mercury content of amalgams and the

other filling choices they have does not speak well for the organized

dental profession.

What medical group would give a treatment to a patient without telling

them of the risks involved?

" Issued late in 1997, the FDI World Dental Federation and the World

Health Organization consensus statement on dental amalgam stated:

" No controlled studies have been published demonstrating

systemic adverse effects from amalgam restorations. " "

My first comment would be to question,

" Who staffed these committees, and what percentage were connected

to the ADA though the NIDCR or the FDA

dental materials branch or other relationships? " We appear to have the

foxes guarding the henhouse! Then I would again point out that

" absence of proof is not proof of absence " .

I would then ask, 'Have any controlled studies been done and if not,

why not?' If the ADA dentists insist on placing amalgams in the mouth,

are they not required to show it is safe, not the other way around?

Should not the ADA and others concerned push to require the FDA to

prove amalgams are safe instead of totally ducking this issue.

Go to the FDA dental materials web-site and try to find any evaluation

of amalgam safety-- you will not succeed.

The dental branch of the FDA refuses to do a safety study

on amalgams, and this is shame on our government.

" The small amount of mercury released from amalgam restorations,

especially during placement and removal, has not been shown to

cause any adverse effects. "

This increase in mercury exposure has also not been shown

to be safe by proving it does not cause any adverse effects!

Are we to believe this elevated exposure to a toxic metal

is good for us?

If one were in a building that caused the rise in blood/urine mercury

that appears after dental amalgam removal,

then OSHA would shut the building down.

In fact, no study by the ADA or NIDCR has been completed that

specifically and accurately addresses this issue. Yet, the ADA leads

us to believe that additional exposure to toxic mercury from these

procedures is not dangerous to our health.

Mercury toxicity is a retention toxicity that builds up during years of

exposure. The toxicity of a singular level of mercury is

greatly increased by current or subsequent, low exposures to lead

or other toxic heavy metals (12).

Therefore, the damage caused by amalgams could occur

years after initial placement and at mercury levels now

deemed safe by the ADA.

Our ability to protect ourselves from the toxic damage caused by

exposure to mercury depends on the level of

protective natural biochemical compounds

(e.g. glutathione, metallothionine) in our cells, and the levels of

these protecting agents is dependent upon our health and age.

If we become ill, or as we age, the cellular levels of

glutathione drop and our protection against the toxic

effects of mercury decreases and damage will be done.

This is strongly supported by numerous studies where rodents have been

chemically treated to decrease their cellular levels of protective

glutathione and then treated with mercury,

always with dramatic injurious effects when compared to controls.

Therefore, published science indicates that mercury toxicity is

much more pronounced in infants, the very old and the very ill.

A recent NIH study on 1127 military men showed the major contributor to

human mercury body burden was dental amalgams. The amount of mercury in

the urine increased about 4.5 fold in soldiers with the average number

of amalgams versus the controls with no amalgams. (6)

In extreme cases it was over 8 fold higher. Since the total mercury

included that from diet and industrial pollution,

are we to expect that this 4.5 to 8 fold average

increase in mercury is not detrimental to our health?

Does this indicate that amalgams are a

" safe and effective restorative material " ? Is the public and

Congress expected to be so naïve as to believe that increased exposure

above environmental exposure levels is not damaging?

Then why are pregnant mothers told to limit seafood intake when mercury

exposure from amalgams is much greater? Then why is the EPA pushing

regulations to force the chloro-alkali plants and fossil fuel plants to

clean up their mercury contributions to our environment?

Obviously, from this study most of the human exposure to mercury is

from dental amalgams, not fossil fuel plants. Yet, the FDA lets the

dental

profession continue to expose American citizens to even greater amounts

of mercury.

They do this by refusing to test amalgam fillings as a source of

mercury exposure. Also, remember that the amalgam using ADA

dentists are a major contributor to mercury in our water and air

through mercury leaving the dental offices, and even when we

are cremated.

" The ADA's Council on Scientific Affairs 1998 report on its review of

the recent scientific literature on amalgam states:

" The Council concludes that, based on available scientific information,

amalgam continues to be a safe and effective restorative material. "

and " There currently appears to be no justification for

discontinuing the use of dental amalgam. "

What would you expect an ADA Council to say? The ADA,

as evidenced in the current letter by the President of the ADA,

only quotes and considers valid the published research that supports

their desire to continue placing mercury containing amalgam fillings

in American citizens. When were dentists trained to

evaluate neurological and toxicological data and manuscripts?

What is needed is an international conference where both the pro- and

anti-amalgam researchers show up and present their data in front of a

world-class scientific committee. I would challenge the ADA to line up

their scientists and supporters to participate in such a conference.

This could be held in Washington, D.C., so the FDA officials could

easily attend. Perhaps we could persuade the FDA

to sponsor such a conference.

However, this is unlikely since a recent written request to have a

conference to evaluate the safety of amalgams was rejected

in a letter from the FDA and signed by three FDA/ADA dentists

who presented the ADA line on this issue.

Doesn't it seem a bit fraudulent to have FDA/ADA dentists deciding on

whether or not a safety study should be done on mercury emitting

amalgams being placed in human mouths with the blessing of the ADA?

This does seem like a conflict in interest that Congress should address.

" In an article published in the February 1999 issue of the Journal of

the American Dental Association, researchers report finding

" no significant association of Alzheimer's disease with the number,

surface area or history of

having dental amalgam restorations. "

This research was lead by a dentist, Dr. Sax. It was submitted to the

J. of the American Medical Association and rejected.

It was then submitted to the New England Journal of Medicine

and rejected. It was then published in the ADA

trade journal, JADA, that is not a refereed, scientific journal.

JADA is loaded with commercial advertisements for dental products.

They even called a " press conference " announcing the release of this

article! Calling a press conference for a twice-rejected publication

that is to appear in a trade journal is playing politics

with science at its worst!

At this press conference, two of the authors made unbelievable

statements that were not supported by any of the data in the article

and conflicted with numerous major scientific reports,

including the 1998 NIH study (6).

Some of these were high-lighted in the side-bars of the ADA publication.

I would suggest that those concerned with this article visit Medline and

look at the publication records of the two individuals who made these

statements. Also, look at the three earlier excellent publications in

refereed journals by some of the other authors showing significant

mercury levels in the brains of AD subjects

compared to controls (14a,b, 15). However, put a dentist in

charge of the project, and the data gets reversed!

Apply some common sense. The ancillary comments by some of the

authors and the results of the JADA publication are in

total disagreement with the vast majority of research published

that looks at elevated mercury levels in subjects with amalgam fillings.

For example, the NIH study on military men discussed above

showed a very significant elevation of mercury in the blood that

correlated with number of dental amalgams (6).

Another recent publication demonstrated elevated mercury in the blood of

living AD patients in comparison to age-matched controls (10).

These studies clearly show that there should be increased mercury

in your blood if you have amalgams and especially if you have AD

and amalgams (6,10).

Does not the brain have blood in it? This makes it a total mystery as to

how could the authors of the JADA article not find elevated brain

mercury levels in patient with existing amalgams and/or AD.

Even cadavers have brain mercury levels that correlate with the

number of amalgam fillings they had on death.

Further, if you are addressing the contribution of amalgams to brain

mercury and AD, wouldn't it be important to divide the AD and

control subjects into those with and without existing amalgams

on death? In the JADA article this was not done, and

represents a major research flaw! That this was not done also

arouses suspicion.

I participated in submitting a letter pointing out this flaw to editors

of JADA but they refused to acknowledge the letter and did not

publish our comments. It is my opinion that the entire situation

around this singular supportive publication of the ADA position

on amalgams, brain mercury levels and AD represents a weak

attempt at controlling the mind-set of well-meaning dentists,

scientists, physicians and medical research administrators.

It definitely impedes honest scientific debate. It also explains the

cavalier attitude of the ADA and NIDCR about elemental mercury

exposure and toxicity, when compared to the more serious

approaches taken by the EPA and OSHA.

With regards to the JADA article summary that " no statistically

significant differences in brain mercury levels between subjects

with Alzheimer's disease and control subjects. " Here I must quote

Mark Twain on honesty, " There are liars, damned liars and

statisticians. "

Comparing the level of mercury in the AD versus control alone using

straight-forward statistics previously showed a significant difference

on mercury levels in AD versus control subjects (14a,b, 15).

However, there are anomalies, confounders and other factors

that can be considered in this situation,

especially if you don't like the initial results.

This allows one to invoke a Bon-Feroni statistical manipulation.

With Bon-Feroni you include the comparison of one pair of data

(that may be statistically significantly different taken alone,

e.g. mercury levels in the brains of AD versus

control subjects) with several other pairs of data,

rendering the difference statistically insignificant.

One known weakness of the Bon-Feroni treatment of several coupled

pairs of comparisons is that one very likely will miss a single

comparison

that is significantly different, and clever people know this. It is my

opinion

that application of the Bon-Feroni manipulation is what happened in this

JADA study that reversed the previous significance of the mercury levels

in AD versus control brain previously reported.

Research previously reported by some of the very same researchers

involved in the JADA study consistently indicated that mercury levels

were higher in AD versus age-matched control brains (14a,b, 15).

Only when an ADA dentist became involved, did the results

change to being insignificant.

I think the data used in this JADA article and funded by NIH needs to

be re-evaluated by a different statistician, if we are to ever really

know

if the mercury levels in the AD brains differed significantly from

controls.

The letter from the ADA President then lists four publications as proof

of amalgams having no statistically significant negative effects. Two of

these were published in Scandinavian Journals, another was a review of

the literature in a Dental Journal, and one was the JADA article

mentioned above.

Sweden is well known to have led the world in the

restriction and replacement of dental amalgams with

non-mercury containing materials.

Forces are pushing hard to get the use of amalgams accepted again in

Sweden to eliminate this embarrassment to our ADA. The current

situation in Sweden and some other European countries, Canada and

Japan seriously questions the ADA contention of amalgam safety.

What if people in Sweden become healthier without amalgams?

Additionally, the studies quoted by the ADA President were

epidemiological studies. These are very complex ,as many

confounders are included which make finding a statistically

significant difference very difficult.

So the results are negative, nothing found, and not surprising.

However, they are in disagreement with numerous

other similar reports and appear to be hand-selected to support

the ADA position. One has to wonder, since the ADA

President seemed to visit Swedish journals to support the ADA

position, how he missed the research of the Nylander group

in Sweden that showed increased mercury content in brains

and kidneys of humans in relationship to exposure to

dental amalgams (17,18).

Also, the referenced studies in the ADA letter did not involve

neurotoxicity, autism or neurological disease-- which is the

question at hand. Rather, they addressed fertility, reproduction

and other systemic illnesses. Could not the

ADA find references to focus on neurotoxiological studies?

What about the 1989 study that showed elevated levels of mercury in 54

individuals with Parkinson's disease when compared to 95 matched

controls (16)? Further, one ought to consider who was doing these

touted ADA studies and any vested interest they may have in the outcome.

I am also aware of studies done in the U.S.A. by major research

universities that would disagree with the conclusions drawn by the

ADA on this subject, yet these articles are not considered

in the ADA letter.

At the end of the last publication the quote

" Conclusions: No statisticallysignificant correlation was

observed between dental amalgam and the

incidence of diabetes, myocardial infarction, stroke, or cancer. "

How does this relate to an article published in the

J. of the American College of Cardiology

where the mercury levels in the heart tissue of individuals

who died from Idiopathic Dilated Cardiomyopathy (IDCM)

contained mercury levels 22,000 times that of individuals who

died of other forms of heart disease?

Where did this tremendous amount of mercury come from?

Even a Bon-Feroni manipulation could not make this difference

insignificant!

Many who die of IDCM are well-conditioned, young athletes who drop dead

during sporting events-- and they live in locations and in economic

environments where sea-food is not a dietary mainstay. Perhaps the

victims of IDCM are within the ADA Presidents

" handful of individuals who are allergic to one of its components. "

" The National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research is

currently supporting two very large clinical trials on the health

effects of

dental amalgam.Studies underway for several years each

in Portugal and the Northeastern United States involve not

only direct neurophysiological measures but also

cognitive and functional assessments. "

Do we really think that the NIDCR and associated ADA personnel are

going to deliver up a conclusion to American parents saying

" we put a mercury containing toxic material in your child's mouth

that lowered his/her I.Q. and made him more susceptible to

neurological problems in comparison to the

children whom we selected to not get exposed to this toxic material " ?

It is my opinion that most bureaucracies don't have a brain or a heart,

but they do have a very strong survival instinct. Therefore, the results

presented from this study will likely follow previously ADA supported

research, i.e. no significant results.

Since the NIDCR started this project only 4 years ago, one has to ask

why it took so long for them to get involved since the " amalgam wars "

have been going on for scores of years?

Was it the overwhelming amount of modern science showing

mercury from amalgams being a major part of the daily

exposure that forced their hand, and they had to develop a defense?

Would I trust the conclusions of this study without knowing who put it

together and who did the statistics? Not any more than I trust the

conclusions of the JADA article mentioned in the ADA letter that

stupendously concludes that

mercury from dental amalgams does not get into the brain.

As was proven by the tobacco situation, trying to find any significant

negative effect of one product (amalgams) related to any disease

through epidemiological studies is very difficult and complex.

To do this with mercury would be difficult because of the synergistic

effect two or more toxic metals or compounds

(e.g. cadmium from smoking) may have on the toxicity of the

mercury emitted from amalgams.

For example, one publication showed that combining

mercury and lead both at LD1 levels

caused the killing rate to go to 100% or to an LD100 level (12).

An LD1 level is where, due to the low concentrations, the mercury or the

lead alone was not very toxic alone

(i.e., killed less than 1% of rats exposed when metal were used alone).

The 100% killing, when addition of 1% plus 1% we would expect 2%,

represents synergistic toxicity.

Therefore, mixing to non-lethal levels of mercury plus lead

gave an extremely toxic mixture! What this proves is that one cannot

define a " safe level of mercury " unless you absolutely know

what others toxicants the individual is being exposed to.

The combined toxicity of various materials, such as mercury,

thimerosal, lead, aluminum, formaldehyde, etc., is unknown.

The effects various combinations of these toxicants would have

is also not defined, except that we know they

would be much worse than any one of the toxicants alone.

So, how could the ADA take any exception, based on intellectual

considerations, to my contention that combinations of

thimerosal and mercury could exacerbate

the neurological conditions identified with autism and AD?

Autism and AD have clinical and biological markers that

correspond to those observed in patients with toxic

mercury exposure.

Why would the ADA take this position? I personally feel like I

have been in a ten year argument with the town drunk on this issue.

Facts don't count, and data is

only valid if it meets the pro-amalgam agenda.

The ADA was founded on the basis that mercury-containing amalgams

are safe and useful for dental fillings. This may have been an

acceptable

position in 1850. However, modern science has proven that amalgams

constantly emit unacceptable levels of mercury.

Especially, as the average life span has increased from

50 to 75-78 years of age,

where AD and Parkinson's become prevalent diseases.

The ADA can try to verify its position, using selected epidemiological

studies. But the bottom line is that amalgams emit significant levels

of neurotoxic mercury that are injurious to human health and would

exacerbate the medical condition of those individuals with

neurological diseases such as ALS, MS, Parkinson's, autism and AD.

I am hoping that the ADA sent this letter to your committee and also

placed it on the ADA web-site to indicate that they are now willing

for a wide-open discussion to take place on the issue of dental

amalgams.

I, for one, would welcome a major scientific conference on this issue.

The ADA should feel free to post my letter in response and address

any issue they feel that I am mistaken about.

However, in closing, I urge your Committee to push forward on the

study of the potential dangers of mercury in our dentistry and

medicines.

This includes mercury exposures from amalgams, vaccines and other

medicaments containing thimerosal. The synergistic effects of mercury

with many of the toxicants commonly found in our environment make the

danger unpredictable and possibly quite severe, especially any mixture

containing elemental mercury, organic mercury and other heavy metal

toxicants, such as aluminum.

Sincerely, Boyd E. Haley Professor and Chair

Department of Chemistry University of Kentucky

http://www.mercola.com/2001/jun/9/amalgam_safety3.htm

References: (Part 1, Part 2)

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http://www.mercola.com/2001/jun/9/amalgam_safety.htm

Part 1/2

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DR. MERCOLA'S COMMENT: Dr@...

Dr. Boyd Haley is clearly one of the top US researchers in the area of

scientifically documenting the dangers of mercury. His letter refutes

the American Dental Association (ADA) response

to his April 25, 2001 congressional testimony on mercury.

Related Articles:

http://www.mercola.com/article/mercury/

Mercury Detoxification Protocol

http://www.mercola.com/2001/apr/7/vaccine_mercury.htm

First Mercury Poisoning/Vaccine Law Suit Filed

http://www.mercola.com/domains/nomercury.htm

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