|
NEJM Article on Mercury? The New England Journal of Medicine October 30, 2003 issue featured an article entitled "The Toxicology of Mercury-Current Exposures and Clinical Manifestations" by Clarkson, Magos and Myers. You can download the article by going to www.scholar.google.com and typing in the title of the article or clicking on the link below. Be sure to print a copy of the article and then read the comments below where Bernard Windham critiques the flaws in this article. The Toxicology of Mercury-Current Exposures and Clinical Manifestations Why am I interested in your reading this NEJM article? Because pro mercury dental organizations are already using this article published in a prestigious publication to support their fallacy that mercury amalgam fillings are safe. Dentists will surely quote this article to their patients without even bothering to read the article indepth or with a critical mind. If you only listen to the ADA's spin on the science you will never know the truth. Bernard Windham, President and Scientific Coordinator for DAMS (Dental Amalgam Mercury Solutions), whose website can be accessed at http://www.dentaltruth.org critiqued this October 30, 2003 NEJM article and exposed its scientific flaws. By Bernard Windham: Taken from The Clarkson, Magos, Myers mercury article in NEJM, Oct 30, 2003 is very poorly done with a lot of inaccuracies, misstatements, and poor research. The following provides documentation for some examples of such inaccuracies affecting important issues. Summary fact sheets (with URLs) citing peer-reviewed studies and clinical results are mostly used in this regard, because listing all the references here would make this review extremely long. There are over 1000 peer-reviewed studies referenced, supporting the premise of the fact sheets, which are contrary to the statements in the authors' paper. On page 1731 they write: "Fish are main if not the only source of methyl mercury" and on page 1733 that "among humans, the sole source of exposure to methyl mercury is the consumption of fish and sea mammals." This is wrong and contrary to research and clinical experience. People with no exposure to fish or sea mammals can easily be found by test to have significant levels of methyl mercury in the blood, saliva, and brain, etc. if they have exposure to other forms of mercury. Dental amalgam is documented to be the largest source of mercury in most people; and other forms of mercury are methylated in the body by bacteria, yeast, and other methyl donors- making amalgam the largest source of methyl mercury in many. There is a lot of documentation available:
Under mercury vapor they don’t point out that dental amalgam is the largest source of mercury vapor in most and that the studies that they show aren’t relevant to this exposure. There is a huge amount of documentation regarding the common adverse health effects from exposure due to dental amalgam including over 60,000 clinical cases of recovery from over 30 chronic conditions after amalgam replacement. Documentation is available at They don’t mention that thimerosal/ethyl mercury are documented to be a major cause/factor of autism, ADHD, eczema, etc. or discuss the evidence - documentation at They state that chelation is not effective for methyl mercury and ethyl mercury poisoning; which is contrary to evidence and experience: For ethyl mercury: and extensive other clinical experience and studies from NIH Medline for methyl mercury. The fact that some people with acute exposures are irreparably harmed doesn’t warrant blanket statements that chelation isn’t effective in general. Thousands are treated with positive results by doctors throughout the country each year by many variations of what would be called chelation or detoxification. Since the mercury forms: vapor, inorganic, organic are being converted back and forth continuously in the body, one can’t neatly split exposure and treatment results between forms- though there are known differences in general effects and mechanisms of actions of the different forms. On page 1732 they state wrongly regarding mercury exposure from amalgam that: "it was realized that the actual inhaled dose was small, due to the small volume of the oral cavity." This statement is strange since they go on to say dental amalgam is the chief source of exposure to mercury vapor for most. But the fact is that the exposure isn’t small but rather very large and more than the federal health guideline level is well documented in the medical literature from the many studies of mercury excretion in those with amalgam(some of which they later quote). Perhaps the problem is that these researchers do not have experience diagnosing and treating mercury toxicity and are not aware of what it means to talk of a small exposure in something so extremely toxic as mercury. See And the fact is that all sewers and sewer sludge have high (and dangerous levels of mercury) with the largest source being from dental amalgam (dental offices and excretion of those with amalgam). They have a typo in the reference they quote on level of exposure to mercury from amalgam on page 1732. (It should be 5 rather than 8.) On page 1733 they state: "Today’s occupational exposures, such as in the dental office are lower and may lead to mild, reversible effect on the kidney or mild cognitive changes and memory loss." They site only one fairly old reference that didn’t focus on this issue (though it was a good review), even though there are hundreds of studies and clinical investigations that document significant neurological, reproductive, cognitive, and immune effects of dental office exposures. Mark Richardson of Health Canada has estimated that about 20% of the population suffers a subclinical impairment of kidney or CNS function related to amalgam mercury.
Another study used serum blood mercury level to judge body burden, which is well documented to not be reliable for this purpose. None of the studies used reliable measures of body burden, nor did they bother to measure any of the susceptibility measures such as ability to excrete mercury or immune reactivity, which are documented in the literature to be the major factors in who is adversely affected my mercury exposure.
Their statement that "there is no clear evidence supporting the removal of amalgams" is obviously wrong and irresponsible, since many peer-reviewed studies have documented conditions where most who have amalgams replaced recover, and thousands are documented to have recovered from over 30 chronic conditions. On page 1735 the authors in dealing with prenatal exposure focus attention and limit discussion to methyl mercury. But it is well documented in the literature that adverse developmental effects are more common and occur at lower levels for mercury vapor exposure (as from dental amalgam) than for methyl mercury. For example it is well documented that prenatal exposure to thimerosal (rhogam shots) and dental amalgam from mothers are major factors in causation of autism and other children’s neurological developmental conditions.
[The following paragraph is snipped from http://flcv.com/kidshg.html which has the references:] A recent study found that prenatal mercury exposures and susceptibility factors such as ability to excrete mercury appear to be a major factors in those with chronic neurological conditions like autism (86). Infants whose mothers received prenatal Rho D immunoglobulin injections containing mercury thimerosal or whose mother’s had high levels of amalgam fillings had a much higher incidence of autism. While the hair test levels of mercury of infants without chronic health conditions like autism were positively correlated with the number of the mother’s amalgam fillings, vaccination thimerosal exposure, and mercury from fish, the hair test levels of those with chronic neurological conditions such as autism were much lower than the levels of controls and those with the most severe effects had the lowest hair test levels, even though they had high body mercury levels. This is consistent with past experience of those treating children with autism and other chronic neurological conditions(23). Very low levels of exposure have been found to seriously affect relatively large groups of individuals who are immune sensitive to toxic metals(11,35), or have an inability to detoxify metals due to such as deficient sulfoxidation or metallothionein function(18,36,51) or other inhibited enzymatic processes related to detoxification(15-24,30) or excretion of metals(87). Those with the genetic allele ApoE4 protein in the blood have been found to detox metals poorly and to be much more susceptible to chronic neurological conditions than those with types ApoE2 or E3(87).] Note that while hair test mercury level is not a reliable indicator of mercury body burden or mercury toxicity effects in those susceptible to mercury toxicity effects, the hair test results are useful in indicating those with mercury toxicity(23e). Since mercury toxicity affects cell membrane permeability and essential mineral absorption and cellular balance, a pattern of essential mineral imbalances in those with normal diets is an indicator of mercury toxicity. The last section of the paper on thimerosal effects is poorly researched. They state again that "methyl mercury is more potent" than other forms, which is not supported by scientific evidence, as previously seen. All of the forms are extremely toxic and no categorical statement can be supported of this nature. Studies in the previously referenced papers on thimerosal/vaccine effects document that ethyl mercury has toxicity effects of similar magnitude as methyl mercury, and that mercury vapor exposure has developmental effects at lower levels of exposure than methyl mercury. The authors state that since the half life of ethyl mercury in the blood is less than that of methyl mercury, "risks of its damaging either the brain or kidneys would seem remote." However there is no scientific evidence supporting this conclusion and no plausible explanation of why they would think so. Besides the fact that the conclusion of shorter half life in the blood does not imply that body burden is less or decreased, as seen in the previously referenced paper by Haley, Holmes, Blaxill; having a shorter half life in the blood has no proven significance in the degree of developmental damage by a highly toxic neurologic substance. Mercury vapor, which has a far shorter half life in the blood, than the other 2 forms, has the most developmental effects at lower levels of exposure. Back to the top Back to the main page
|
