Blaylock - Mercury Amalgam Cover-Up by InvisiGyrl Blog entry

Blog: Chronic Experts
by InvisiGyrl

Blaylock - Mercury Amalgam Cover-Up

Thus begins a lesson in how to cover-up a major health disaster using scientific, “evidence-based” methods meant to impress the media and public at large.

Date: 3/3/2005 7:29:16 AM ( 19 y ) ... viewed 2185 times

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By Russell L. Blaylock, M.D.

Recently, I reported on the methodology and machinations involved in vaccine-related injury cover-ups by the top researchers in science and government at the Simpsonwood Conference on Thimerosal in vaccines.

Just as the smoke has cleared, however, a brand new scandal has recently come to light concerning the safety of mercury contained in dental amalgams, which is of equal magnitude and again shows the modus operandi of the government/elitist scientists’ coalition. The official name of the report is “Dental Amalgam: A Scientific Review and Recommended Public Health Service Strategy for Research, Education and Regulation.”

This report is described as the Trans-agency Working Group on the Health Effects of Dental Amalgam, which included representatives of the National Institutes of Health, the Center for Devices and Radiological Health of the FDA, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Office of the Chief Dental Officer of the Public Health Service.

These organizations requested the Life Sciences Research Office (LSRO) as a subcontractor of BETAH Associates undertake an independent third-party review of the topic. BETAH received the contract from the Department of Health and Human Services without bidding, as is proscribed by law. To carry out this mandate, they were asked to consider peer-reviewed, primary scientific and medical literature published between 1996-2003 addressing this specific question.

Thus begins a lesson in how to cover-up a major health disaster using scientific, “evidence-based” methods meant to impress the media and public at large. (In this review, I will consider only the Executive Summary, which was written for the media and the lay public.)

Overwhelm Them with Your Credentials

Students of this methodology will always be impressed by the length the designers of these “independent studies” will go to convince the public and, particularly, the media they have assembled the world’s greatest experts to study the matter in question. As we saw in the case of the Simpsonwood Vaccine Study, they assembled similar “experts” to study the effects of mercury in vaccines, only to find out their experts were not so expert after all and that many of the true experts were not invited.

In the Executive Summary, they list the types of experts collected for this “independent study.” Invited were experts in the fields of immunotoxicology, immunology, allergy, neurobehavioral toxicology, neurodevelopment, pediatrics, developmental and reproductive toxicology; toxicokinetics and modeling; epidemiology; pathology; and general toxicology, all very impressive titles. Yet, most critical in all these specialties is their expertise in the area of mercury toxicology, pathology and developmental pathology. Or, perhaps, a lack of it...

You can be a world expert in immunology and not know a single thing about mercury toxicity, especially on neuronal and neuroglial systems. It is interesting to note, in the Executive Summary they state, “No member of the Expert Panel expressed a public opinion regarding the potential adverse effects of dental amalgam prior to or during the review period.”

While this might imply impartiality, it can also indicate a lack of expertise in the area of mercury and its pathophysiological effects. One would think that, if you were truly an expert in the field, sometime along the line you would have expressed an opinion publicly either on its safety or its danger. Even so, I will accept this as an expression of impartiality since the names and institutions of the review panel are not disclosed in the Executive Summary.

Now let’s look at some of the deceptive tactics these studies use.

Control the Information

As stated, the literature review was limited between January 1, 1996 and December 2003. Immediately, one has to ask the most obvious question: Why were the dates of the literature limited?

In fact, a number of very important studies concerning the immunological, as well as other addressed, effects of mercury appeared just before the beginning date. For example, Queiroz and Perlingeiro published a study in 1994 on the immunologic effects of inorganic mercury (the same kind found in dental amalgam) in workers exposed to mercury. 1 At least a half-dozen similar studies on both animals and humans were eliminated by this date-limitation method.

Similarly, a significant number of studies were excluded that concerned the effects of mercury on the brain. This was not only done by using an exclusionary dating limit, but also by severely restricting the types of studies that would be accepted. Out of some 961 studies found within these dates, more than two-thirds were excluded.

Dr. Boyd Halley’s studies were excluded, even though he has conducted some of the most important research on the biochemical effects of inorganic mercury, specifically from dental amalgams. His results have never been refuted.

In addition, Dr. Halley has proven, beyond any challenge, that mercury vapor is released from dental amalgam fillings in large concentrations, even in fillings more than 20 years old. Also, he has proven that mercury -- even in very low-concentrations -- can produce the very same pathological change seen in Alzheimer’s disease (neurofibrillary tangles). 2

It is interesting the “expert panel” excluded studies on organic mercury, citing the difference in toxicokinetics as the reason. They point out that they failed to find quantifiable amounts of inorganic mercury being converted to methylmercury in the body, which is strange since Charleston and Body reported the conversion of methylmercury to inorganic mercury within the brain’s microglial cells. 3 This study was reported in the 1996 issue of Neurotoxicology, an issue that should have been included in the study’s time frame.

What this means: Inorganic mercury can produce the very same damage in brain cells as methylmercury, which totally refutes their assertion. Likewise, other studies have shown (in 1995) that a portion of the inorganic mercury in dental amalgam is converted into methylmercury in the tissues of the mouth.

Another tactic was to exclude all studies in which mercury body burdens were measured by means other than urine mercury levels, This excluded all studies using saliva, hair and nail clippings, all of which have shown to be reliable. By doing so, they were able to exclude a major smoking gun. That is, research showing a baby’s hair mercury level correlated with the number of dental amalgam fillings in the mother.

Imply Unsupported “Facts”

Throughout this report, the authors imply that only chewing nicotine gum significantly increases mercury vapor release in the mouth. The purpose of this is to remove any concerns by those who chew ordinary gum. In fact, a number of studies have shown blood levels and oral levels of mercury are substantially increased by chewing ordinary gum and even a piece of rubber tubing. Hot liquids or foods also have been proven to substantially raise oral mercury vapor levels as well as blood levels.

Another example is their insistence that there are insufficient studies to indicate a correlation between mercury exposure from dental amalgams and human disease, especially autoimmunity. While recognizing allergic hypersensitivity in some individuals, they insist it is rare. A recent study completed just after their literature 2003 cut-off period, states patients with certain autoimmune diseases such as lupus, multiple sclerosis, autoimmune thyroiditis and allergic disease “often show increased lymphocyte stimulation by low doses of inorganic mercury in vitro.” 4

In their study, they removed amalgams from a group of 35 patients with autoimmune diseases and replaced them with composites. When examined six months later, 71 percent had shown an improvement in health, with the greatest improvement in those with multiple sclerosis. Their conclusion: “Mercury-containing amalgam may be an important risk factor for patients with autoimmune diseases.”

A similarly glaring manipulation of reality occurred when the writers of the Executive Summary stated the following:

In total, these studies failed to support the hypothesis that Hg0 (mercury vapor) exposure, at the levels released by dental amalgam interferes with human neuropsychological function or acts as an etiological factor for the neurodegenerative diseases-Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease.

This is a total lie based on cleverly worded distortions of study conclusions and the elimination of studies that really show a strong correlation.

In fact, a 1998 study by the prestigious Battelle Centers for Public Health Research found that mercury levels commonly seen among dental professionals with very low levels of mercury vapor exposure, demonstrated alterations in mood, motor function and cognition (thinking). 5 These, they emphasized, were symptoms that can be subtle and missed by conventional neuropsychological testing. These results have been confirmed by a number of other independent laboratories and reported in peer-reviewed journals.

As for the scientific connection to neurodegenerative disorders, a number of such studies abound in the literature. One of the most impressive lines of evidence is one pursued by Pendergrass and Haley in a 1997 study published in the journal Neurotoxicology.

In their study, they showed concentrations of mercury vapor, known to be released by dental amalgams in people, increased mercury concentrations in rat brains from 11- to 47-fold higher than controls. At this level, the mercury produced the identical lesions seen in Alzheimer’s disease (neurofibrillary tangles) by interfering with normal tubulin maintenance.

A second mechanism of producing neurodegenerative diseases is even more impressive, called excitotoxicity. Excitotoxicity, a mechanism by which excess glutamate accumulates outside the neuron, thereby leading to death of the cell by an excitation process, has been linked to mercury neurotoxicity as early as 1993. 6 More recent studies have confirmed this mechanism and clearly demonstrate, even in concentrations below that known to cause cell injury, mercury can paralyze the glutamate removal mechanism, leading to significant damage to synapses, dendrites and neurons themselves.

This glutamate removal mechanism is critical to brain protection. Additionally, mercury in very low concentrations increases glutamate release, primarily by stimulating the brain’s immune cell, the microglia. Chronic microglial activation, as seen with mercury exposure, has been solidly linked to all of the neurodegenerative diseases.

At least two studies have shown that mercury increases the toxicity of glutamate. 7,8 Interestingly, excess glutamate can also produce the same neurofibrillary tangles seen with mercury exposure.

In essence, we have the mechanism by which these diseases are produced by mercury vapor and know that it can occur in concentrations commonly found in people having dental amalgam fillings. The reason even more people are not devastated by these diseases: A number of nutritional and genetic factors offer substantial protection. For example, selenium has been shown to significantly lower brain mercury levels and reduce its toxicity.

mercola.com