If you look at the papers that Lyn Patrick uses to draw conclusions about ALA chelation you will find flaws in the studies and therefore there are flaws in the conclusions. Andy has mentioned these papers in the autism mercury forum - and I don't see what is so hard for the layman to understand. One was a study using dead kidneys. This is Andy's comment:
One study was about lead chelation with ALA so no conclusions about ALA and mercury chelation can be drawn from that one. The other studies used single doses of ALA and that doesn't take into account the fact that chelation is a process not just a one time shot. One study that is often referred to was using huge doses of DMSA and DMPS and comparing results from those to minuscule doses of ALA. There is a Russian paper that Andy has referred to in the past in autism mercury archives that people should really find a translation of and read if they have any doubts about using ALA alone for mercury chelation. Russian papers aren't going to show up in PubMed but that doesn't mean that they aren't important.
And then there are the positive reports from people who have chelated with ALA alone, using Andy's protocol, and recovered. One cannot ignore those.