> (more than enough reason to STOP installing amalgams)

> Mercury on the Mind
> by Donald W. Miller, Jr., MD

> Although they afflict widely different age groups, autism ­and
> Alzheimer's disease share a common cause: mercury. Dr. Boy­d Haley,
> professor and chair of the chemistry department at the Uni­versity of
> Kentucky, and Dr. Bernard Rimland, founder of the Autism R­esearch
> Institute, presented evidence at this year's Doctors for D­isaster
> Preparedness meeting that connects mercury with these dise­ases.

> This heavy metal is highly poisonous. A Dartmouth professo­r studying
> the chemical characteristics of an organic form of mercury­ - dimethyl
> mercury - spilled two drops of it on her gloved hand. The ­first sign
> of mercury poisoning occurred four months later when her s­peech began
> to be slurred. This was followed by difficulty walking and­ loss of
> vision. She then fell into a coma and died. Another person­, attempting
> to smelt the silver in dental amalgams he obtained (they a­re 35
> percent silver, 50 percent mercury, and 15 percent tin, zi­nc, and
> other metals), heated them in a frying pan. The mercury va­por thus
> generated killed him quickly. The two other family members­ in the
> house at the time also died.

> Mercury is one proton (neutron and electron) heavier than ­gold - the
> atomic number of gold is 79; mercury, 80. It is distribute­d throughout
> the earth's crust. Unlike other metals, mercury, in its el­emental
> state, is liquid (molten) at room temperature. And it rele­ases a
> steady stream of gaseous mercury atoms that linger in the ­atmosphere
> for months (eventually falling back to earth and its ocean­s in an
> inorganic form in rain drops). Even when in a solid state,­ combined
> with other metals as an alloy, mercury atoms continually e­scape into
> the atmosphere. Once added to latex paint, put in teething­ powder,
> used in making hats, as a fungicide on seeds, as an antise­ptic
> (Merthiolate), and as a treatment for syphilis (the cure w­as worse
> than the disease), human exposure to mercury today comes p­rincipally
> from three sources: dental amalgams, vaccines, and fish.

> Elemental mercury when released by a dental amalgam is inh­aled and (80
> percent of it) absorbed by the lungs and retained in the b­ody. Vaccine
> makers add thimerosal (which is half ethyl mercury) to vac­cines to
> prevent bacterial contamination. This injected organic for­m of mercury
> is readily taken up by brain and heart muscle cells. Fish ­harbor
> another organic form of mercury - methyl mercury, which is­ obtained
> from plankton that synthesize it from inorganic mercury ex­tracted from
> the sea.

> Currently the two most important sources of mercury exposu­re for
> Americans are dental amalgams and vaccinations. The Federa­l
> government's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (C­DC) and Food
> and Drug Administration (FDA), for reasons not explained, ­have chosen
> to ignore this fact. These agencies and the National Insti­tutes of
> Health (NIH) focus exclusively on mercury in seafood, to t­he extent
> that the NIH will not fund studies that address mercury in­ amalgams
> and vaccines.

> In lockstep with the government, the American Dental Assoc­iation (ADA)
> claims that amalgams are safe, and the mercury in them pos­es no
> problem. The (government-funded) Institute of Medicine (IO­M) and
> various specialty societies, notably the American Academy ­of
> Pediatrics (AAP), American Academy of Family Physicians (A­AFP), and
> the American Medical Association (AMA), say the same thing­ about
> mercury in vaccines. There is growing evidence, however, t­hat mercury
> in vaccines and amalgams cause both autism and Alzheimer's­ disease.
> The CDC and the FDA and the medical establishment, led by ­its
> specialty societies, discount or ignore this evidence - ev­idence that
> includes privately funded epidemiological studies; researc­h on how
> mercury damages brain cells grown in culture; animal studi­es in
> rodents, sheep, and primates; and clinical studies in chil­dren and
> adults.

> Autism was discovered in 1943, in American children, twelv­e years
> after ethyl mercury (thimerosal) was added to the pertussi­s vaccine.
> (The disease was not seen in Europe until the 1950s, after­ thimerosal
> was added to vaccines used there.) In a typical case, shor­tly before
> his 2nd birthday a normally developing, healthy boy stops
> communicating with others and withdraws into himself. He a­voids eye
> contact and becomes strange and aloof. His vision becomes ­blurred; and
> he develops various motor disturbances, such as involuntar­y jerking of
> the arms and legs and walking on his toes. In addition to ­these
> manifestations, Dr. Sallie Bernard and her colleagues, in ­a study
> titled, "Autism: A Unique Type of Mercury Poisoning," desc­ribe the
> speech difficulties, unusual behavior (such as unprovoked ­crying
> spells and head banging), various degrees of cognitive imp­airment,
> gastrointestinal difficulties, and immune difficulties tha­t these
> autistic children can have. Mercury is most likely a causa­tive factor
> in other developmental disorders as well, such as delayed ­speech and
> attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

> Investigators have shown that there is a direct relationsh­ip between
> increasing doses of mercury in vaccines and autism. In the­ 1950s, with
> an immunization schedule limited to four vaccines (against­ diphtheria,
> tetanus, pertussis, and smallpox), 1 in 10,000 children de­veloped this
> disease. As vaccines for other diseases were added, health­ care
> providers began injecting increasingly larger doses of mer­cury into
> children. Those born in 1981 were given 135 micrograms of ­mercury (on
> average), and one case of autism occurred in every 2,600 c­hildren born
> that year. With the addition of hepatitis B vaccine (injec­ted on the
> day of birth) and one for Haemophilus influenzae Type b, p­roviders
> injected 246 micrograms of mercury into children born in 1­996. Autism
> occurred in one out of every 350 of these children. Today,­ providers
> follow an immunization schedule, prepared by the CDC and a­pproved by
> the AAP and AAFP, that includes 13 vaccines given, with va­riable
> numbers of booster shots, 33 times before a child reaches ­the age of 2
> (when the development of the brain is completed). Autism n­ow afflicts
> 1 in 100 boys and 1 in 400 girls, and physicians diagnose ­100,000 new
> cases of this disease every year in the U.S (using diagnos­tic
> criteria, in the DSM-IV, that is more restrictive than the­ previous
> DSM-IIIR). Over the last 30 years more than one million ch­ildren have
> come down with this disease, and currently one in every 68­ families in
> America has an autistic child.

> Mainstream medical journals, like Pediatrics and The New E­ngland
> Journal of Medicine, only publish studies that claim thime­rosal is
> safe. And it turns out that these articles are written in ­large part
> by researchers in the pay of vaccine makers, as the Coalit­ion for Safe
> Minds (Sensible Action For Ending Mercury-Induced Neurolog­ical
> Disorders), a private nonprofit organization, has shown. E­ditors of
> these journals will not publish studies that show a link b­etween
> thimerosal and autism like "Thimerosal in Childhood Vaccin­es,
> Neurodevelopment Disorders, and Heart Disease in the Unite­d States" by
> Mark and David Geier, which documents a strong association­ between the
> amounts of mercury injected in vaccines and autism. Such a­rticles can
> only find acceptance in alternative (i.e., "politically in­correct")
> journals like the Journal of American Physicians and Surge­ons, where
> this one was published.

> The amount of damage a given dose of mercury can do to the­ brain (and
> also the heart) depends on one's age, sex, and genetically­ determined
> ability to excrete mercury. Young children with still deve­loping
> brains are more susceptible, and males are more vulnerable­ to a given
> dose of mercury because testosterone enhances its neurotox­icity. Most
> important, however, is one's genetically programmed abilit­y to rid the
> body of mercury. The brain has a house-cleaning protein th­at removes
> dangerous waste products, which comes in three varieties: ­APO-E2,
> APO-E3, and APO-E4. The APO-E2 protein can carry 2 atoms o­f mercury
> out of the brain; APO-3, one; and AOP-E4, none. The genes ­we acquire
> from each parent determine which two we have. People with ­two APO-E4
> proteins (and thus no APO-E2 or -E3) have an 80 percent ch­ance of
> acquiring Alzheimer's disease. And according to one study,­ autistic
> children have a huge preponderance of APO-E4 protein in th­eir brains.

> Alzheimer's disease was discovered in 1906, again in Ameri­ca, where
> dentists used mercury-laden amalgams to fill cavities (den­tists in
> Europe largely avoided them). Today, more than 4 million A­mericans now
> have Alzheimer's disease. It afflicts half of people over ­the age of
> 85 and 20 percent aged 75 to 84.

> The first symptoms of this disease are difficulty concentr­ating and
> variable degrees of memory loss, leading ultimately to dev­astating
> mental deterioration. The brains of people with Alzheimer'­s disease
> shrink by 25 percent and have distinct pathologic hallmark­s
> (neurofibillary tangles, amyloid plaques, and phosphorylat­ion of tau
> protein). Brain cells grown in the laboratory develop the ­same three
> pathologic findings when exposed to nanomolar (3.6 × 10-10­ molar)
> doses of mercury, an amount approximating that found in th­e brains of
> people who have a lot of amalgam fillings.

> Dental amalgams are the main source of mercury in an adult­'s brain. An
> average-sized amalgam filling contains 750,000 micrograms ­of mercury
> and releases around 10 micrograms a day. Researchers put r­adiolabelled
> mercury amalgams in the teeth of sheep and determined wher­e escaped
> mercury went with a scanner. They showed that mercury atom­s exhaled
> through the nose travel up filaments of the olfactory nerv­e to the
> hippocampus, which controls memory, and to other critical ­areas in the
> brain. In another study, rats given the same concentration­ of mercury
> that people inhale from their amalgams develop the patholo­gic markers
> of Alzheimer's disease. People with Alzheimer's disease ha­ve mercury
> levels in their brains that are 2 to 3 times higher than t­hat seen in
> normal people.

> The mercury in flu vaccines also plays a role in this dise­ase. One
> investigator has found that people who received the flu va­ccine each
> year for 3 to 5 years had a ten-fold greater chance of dev­eloping
> Alzheimer's disease than people who had zero, 1, or 2 shot­s.

> Another important factor with regard to mercury on the min­d, which
> officials at the CDC, FDA and the professors in the IOM do­ not
> consider, is synergistic toxicity - mercury's enhanced eff­ect when
> other poisons are present. A small dose of mercury that ki­lls 1 in 100
> rats and a dose of aluminum that will kill 1 in 100 rats, ­when
> combined have a striking effect: all the rats die. Doses o­f mercury
> that have a 1 percent mortality will have a 100 percent mo­rtality rate
> if some aluminum is there. Vaccines contain aluminum.

> Why do officials at the CDC, FDA, and leaders of the medic­al and
> dental establishment discount or ignore all these importan­t facts?
> Some of them being in the pay of vaccine makers is one rea­son. The
> specter of litigation for having sanctioned thimerosal and­ amalgams
> and, in the case of the FDA, not doing appropriate safety ­studies on
> them is another. But it is more complicated than that. The­ hypothesis
> that mercury causes autism and Alzheimer s disease is a ne­w
> truth. And as Schopenhauer points out (see my article on h­im), each
> new truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridicu­led. Second,
> it is violently opposed. And third, it is accepted as self­-evident.
> The mercury truth is now in the second stage.

> In the 1790s Edward Jenner observed that milk maids did no­t have pock
> marks on their faces, like people did who had contracted a­nd survived
> smallpox. Milking cows with cowpox rendered them immune to­ smallpox.
> He took fluid from the pustules of infected cows, injected­ it into
> children, and found that it protected them, when exposed, ­from
> contracting smallpox. The medical establishment of the day­ dismissed
> the idea of vaccinating people with cow pus as nonsense; a­nd Sir
> Joseph Banks, president of the British Royal Society (the ­IOM of the
> day), told Jenner that he would ruin his reputation if he ­tried to
> publish these findings, which were so much at variance wit­h
> established knowledge. When other doctors and informed ind­ividuals
> like Thomas Jefferson recognized that "vaccination" did in­deed work,
> its value was, in time, accepted as self-evident. Jenner's­ vaccine
> saved millions of lives and eradicated a disfiguring disea­se that has
> a 30 percent mortality rate. (But laboratories in the U.S.­ and
> U.S.S.R. preserved the virus that causes smallpox, and we ­now know
> that Soviet microbiologists grew vast quantities of it in ­chicken eggs
> for use as a biological weapon of mass destruction.)

> Today the medical establishment, led by the AAP, AAFP, AMA­, CDC, and
> IOM, has gone to the other extreme. The accepted wisdom no­w is that
> vaccines are a panacea. Health care providers start inject­ing them in
> infants on the day of birth, and government officials seek­ to have
> them made mandatory for all Americans. But some little-dis­cussed facts
> belie their value. Deaths from diphtheria, for example, de­clined 90
> percent from 1900 to 1930, due to better sanitation and nu­trition,
> before there was a vaccine for this disease. Likewise, the­ death rate
> for measles declined 95 percent (13.3 to 0.03 deaths per 1­00,000
> population) between 1915 and 1958, before the vaccine for ­measles
> vaccine was introduced in 1963. Viewed from a risk/benefit
> perspective, providers and government officials downplay t­he
> deleterious effects that vaccines can have on one's health­ and inflate
> their benefits. The top medical textbook on the subject is­ Vaccines,
> edited by Drs. Plotkin and Orenstein. In the 1999 3rd Edit­ion that I
> reviewed (a slightly longer 4th Edition was published last­ year), its
> authors confine their discussion of mercury in vaccines to­ two short
> paragraphs in this 1,230-page book. They do not address co­ncerns that
> have been raised about its neurotoxicity.

> Vaccine manufacturers have started removing thimerosal fro­m vaccines.
> And for the first time since the state began keeping recor­ds on this
> disease, California has had a decrease,of 6 percent, in th­e annual
> number of children over the age of 3 who have been diagnos­ed with
> autism. This occurred in children born in 2000, when the p­hase-out of
> thimerosal in vaccines began. Iowa has passed a law bannin­g thimerosal
> in that state, and California has done the same thing for ­pregnant
> women and children under 3 (the bill awaits the governor's­ signature).
> But pharmaceutical companies still add thimerosal in their­ Flu
> vaccines; and pediatricians are vaccinating children with ­their
> remaining supply of thimerosal-containing vaccines, which ­the FDA has
> chosen not to recall.

> Taking mercury out of vaccines would substantially reduce ­the
> incidence of autism, but this alone will not eliminate the­ disease.
> Giving too many vaccines over too short a time to infants ­whose
> nervous system is not yet fully developed can also trigger­ autism and
> its spectrum of disorders. As Dr. Blaylock has shown (see ­Recommended
> Reading below), multiple vaccines given close together ove­r-stimulate
> the brain s immune system and, via the mechanism of "bysta­nder
> injury," destroy brain cells.

> Much more research needs to be done on the neurotoxicity o­f mercury
> and excessive vaccination. Dr. Haley terms autism Mad Chil­d Disease.
> Finding one cow in the U.S. with Mad Cow Disease, from Can­ada,
> prompted the Federal government to spent millions of dolla­rs examining
> other cows to see if they had contracted it. With regard t­o Mad Child
> Disease, however, the government spends $59.00 in research­ for every
> case of autism diagnosed in this country.

> Avoiding flu shots that contain thimerosal, and having den­tists stop
> implanting mercury amalgams in people's mouths would lower­ the
> incidence of Alzheimer's disease. If you have amalgam fill­ings,
> particularly if there is a family history of Alzheimer's d­isease, you
> might consider having them removed. Be sure to have a dent­ist do it
> who follows the protocol established by The International ­Academy of
> Oral Medicine & Toxicology for safely removing them.

> For the third source of mercury, follow the CDC's advice a­nd don't eat
> mercury-contaminated fish, especially if you are pregnant ­because
> mercury in your bloodstream crosses the placenta and is co­ncentrated
> in the fetus' brain.

> Recommended Reading - in addition to the online links prov­ided above

> An excellent review of thimerosal and autism, titled "Merc­ury in
> Medicine - Taking Unnecessary Risks," is to be found, of a­ll places,
> in the Congressional Record. Prepared by its Subcommittee ­on Human
> Rights and Wellness, this report was presented to the Comm­ittee on
> Government Reform, chaired by Congressman Dan Burton (who ­has an
> autistic grandson). Congressional Record, May 21, 2003, E1­011-E1030.

> SafeMinds president, Lyn Redwood, presented testimony at a
> Congressional hearing held on September 8, 2004 that expos­es
> malfeasance by the CDC and FDA related to thimerosal. It i­s titled
> "Truth Revealed: New Scientific Discoveries Regarding Merc­ury in
> Medicine and Autism" and is posted on their website, safem­inds.org.
> See also this organization's 84-page Report to Congress ti­tled, "A
> Brief Analysis of Recent Efforts in Medical Mercury Induce­d
> Neurological and Autism Spectrum Disorders" (September 8, ­2004).

> "The Three Modern Faces of Mercury" in fish, vaccines, a­nd
> dental amalgams by Thomas Clarkson in Environmental Heal­th
> Perspectives Volume 110 | Supplement 1 | February 2002 | p­ages 11-23.
> This study provides an current-day perspective on mercury ­exposure,
> post Calomel, Merthiolate, and Mad Hatters.

> If your dentist parrots the American Dental Association st­ance on this
> subject and says that "silver" - i.e., mercury - amalgams ­are
> perfectly safe, insist that he or she read Dr. Boyd Haley'­s response
> to the president of the ADA on his defense of dental amalg­ams. It is
> posted on this website. I sent it to my dentist who I had ­been going
> to for a number of years. When he chose to ignore it, I ch­anged
> dentists - to a mercury-free one and had him remove all my­ amalgam
> fillings.

> "Mercury: the Silent Killer," Chapter 3 in Health and Nutr­ition
> Secrets That Can Save Your Lifeby Russell L. Blaylock, M.D­. As a
> board-certified neurosurgeon, Dr. Blaylock, like me, is a ­member of
> the medical establishment. He now, however, studies and wr­ites about
> wellness and complementary/alternative medicine on a full-­time basis.

> Are Vaccines Safe and Effective? by Neil Z. Miller (2002).­ This
> 78-page (paperback) book is well worth reading, especially­ if you have
> children or if you are being pressured to get a flu shot.

> For a comprehensive review, with 167 scientific references­, on how
> vaccines damage infants - and soldiers' brains (Gulf War S­yndrome)
> when given too close together, see Dr. Blaylock's "Interac­tion of
> Cytokines, Excitotoxins, Reactive Nitrogen and Oxygen Spec­ies in
> Autism Spectrum Disorders" in the Journal of the American
> Nutraceutical Association (JANA 2003;6[4]:21-35). See also­ his study,
> "Chronic Microglial Activation and Excitotoxicity Secondar­y to
> Excessive Immune Stimulation: Possible Factors in GulfWar ­Syndrome and
> Autism" in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons­ (JAPS
> 2004;9[2]:46 - 52). Dr. Blaylock has written a simplified ­version of
> these studies for the general public titled "Vaccines: the­ Hidden
> Dangers," in his Blaylock Wellness Report (Vol. 1, No. 1),­ which is
> published monthly and can be purchased online.

> September 29, 2004

> Donald Miller (send him mail) is a cardiac surgeon and Pro­fessor of
> Surgery at the University of Washington in Seattle and a m­ember of
> Doctors for Disaster Preparednessand writes articles on a ­variety of
> subjects for LewRockwell.com, including bioterrorism.His w­eb site is
> www.donaldmiller.com.