DAMS Leaders Picket the Virginia Dental Association Annual Meeting

By Marie Flowers
Vinton, VA

On September 9th and 10th of 2004, Linda Cifelli and Anne Ferreira,
DAMS Coordinators from Williamsburg, VA and I picketed the annual
meeting of the Virginia Dental Association in Norfolk, Virginia. The
meeting was held in the Waterside Convention Center, which is part of
the Waterside Marriot Hotel on Main Street.

We arrived on Thursday morning carrying signs stating, "Avoid
Dentists Who Use Mercury Fillings" with www.MercuryPoisoned.com 
prominently displayed. On the flip side was, "Dentists Don't Tell
You 'Silver' Amalgam Fillings are 50% Mercury."

Another poster said, "Poor Kids on Medicaid Only Receive Mercury
Fillings," and the flipside read, "Stop Poisoning our Kids with
Mercury Dental Fillings," with the DAMS website, www.amalgam.org at
the bottom.

Linda had a sign that stated, "Dentists Get Poisoned Too."

I picked up three Halloween skulls from the Dollar Store to take with
me. I had one skull velcroed onto the top of my stick above my sign.
The wind was whipping and the signs were twirling. In the afternoon,

the head fell off the stick into a water puddle in the street. I knew
I had to find a better way to display the skulls to let the people
know how deadly mercury was.

Linda stood across the street from the hotel in front of a barber
shop while I stood on the corner of Main and another busy street on
the same side as the hotel.  The barber offered us free coffee and
said we could use his bathroom or leave signs in his office. Anne
went into the hotel to see what was going on and was able to get a
copy of the schedule of the meeting which also included pictures and
descriptions of the scheduled speakers,  

One of the hotel personnel came out and told me I would have to move
because I was standing on their property. I had been talking to a
pedestrian about mercury dental fillings and he spoke up in my
defense stating, "No this is a public sidewalk." I decided to go
across the street in front of the deli to avoid confrontation, and
also figured the dentists could see us better across the street
anyway. Some dentists were checking into the hotel, and unloaded
their cars as we stood across the street with our signs.

We passed out lots of good information sheets about the dangers of
mercury fillings. Some just didn't want to be bothered and one old
lady would say every time she came by, "This is not true what you are
saying. They couldn't be doing this." Others would come up to us and
ask, "Why are you here? What is this all about?"  They would listen
for in-depth information about the toxicity of dental fillings, and
the politics behind the cover-up of the use of these fillings.

The main message we told the public was that "silver" fillings were
50% mercury and only around 25% silver and the dentist didn't have to
tell the patient what he was putting in their mouths or give them a
choice. We stressed that the patient had no informed choice and the
Virginia Dental Association was lying to the public by calling
mercury fillings, "silver." I also stressed that poor children who
went to health clinics didn't have a choice of white fillings on
posterior teeth, but only had mercury.

Anne started us on a chant when the dentists came out of the hotel to
go to the deli for lunch. Some of the dentists would hide their
dentists' identification tags in their pockets when they came by so
we wouldn't know they were dentists. We called out, "Who's got the
lies? The VDA. Who's got the lies? The VDA.  Stop calling the
fillings silver! Call them MER-CU-RY! Who's got the lies? The VDA!"

One older dentist came by and snarled, "That's not true. You could be
sued for saying they are 50% mercury."

I wonder who would sue us? The amalgam manufacturer? They have the
list of ingredients, including the mercury, on their Materials Safety
Data Sheet (MSDS). They don't have anything to hide. They warn
dentists on the MSDS about safety issues concerning the use of
amalgam and say they are not responsible for its use. They put the
use of amalgam strictly onto the dentists.

Some of the younger dentists were responsive to us. Some would say
they no longer used mercury and one dentist thanked Anne for coming.
He said, "Maybe now we can start talking about it."

Talk about it!? Do you mean that the dentists are NOT even talking
about it?

But then I remembered scandals in a church I attended in the '90's
and the "hide-it-under-the-rug mentality of the church leadership who
didn't want to face the sins of the pastor. They didn't want to talk
about it either, even with the facts staring them in their faces. So
human nature being what it is, if a church or a dental association
doesn't want to admit they are poisoning people (spiritually OR
physically), they just don't talk about it, and hope the whole issue
will go away. So much for professional leadership!

It was ironic that the dentist told Anne he was glad we were there
because he was still using mercury in his practice. I wonder what the
gossip was among the dentists for those two days?  I suppose we did
make the meeting a little more interesting.

A female dentist from Hampton, who considered herself to be
a "progressive" dentist, told us that she was mercury-free and that
we were picketing the wrong ones. She said we should picket the
insurance companies so they would start paying for the composite
fillings. She told me the same thing two days in a row. She said we
were just making the dentists look bad.

We thanked her for being mercury free but I pointed out to her
something that Linda Cifelli had mentioned. I said, "Why would
insurance companies pay for a composite filling as long as dentists
keep saying that amalgam fillings are safe and satisfactory? Dentists
just advertise that they use "tooth-colored" fillings, and never once
mention that the amalgam is hazardous, so the insurance companies
would be under the impression that the use of "tooth-colored"
fillings is just a matter of cosmetics. Insurance companies don't pay
for health care that is just cosmetic in most cases, so what would
give them an incentive to pay for non-mercury fillings if the
dentists don't admit that the use of amalgam fillings is dangerous
and patients should use composite fillings because it is a health
issue?

It would be great if DAMS and the dentists in Virginia could unite to
encourage legislation, if possible, or find a way to exert pressure
to get the insurance companies to start paying for composite
fillings. But until the dentists start telling the truth about
amalgam fillings, it may be hard to get insurance companies to pay
for something that the Virginia Dental Association says is only a
cosmetic choice.

When people would pass by, on foot, or in their automobiles, I would
yell, "Do you know that silver fillings are 50% mercury?" Not one
person said they knew this, except for dentists or dental
professionals who would respond, "I know all about it."

We talked with people who represented the companies who supplied
materials for dentists to use. The Densply Caulk Company, who
manufactures amalgam, but was at the meeting to promote the use of a
composite they manufacture, claimed their new composite was as easy
to install as an amalgam filling. One young lady from Densply Caulk
kept saying that people already knew that amalgam was mercury, and
the female "progressive" dentist said that people who came to her
knew that amalgam was mercury- that most people knew it is mercury.
She said her patients asked for composites.

I told the dentist and the Densply Caulk representative that most
people DID NOT know that silver fillings were mercury, so how could
they truly make an informed choice if they didn't know? The
progressive dentists said her clients were professional business
people. She said people in Roanoke might not know it, but in Hampton
they knew.

We talked to some dental assistants and dental hygienists and one
assistant told me that when they gave their patients a choice between
silver fillings and composites, that patients would ask which cost
the most. When they found out that the composites cost the most and
their insurance may not pay for it she said MOST of the patients
would choose the silver. She said that it was the patients who wanted
the silver amalgam.  

I asked her, "Why SHOULD the patients choose the composites when they
DON'T KNOW that the fillings are 50% mercury? They might choose the
composite fillings if they knew that the silver fillings were
mercury, and it was a health issue instead of just a cosmetic issue.
Do you ever call them mercury fillings, or do you just call them
silver fillings?"

She told me, "No we just call them silver or amalgam."

Anne and I talked with a distinguished gentleman from Texas. We
wondered why a dentist would be there from Texas, but I later found
his picture in the VDA magazine showing that he was one of the main
speakers. He said he had been mercury free for years and I shared how
I had been poisoned, and told him that dentists needed to start using
safer protocols while removing mercury fillings. I encouraged him,
and other mercury free dentists that I talked to, to look at the
website of the IAOMT2 and to see their protocol for mercury removal.
He asked Anne about the fluoride issue and Anne was able to share
things with him she had learned while attending IAOMT dental
conventions. He was very open to what we had to say.

When a dentist came by I would ask if he was mercury free, and I had
some good conversations with those mercury-free dentists. One dentist
told us, "As long as we have the old men controlling the VDA, there
will be no change."

I am going to start calling these old men the "old timers."

One dentist asked me if I were a dentist, and when I replied no, he
told me, "then you don't know what you are talking about."  

When a dentist would pass by saying, "It's not true," I would
respond, "I have mercury in my brain. I am poisoned." Then they would
ask, "How do you know you are poisoned?"

Another dentist came by, looked at the skull and said that the
skull's teeth needed composites. Another dentist admitted to me he
had had a brain tumor.

Someone came by and asked which dental products manufacturer hired us
to picket the VDA meeting. He wanted to know if a composite
manufacturer had hired us. We told him that we had not been hired by
anyone, but we paid our own way to this meeting, and that we had just
been poisoned by our dental fillings. I told him we represented the
DAMS organization of people all over the world who had been poisoned.

Several people snapped our pictures from high up on the balcony and
from across the street. One composite manufacturer's representative
thanked us for coming and said we helped them by being there. They
wanted a picture to take back to their company.

Anne and I had a long talk with the wife of one of the "old timers"
on the VDA. She said she had been sick for years with many health
problems including an auto immune disease. She said she had thought
before that maybe her fillings could be causing her problems. Both
her son and her husband were dentists, but she said her husband would
never change. She said her son was more open to change.

We looked in her mouth and she had several gold crowns mixed in there
with mercury fillings. We told her about oral galvanism and told her
to please get the gold crowns out of her mouth and have it done by a
safe biological dentist. We told her if her son contacted the IAOMT
he could learn how to safely remove her gold crowns and mercury
fillings and learn about the biocompatibility of dental materials.

The lady said that if she went to another dentist she wouldn't have
any money left. She said that her husband wouldn't be giving her
money to pay to have dental work done by someone else. We encouraged
her to do her research. I told her of a clinic close to her house
that could check her for mercury toxicity.

She will need all the research she can read and prayer and courage
too. Living in the house with a stubborn pro-amalgam dentist "old
timer" would be a difficult thing to do if you are sick and poisoned
and it is your husband's ideas and the ideas of HIS dental
association that has made you sick.  

The dentist's wife said we had been an answer to prayer. She said the
Lord always sent the right people to her when she needed answers.

The second day I tied one skull around my neck with binding twine,
but then thought of a great way to display another skull with his
eerie teeth grinning. His head was completely filled with a
Styrofoam, so I cut a hole in the base of the skull, stuck a thick
dowel deep into the skull and just carried my little friend around
high on a stick.

By the second day, the merchants across the street from the hotel
were complaining about us standing in front of their businesses and
called the police. By this time the barber no longer wanted us to
leave signs in his barber shop since he "had to live with his
neighbors after we left." I thanked him for his previous kindnesses
to us and removed the extra signs from his shop.

The police came and told us we had to remove the signs we had tied to
trees and around a trashcan. They said the only signs we were allowed
to have were those we carried. So I had to take some signs back to
the car in the parking garage.

I met an elderly man in the garage elevator where I was holding my
skull in my hand. He asked me about the skull and I told him we were
picketing the Virginia Dental Association Meeting about the use of
mercury. I asked him if he was a dentists and he said yes. He
said, "There is nothing to what you are saying. I have used silver
fillings for years and it hasn't hurt anybody."

I asked him, "Sir, how would you know? How many times have people
gotten sick but never thought of their dental work as being a
contributing factor to their condition? And how many doctors think to
look into their patients mouths to look for mercury?"

While we walked the two blocks back to the hotel, I told him I had
been on prednisone previous to my being poisoned, and I was more
susceptible because of my immune system being lowered. I told him
that I had told my dentist I had been on prednisone but he went ahead
and drilled into a filling anyway and let me breathe the vapor. Once
again I explained that dentists need to have a safer protocol in
place while removing fillings, and then maybe so many people wouldn't
be poisoned. I told him dentists needed to take into account people
with a lowered immune system, and those on steroid drugs. Like
another dentists I talked with in the Sam's Club in Roanoke, this
elderly dentists told me, "You are one in a million. Your condition
was unusual."  

I told him, "No sir, many people are harmed by mercury, but many of
them just don't know it." We had a polite conversation and I was very
respectful to him. He went into the hotel, and I went across the
street to hold up my skull and my signs.

The police came again and told us we couldn't stand in one place but
had to keep moving. So we started walking around the streets more.  I
walked up and down the streets with the skull held high. People would
take a strange look at the skull, and then would read the signs. We
had honks and "thumbs up" from people in their cars. Since the
letters were big, they could read the signs from across the street
while waiting for the lights to change.

We had lengthy conversations with taxi drivers. One told me her
sister had experienced some strange symptoms and had been ill after
having lots of dental work done. One man talked to us on Thursday and
promised he would return on Friday to help us carry signs. He took
our information papers with him to distribute in the mall, and called
WAVY Channel 10 and told them to come and do a story on us. We had
sent out press releases, but no one came.

I talked for a long time with a woman who was getting ready to go to
her dentist and have some silver fillings removed. I referred her to
a biological dentist in the Williamsburg area and she was so thankful
she had talked to me so she could avoid exposure to mercury vapor.

So we told many people about mercury dental fillings. We warned them
not to let their regular dentists drill out mercury fillings. We told
them about DAMS. We told them that the Virginia Dental Association
did not want to allow them to have an INFORMED CHOICE about their
dental fillings because the VDA was in Richmond strongly opposing the
Informed Consent Bill (SB 187) we tried to pass in February of 2004.
We told them the VDA spokesman said people already knew that the
silver fillings had mercury because the dentists were already telling
them.

It was then that people's mouths would fall open and say, "Well, I
didn't know."

Like I said before, I did not meet one person on the streets in
Norfolk who knew these fillings contained mercury, unless they were
already in the dental profession. We were not talking to illiterate
people. We talked to military people, business people, shoppers, a
barber, and common people in street clothes, but none told us they
already knew that silver fillings contained mercury.

And the Virginia Dental Association doesn't want them to know. The
Virginia Dental Association just wants to hide their heads in the
sand and pretend that this is not happening.