IUBio

IMPORTANT NEWS - Mercury and Alzhiemers link - NEW EVIDENCE..

pcsol at tcp.co.uk pcsol at tcp.co.uk
Thu Jan 30 09:16:08 EST 1997


reiersol at online.no (Dagfinn Reiersol) wrote:

>The following quote is from The Valley Advocate, December 5, 1996.

>"A team of scientists led by Dr. Boyd Haley recently completed a study
>exposing six laboratory rats to a typical intake of amalgam mercury
>vapor, diluted to account for the size difference between rats and
>humans. To the researchers' astonsihment, every rat developed symptoms
>and brain tissue damage indistinguishable from that of Alzheimer's
>Disease patients. The reseachers then repeated their experiment only
>to find the same results. While the jury is still out for human
>patients, the leader of the research team had seen enough. Dr.
>Bronte's new book The Mercury in Your Mouth: The Truth About 'Silver'
>Dental Fillings quotes Dr. Haley's response to the group's findings.
>'The results of this experiment are terrifying,' he said. 'I'm getting
>the rest of my fillings taken out right now, and I've asked my wife to
>have hers replaced too.'"

>Comment: since ALL the rats developed symptoms and brain damage, there
>will surely be some who do even at lower exposure levels. This means
>that we have a problem even if humans are LESS susceptible than rats.
>From this study and the assumptions usually made in risk assessment,
>even if humans are 100 times less susceptible, amalgam mercury could
>cause AD in a significant number of people.

>If you want follow Dr. Haley's example and have your amalgam fillings
>removed, make sure you do it with the proper safeguards, since amalgam
>removal will increase your mercury exposure temporarily.
>Unfortunately, most dentists don't know how to do this. The IOAMT
>(International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology) has a protocol
>for amalgam removal which can be found at:

>http://www.tiac.net/users/mgold/dental/amalgam/iaomt.txt

>Dr. Haley's response also underlines a dramatic aspect of the dental
>organizations' policy of minimizing, denying and ignoring the risks of
>amalgam. If the dental profession had followed a policy of prudence
>and heeded the early warning signs, they would have allowed people to
>gradually come to understand the risk, and the use of amalgam would
>have declined slowly. With this kind of dramatic research starting to
>appear, there is the possibility that "everyone" will want their
>fillings replaced quickly, and there may not be enough dentists
>available to cope with the demand.


>---------------------------------------------------------------------
>Dagfinn Reiersol    reiersol at online.no
>Oslo, Norway
>---------------------------------------------------------------------

Thanks Dagfinn,
Thats an interesting new development. it could confirm
the already-suspected link between Alzheimers disease and 
low-level Mercury poisoning (leaked from Amalgam fillings)
that I had been looking at...

This is dated Dec 1996 - very recent. I intend to check
the research in more detail,  but I have no reason to
doubt the source. Dr Haleys work is already well known -
he is a member of the University of Kentucky's huge
multi-million $ long-term research project examining
the causes a Alzheimers Disease - there is probably 
no-one more eminent or knowledgable in this field.

Below is my earlier text detailing the already-convincing
evidence linking Alzheimers disease to Mercury.

-------------------------------------------------------------
Q:"The ADA says the recent "California nuns" study proves amalgam is
safe"
-------------------------------------------------------------
The ADA are not keen to talk about the previous studies that
showed well above average Hg levels in the brains of Alzhiemer 
sufferers performed after death.

This study was a sample of approx 100 nuns - statistically,
say, a 0.5% suseptability would go totally unnoticed, drowned
by sampling "noise". 
Quite apart from the other incorrect assumptions - ie.
that nuns would be representitive of the population.
How many nuns chew gum, eat junk food (poor diet
= low glutathione, the bodies defence against Hg)
drink acid soda drinks, sit in front of computer monitors, etc..

I am being deliberately conservative in my choice of % 
- even if it was 0.5%, thats getting on for 1 million 
people in the USA. The sort of symptoms induced by mercury 
poisoning - at the "low end" of the graph - can be subtle. 
It is extremely hard to differentiate between neurological
and psycological symptoms - a recent survey of top neurologists 
showed they got it wrong more than 50% of the time. What chance 
does a busy dentist/doctor stand?

I personally believe this is why psyciatric disorders seem 
to be so prevalent in Western culture - toxicology (not *just*
amalgam, although its probably the biggest single cause) rather
than stress may be at the root of it..
In fact I think the ADA needs to *prove* that serious
amalgam-related-illness conditions run below 0.001% 
(near 2,000 cases US wide) - just because amalgam is so widely used.

Proving a 0.5% tendancy by random sample is very hard - very large 
sample sizes are needed - and proving 0.001% is well nigh impossible.
What work I have done with statistics (in computing)
has shown me just how careful a researcher must be in
building his models. The "nuns" study is a classic
example of a badly constructed model.

It is far better to conduct research on the target groups
(ie measure Hg in brain of alzhiemer patients after death,
compare to norms) - this way much smaller samples are
needed.

Another important factor - any sample taken must be "forced"
in some way, not volentary - otherwise people who are ill 
will just "opt out" of the volentary survey (particularly those 
with neurological conditions) leaving just healthy people
in the survey.

-------------------------------------------------------------
Q:"So, could Mercury from Amalgam cause Alzheimers Disease?"
-------------------------------------------------------------
The original studies that prompted the "nuns" studies definitely
indicated that mercury could be a cause of Alzheimers. For the 
reasons I outlined above, I believe the "nuns" study to be flawed,
and hence this study extracted below (and other similar ones) 
stands unrefuted. No other evidence/research stands to refute it.

Authors: Thompson CM; Markesbery WR; Ehmann WD; Mao YX; Vance DE; 
Title: Regional brain trace-element studies in Alzheimer's disease. 
Address: Department of Chemistry, University of Kentucky, Lexington
40506.  
Journal: Neurotoxicology, 9: 1, 1988 Spring, 1-7 
Alzheimer's disease (AD) brain trace-element imbalances in the 
amygdala, hippocampus and nucleus basalis of Meynert (nbM) are 
found in most cases to be consistent with those previously reported 
in samples derived principally from AD cerebral cortex (Ehmann et 
al., 1986). The elevation of mercury in AD nbM, as compared to 
age-matched controls, is the largest trace-element imbalance observed 
to date in AD brain. In addition to the general confirmation of 
imbalances for Cs, Hg, N, Na, P, and Rb noted previously in 
cerebral cortex samples, imbalances for Fe, K, Sc, and Zn were 
observed in two regions and one region also exhibited imbalances 
for both Co and Se. Persistent imbalances for the univalent cations 
Na, K, Rb and Cs support arguments for a membrane abnormality in AD. 
The data presented here also provide the first comprehensive 
simultaneous multi-element determinations in both control and AD nbM.

Also see:
Autors: Wenstrup D; Ehmann WD; Markesbery WR; 
Title: Trace element imbalances in isolated subcellular fractions 
       of Alzheimer's disease brains. 
Address: Department of Chemistry, University of Kentucky, Lexington. 
Journal: Brain Res, 533: 1, 1990 Nov 12, 125-31


cheers
ade

To learn more about the Amalgam safety issue (or lack of) visit:-
  http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/pcsol


To learn more about the Amalgam safety issue (or lack of) visit:-
  http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/pcsol




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