FDA Dental Materials Panelist Calls For Informed Consent

Dr. Michael Fleming, an International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology dentist, served as a consumer representative on the recent FDA panel reviewing the so called "White Paper" on 'Silver' fillings. Since these fillings are more than 50% mercury is is consumer deception to call them 'silver'. A recent Zogby poll found that 76% of the public was not even aware that mercury is in an amalgam much less that it is the principle component.

Michael feels actually demands that the public be honestly informed about the risks they will be exposed to from having these mercury leaking, teeth cracking, baby killing fillings implanted in their teeth. His recent editorial published for the entire profession to read is reprinted here with permission of Dental Economics.

President's Message

Greetings from your newly installed president.

The International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology’s 20 years of effort in funding primary research into the safety of dentistry had a lot to with the recent decision of the FDA advisory panels on amalgam.

I would like to express to you my deep concern over the issue of amalgam not only as a practicing dentist but a caring human being. It is absolutely important to protect the patient, the staff and the dentist during the mercury/silver filling removal process. Lungs are a prime portal of entry for the elemental mercury vapor and particulate amalgam. Surgical masks do not prevent the inhalation of micron-sized particles of pulverized mercury/silver amalgam fillings. The IAOMT has established simple protocols to protect everyone present. Regrettably, these precautions are routinely ignored by the majority of dentists.

If you are not familiar with patient protection I urge you to carefully review the simple procedures on our web site at http://www.iaomt.org. As a physician, be aware that if you suspect that a client may be experiencing an adverse reaction to mercury and merely direct them to their local dentist you may not be doing them a service. In the Wall Street Journal Rod Mackert, spokesperson for the American Dental Association, warned against removal because a large bolus dose of mercury is released during unprotected mercury/silver filling removal. Since the bolus dose is entirely preventable we concur with Dr. Mackert’s warning but certainly not his conclusion. What he failed to mention is that placement of a mercury/silver filling creates a similar bolus dose of mercury and that mercury exposure continues throughout the life of the filling. Do not needlessly allow harm to come to your patient. Protect them from preventable mercury exposure.

This eNewsletter is most likely our last issue before the March 15-17, 2007 meeting in Tucson Arizona. At that meeting we anticipate the star-studded premier of the FDA Neurology/Dental Panel highlights from the review of mercury/silver fillings IAOMT DVD. We have distilled two days and 48 hours of video to show you why 9 out of 10 neurologists and 4 our of 10 dentists voted to reject the FDA White Paper claiming to review the safety of mercury/silver fillings. You bring the Pizza and we’ll bring the beer. See you in Tucson.

The FDA Panel voted 13/7 for:
2) The draft FDA White paper does not objectively and clearly present the current state of knowledge about the exposure (to mercury) and health effects related to dental amalgam.

3) Given the amount and quality of information available for the draft FDA White Paper, the conclusions (amalgam is safe) are not reasonable.


My best regards,
Dr. Janet S. Stopka President IAOMT

IAOMT eNewsletter Vol. 1 #3

The President’s Message

Is it not, therefore, hypocritical for JAMA to publish
the severely flawed, ethically challenged children's
mercury exposure experiments?
more…

JAMA papers perpetuate the myth

Our physician colleagues at the American Medical Association, sadly and surprisingly, allowed two seriously flawed papers about mercury silver dental fillings to be published in its flagship journal, JAMA, on April 19, 2006
more…

NIDCR funded researchers looked for mercury in all the wrong places

Seven major flaws in the two studies, recently published in JAMA, invalidate the authors’ comparison of children with dental mercury fillings with youngsters who were amalgam free.
more…

IAOMT filed ethical complaints with IRBs of universities whose personnel conducted the children’s mercury exposure study of orphans and indigent children.

On the same day the two children mercury exposure studies above were published, the IAOMT filed 5 ethical complaints with the university Institutional Review Boards responsible for allowing these investigators to violate the very basic principles of informed consent and patient protection during human experiments.
more…

Safe removal of amalgam fillings

Mercury-free dentists have devised strategies to reduce the amount of mercury exposure to both patients and dental staff during amalgam removal. The strategies are the barrier and ventilation techniques as well as the “biological support” nutritional methods that “treat” the anti-oxidant and excretory systems stressed by heavy metal exposure.
more…

The Scientific Case Against Amalgam

Since its introduction early in the 19th century, dental amalgam has been controversial because of its poisonous mercury content. Throughout the years, those defending mercury fillings only could claim that the mercury exposure had to be too small to hurt anyone. Over time, though, a great body of evidence has accumulated showing that mercury is release from amalgam in significant quantities, that it spreads around the body, including from mother to fetus, and that the exposure causes physiological harm. A growing number of dentists, physicians, researchers, citizen activists, politicians, and regulators have concluded that the time has come to consign amalgam to the “dustbin of history.”
more…

President's Message

When I received what was then the latest edition of The Merck Manual, the compendium of differential diagnosis and treatment in internal medicine, I discovered that this centenary edition included a facsimile of the first publication printed in 1899. Recently, out of curiosity, I went to the index of that slender volume and counted 19 different mercury compounds listed for various therapeutic applications. Opening to the index in the 1999 edition, I found only one entry for mercury: Mercury Toxicity. Yet, the American Dental Association, in the manner of a strong trade organization, holds onto this 170-year-old technology through ignorance, deceit and denials.

How can it be that the medical profession has totally removed mercury from its pharmacopoeia in the past 100 years, even belatedly beginning to eliminate thimerosal, the ethyl-mercury preservative, from vaccines, while the dental profession is not far removed from the medieval practice our dental forefathers of shaving silver coins into elemental mercury?

Is it not, therefore, hypocritical of the JAMA to publish the severely flawed children’s amalgam trial (which I refer to as the children’s mercury exposure experiments)? How ironic that the AMA that expresses such concern about mercury in the environment and rejects its use in any form of medication, feels that it finds “safe haven” in the mouths of our patients.

To stretch the time line of one of Dr. Boyd Haley’s aphorisms: “is this what it’s like to have a 170-year-long argument with the town drunk?”

Opinion’s of IAOMT President Terrence Messerman <TMesserman@aol.com>

Smoking Teeth

Safe removal of amalgam fillings

Mercury-free dentists have devised strategies to reduce the amount of mercury exposure to both patients and dental staff during amalgam removal. The strategies are the barrier and ventilation techniques as well as the “biological support” nutritional methods that “treat” the anti-oxidant and excretory systems stressed by heavy metal exposure.

Full Article in Adobe Acrobat format from link:

The Scientific Case Against Amalgam

Dental amalgam has been controversial ever since it was introduced, early in the nineteenth century, because of its mercury content. People of the Napoleonic era knew full well that mercury was poisonous, and the best that anyone has ever claimed about amalgam is that the mercury exposure may be too small to hurt anyone. Over time, though, a great body of evidence has accumulated showing that mercury is release from amalgam in significant quantities, that it spreads around the body, including from mother to fetus, and that the exposure causes physiological harm.

Full Article in Adobe Acrobat format from link: