ATLANTA WSB-TV2 INVESTIGATES: Are Fillings in Your Mouth Toxic?

Here is a jaw dropper from Atlanta WSB-TV2 on May 18, 2015

Atlanta WSB-TV2 Investigates: Are Fillings in Your Mouth Toxic?
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Atlanta WSB-TV2 Investigates: Are Fillings in Your Mouth Toxic?

OLD HARD AND NEW FAST WAYS OF LEARNING ABOUT THE GENOME, THE TOXOME, AND HOME

I learned the old hard way (20+ years of chronic disease), then the new fast way about gene types and toxins: two years discovering biocompatibility issues in dentistry and medical devices, and immersion in the sciences and arts of investigative and scientific research. An economist and ethicist by training, with a new vocation and skill set by life's necessities and the fundamental urge to be well.

What am I learning? Health and chronic disease has a lot to do with methylation, and other basic biochemical and bioelectrical pathways essential for human life, animal life, probably plant life. We are the biome, the toxome, the home. Much as we like to think we are a higher being or species, our higher creative and economic capabilities come back to bite us when we ignore the fundamental economic, social, medical, environmental externalities at the scale of patient, profession, and  local, national and global levels.

It's all about luck in the gene pool, and in the toxins pool.Those with great genes can swill toxins and expel them with ease, and dance and compose magna opi in their 90s. Those with bad luck in methylation, detoxification, and immunological pathways can still be healthy - but only if they avoid toxins like the plague. Because they are ubiquitous, and stick with us given our genetic glitches, we begin the long slow decline, the long sunset, and the long goodbyes much too early, before our time.

But there is hope! We can now learn our gene types and our toxins, separate the bad from the bad, and strengthen the good.The body, brain and psyche has an astonishing capacity to heal itself when, like a computer or a car, we clean out bugs, reboot/reset electrical pathways and get things humming in the right direction again.

After being 25 years clinically older, I am now 25 years clinically younger. At 60, I may live to 101 like my grandmother relatively intact, instead of mid 80s with a horrible last few years like my mom. When my time comes I'd vote for a massive heart attack in my sleep or the ice floe or ocean to reenter the great sea and circle of life from which it began.

There are clinical trials underway in Sweden of a compound that boosts glutathione to help with metals toxicity because the FDA wouldn't grant orphan drug status. People travel even overseas for biologic dentistry because dental plans have no patient protection nor medical necessity rules, they are strictly commercial contracts that write their own rules. Health insurers would be so wise to cover biologic dentistry like any specialty, make referrals, and incorporate all things dental into EHRs.

Dental is the root of much inflammation and oxidative stress throughout the body and brain. Teeth are god's plan for mortality. Dental infections, and toxins - conveniently denied by the ADA and the FDA - cheat us of years of health, vitality, cognition and mobility. Dental mercury poisoning is acknowledged in many advanced countries, not in the USA. Toxins - bad for humans - are synergistic.

Biologic dentistry, functional medicine, integrative and holistic approaches are growing by leaps and bounds not just because they make people feel better, but because they work.

I am interested in partners for fascinating ventures. New interests include health innovation, apps and IT, wellness, chronic diseases, etiology, epidemiology, QR codes, old and new medicine, genomics, toxicology, pharmacology, cellular bio-chem-electrics, medical devices, FDA, Form 3500s, govt regulation of dentistry and medicine, self regulation of the professions, patents held by professional associations, conflicts between professional and commercial roles, civil rights, genetic rights (none where it counts in dentistry and not enough in medicine), constitutional law, health law, conflicts of interest among top regulators and industry, lobbying and campaign spending reports, media, censorship and journalism. 

The Aha! Moment: Why Houston (Boston, Washington, Congress) We Have a Huge Problem...

Medical and Dental Associations: Professional, Commercial and Trade, or Both?

 Ethical and Legal Questions

1. Is it appropriate for professional medical and dental associations to hold patents on products?

2. Should the licensing, teaching and practice of medicine and dentistry be separate from their trade and commercial interests?

3. What is the appropriate regulatory stance? What happens when conflicts of interest arise?

AMA

The American Medical Association (AMA) is concerned with the licensing, teaching, and practice of medicine. It does not hold patents on specific products.

ADA

The American Dental Association (ADA) is concerned with the licensing, teaching and practice of dentistry, and also with the trade and commercial aspects of dentistry. It was founded in 1859 to promote the use of an inexpensive restorative material at the time, dental amalgam, first introduced in the United States in the early 1830s. There have been improvements in its formulation over the years.

The ADA has been assigned 83 patents during the period of online records at the US Patent Office, 1976 to the present. Patents from 1790 through 1975 are searchable only by Issue Date, Patent Number, and Current US Classification.

The ADA’s most recent patent on dental amalgam, “Method for eliminating gamma.sub.2 phase from dental amalgam and improved dental amalgam composition” was granted in 1977, amended in 1978, and expired in the mid-1990s.  The ADA’s latest patent, granted February 25, 2014, is, “A method and apparatus for measuring the polishability of a solid material such as a dental restorative material.”

Trends in Patents on Dental Amalgam

There have been 42 patents filed with dental amalgam in the title during the period of online records at the US Patent Office, 1976 to the present. Patents from 1790 through 1975 are searchable only by Issue Date, Patent Number, and Current US Classification. Recent patents note a record of an early one filed, “Improvement in Dental Amalgams,” in 1874 by Stephen Southworth of Niagara Falls, NY.

In addition to the ADA 1977 and 1978 patents noted above, there have been additional ones granted. Of note, Japanese researchers were granted a patent in 1987, “Dental amalgam alloys containing selenium,” to counteract, “the cytotoxicity resulting from mercury eluting from the amalgam filler.”

Since 2003, the only patents that have been granted have been related to the mitigation of harm from dental amalgam to water, air, crops, fish, etc.: “Dental amalgam separator,” “Low-cost magnetically aided apparatus for separating dental amalgam from waste water,” and “System and method for reducing environmental crematorial release of mercury from mercury-containing dental amalgam, in which teeth are encapsulated to reduce mercury vapor as crematoria have weak emissions controls.

 This work by Laura Henze Russell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.