Vaccine Safety

“To generate vaccine-mediated protection is a complex challenge. Currently available vaccines have largely been developed empirically, with little or no understanding on how they activate the immune system. Their early protective efficacy is primarily conferred by the induction of antigen-specific anti-bodies.”    This is a quote from a World Health Organization 20 page report on vaccines:  http://www.who.int/immunization/documents/Elsevier_Vaccine_immunology.pdf

Empirical evidence is concerned with observation or experience, rather than theory or pure logic. This means that what many people are calling science is actually statistics.  Scientists count the results and make a determination, a judgment, as to whether a vaccine is effective.

We do understand an injection with a ‘dead’ piece of virus and an adjuvant like mercury or aluminum creates an autoimmune response. An organism won't have a reaction without the neurotoxin involved because the virus is dead. However, not every human reacts the same way to a neurotoxin being injected into his or her veins.


Human activity has distributed many toxins throughout the world and our local environments. I believe that we should take into account genetics, current health status, and an individual’s current toxic load before adding more toxins into a human body.  

There is a long history of mercury poisoning in modern medicine. As recently as the 1950’s the pharmaceutical industry was ordered to stop poisoning so many people with mercury and calomel.  (Calomel is a mercury compound)  See http://www.mercuryfreekids.org/eli-lilly/

Let’s work together to make sure everyone is safe to receive a vaccine before the vaccine is administered.

How To Debate Science With Pro-Vaxxers

I made a comment on an article:

The healthcare system is clear they don't understand how vaccines work. We do understand an injection with a ‘dead’ piece of virus and a preservative like mercury or an aluminum adjuvant creates an autoimmune response. An organism won't have a reaction without the neurotoxin involved because the virus is dead. However, not every human reacts the same way to a neurotoxin being injected into his or her veins.

A provax respondent takes the bait:

Your first line is nonsense. How vaccines work is very well understood. To deny that is to deny a huge amount of science going back a couple of hundred years and more. In fact, how vaccines work is very well understood and very well established. Stop telling stories.

My rebuttal:

No, it is not well understood how they work. Here is an excerpt from the World Health Organization. You won't have to read far, it's the first thing they say in a 20 page report. I'll cut and paste it for you.

To generate vaccine-mediated protection is a complex challenge. Currently available vaccines have largely been developed empirically, with little or no understanding on how they activate the immune system. Their early protective efficacy is primarily conferred by the induction of antigen-specific anti-bodies.

Here is the definition of Empirical: based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic: they provided considerable empirical evidence to support their argument.

That means they're guessing. It's not science, it's statistics.

Oh, here's the link:

http://www.who.int/immunizatio...

How to Debate Vaccination Culpability with Pro-Vaxxers

On January 7th, 2014, nine years after the fact, in the case of Karsen Steele Waters, the United States Court of Federal Claims made it's final decision.

The undersigned finds that there is not a preponderance of the evidence showing that Karsen’s injuries were caused or significantly aggravated by his February 19, 2005 vaccinations. Although Karsen’s vaccinations may have caused a low grade fever or otherwise triggered his first seizure on February 20, 2005, neither that initial seizure nor his vaccinations caused or significantly aggravated his Dravet syndrome and resulting neurological complications. Rather, his SCN1A genetic mutation is the sole cause of his injuries. For that reason, the undersigned finds by a preponderance of the evidence that respondent has provided an alternative cause of Karsen’s injuries, and, therefore, petitioners are not entitled to compensation.

This is how I debated a provaxxer in the comments of a recent pro-vaccination article.  The pro-vaxxer responds to the above:

What do you want me to say, Albert? That the courts made the wrong decision? Because it sounds to me like they made the right one. Dravet Syndrome is a genetic disorder.

My repsonse:

So your saying the health practitioner doesn't need to check for genetic weaknesses in people before they give them vaccines that might hurt them?  If the vaccine gives someone diabetes then that would be the injured persons problem because why?  Because they have a pancreas?  Perhaps there is no culpability for manufacturers that make toy parts which wedge in children's mouths and choke them to death.  Let the buyer beware!  That's a famous real estate saying.  Let's apply that to vaccines to.  Let the vaccinated beware!  15 hours after your receive a vaccine if you turn epileptic, that's your problem.

 

Hg Poisoning - Sources

Silver Amalgam Fillings
Vaccinations
Eating Fish
Lightbulbs
Coal

Through the antiquated Castner-Kellner process mercury contaminates minimally 20% of the following products, some severely.

High Fructose Corn Syrup - Castner Kellner process in 20%
Bleached Products
White Rice
White Flour
Bleached paper - towels, toilet paper, napkins, paper plates


Tainted old lumber
Acrylic sealant paints for mold and mildew
Plastics - that new car smell

I am excerpting an interview with John Moore here: About John Moore   Since John Moore almost died from mercury poisoning in 1974, that highly toxic element has haunted the man. He was and is an industrial engineer, at one time working with the Boeing Company.   All of life,s work became an aside once he decided to find out what happened to him. He became a mercury/dental health researcher. He now assists those who want to learn and perhaps rescue themselves from the planet,s ubiquitous contaminant. He taught classes to dental and health professionals for three years' often with up to 100 persons per session. His expertise was acknowledged by author Tom Warren in the book Reversing Chronic Diseases' along with fellow researcher Gary Tunsky. The illustration of mercury vapor escaping a mercury seat is taken from Warren's book. Our interview starts with a half question about that near- death experience.   The sidebar is based on an interview with Gary Tunsky, who is mentioned by Moore in this interview.   ACRES U.S.A. You had a near-death experience with mercury. Will you tell us about it?   JOHN MOORE. I came close to dying " I was about two months away. Around 1985 I noticed that my health was going downhill, and I just did not have the energy I had once had. That was my chief complaint at that time. As time progressed, I continued to go downhill, and I continued to lose my memory. I would ask my wife a question and she would say, "You just asked me that question a minute ago! I was adamant that I hadn't asked and that I was not losing my memory, but indeed, that was the case. In the early part, I reached the point where the fatigue was so overwhelming that I could not do any work and was absolutely unable to function. I became antisocial " I didn't want to talk to anybody. My wife would say good morning to me, and I would want to rip her head off " which I proceeded to do verbally. I knew it was wrong as I was doing it, but I felt powerless to stop it. It was a bizarre scenario for me, because I was not normally like that.   ACRES U.S.A. How does this mercury get to the brain?   MOORE. It is the vapor from amalgam fillings coming off the tooth that gets us. It is not generally the liquid mercury per se, though that can get you' too. It was mercury vapor coming off the fillings of the teeth that was the primary source of my poisoning " although fish also played somewhat of a role because I did happen to like fish and they are often poisoned with mercury, as well.   ACRES U.S.A. This is ocean fish as well as freshwater fish?   MOORE. You bet.   ACRES U.S.A. What is the source?   MOORE. The primary source of pollution for freshwater, and salt water for that matter, is industrial pollution. Coal-fire power plants put 40 tons of mercury a year into the atmosphere through burning coal. In the U.S. alone, hospitals that burn their wastes put 20 tons a year into the atmosphere. All plastics manufacturing put a ton of it in the atmosphere. Farmers in the past have also done so. I don't know whether it is currently being used or not, but mercury is still labeled as an insecticide " methone ethyl mercury, which is a really nasty form of mercury, is used on seeds. The purple/pink color one might find on seeds is classically mercury fungicide that has been applied. Farmers are using mercury, and there are a lot of crops that have been sprayed over the years with mercurial fungicide.   ACRES U.S.A. Wasn't there a case where quite a number of people were poisoned by accidentally eating poison-treated seeds?   MOORE. Absolutely. We sent bags and bags of seed grain to Iraq around 1974. It had a skull and crossbones on it, but many Iraqis' instead of planting the seeds' ground it and ate it as flour. Five hundred people died initially, and 6,526 people were hospitalized over the next five years. The really bizarre problem here is that it took them a year to figure out what happened, even with such a massive, industrial-strength poisoning. The reason is that it doesn't show up in the blood, and it doesn't show up in the urine. If I were to pick you up and put you in a bucket of mercury bare-naked and took you out and tried to check you for contamination' if we didn't do it instantly, within the first two minutes' that mercury would be bound up. It gets bound up quickly in the tissue, on the outside of the cell, and crosses the cell membrane to go inside the cell and play with the RNA and DNA. It changes the cell, making it a bastard cell.   ACRES U.S.A. And there is nothing you can do about it.   MOORE. There is something you can do about it. You can detoxify the body for mercury and get the amalgam fillings out of the teeth. It is the fillings that are the main source according to the World Health Organization.   ACRES U.S.A. Why did the American Dental Association come down on Hal Huggins then?   MOORE. That is an interesting question. The American Dental Association for years and years has said that the mercury doesn't go anywhere. Then approximately 15 to 20 years ago, they finally admitted, yes' some of it does come out of the fillings' but it is an insignificant amount, and it doesn't cause a problem. Their only mistake was that it took them 25 years to finally create a problem that would allow them to pull Hal Huggins' license. That was just too long, because the people who knew about his work on the effects of mercury got on the bandwagon when they heard what was happening to him.   ACRES U.S.A. Let,s go back. We understand where it comes from when you are using pesticides and even from inoculations. But isn't mercury also a signal product in the manufacture of wood products' fabrics' plastics' that sort of thing?   MOORE. All plastics are preserved with mercury, and the reason is to stop the UV light from damaging the plastic. You cannot contain the mercury because it offgasses' starting from a liquid at 50 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. At -50 F, mercury starts to off-gas into the atmosphere, and as you raise the temperature, it off-gasses even more. Well, our mouth is nearly 148.6 degrees higher than that, so mercury off-gasses very readily from the mouth. I believe mercury is the main cause of Ms' Parkinson's' ALs' Alzheimer,s and autism, along with any neuromuscular disease because it strips the myelin sheathing off the nerves.   ACRES U.S.A. This material is used in all plastics and all the materials in a brand-new automobile. Wouldn't a new automobile be giving off these vapors that you are speaking of?   MOORE. They sure do, and all the new car dealerships know about it in the summertime. They hire people to go in when the heat of the day comes on to clean off the gray haze on the inside of the car. It,s the mercury that has off-gassed from the plastics and condensed on the windows.   ACRES U.S.A. So if you own a car like that and you get in when it has been sitting in the sun' you get a nice lung-full of it right there.   MOORE. You absolutely do. A friend of mine, Tom Warren' who wrote the book Beating Alzheimer,s' shows the before- and-after CAT scans that demonstrate precisely that. Tom came here one day in a relatively new car, about a year old, and he was just foggy as a jaybird. He was on his way down to Mexico to work with one of the doctors in a clinic down there. He was so foggy that I asked him if he had been eating fish again' because that is a classic source, and he was having a classic response from eating seafood of any sort " fish, clams' oysters' shrimp, all of that. My wife asked, "Is it the car? I checked it, and sure enough it was the car that was causing the problem. I told him to get an ozone machine, which he already had, and run it in the car on full for 12 to 24 hours before he drove again. I told him to also drive with the windows open. He did both those things and got down and back just fine.   ACRES U.S.A. Manufacturing, teeth, medicines' doesn't this sort of come up to an equation of war? How can you have a war without mercury when we fight them the way we do today?   MOORE. You may be interested to know that fulminated mercury, which is one of the compounds in gunpowder, was brought over here by DuPont when he came in the early years. It is absolutely part of the gun industry and has been for years. At one time people cleaned guns by putting mercury in the barrel because it will dissolve other loose metals. It is used in the trigger mechanism for the atomic bomb. There were 4,000 commercial uses recorded about 25 years ago, today my guess would be closer to 12,000. Fluorescent tubes' of course, have mercury in them. That is what makes them work " one drop in each one of them, and when they finally get to the point where that drop has escaped through the glass' then they stop working because they don't have the mercury to electrify the tube. They came out with these new screw-in light bulbs that are low energy, those are mercury light bulbs. That is one of the most recent uses of it. Some areas that are aware of this have stopped encouraging people to use these bulbs.   ACRES U.S.A. What was the connection between the processing of gold and mercury?   MOORE. It might be of interest to know that the biggest country to send ships to the New World in the era of discovery was Spain. Spain has the largest mercury mine on the planet. The kings of Spain at the time were looking for gold in the Americas. So as the ships came over they were full of mercury in the holds' and it was kept in leather pouches' and it was off-gassing. People were breathing the gasses' and there were mutinies and all kinds of weird things happening. But they got over here, at least some of them, and they had the ore crushed and brought out of the mines by natives' and then they would pour mercury over the ore, which would dissolve the gold and put it into the mercury solution. Then they would pour the mercury solution off, heat it up to vaporize the mercury, and what was left was the gold. The miners that were doing this work went crazy, much as in the Alice In Wonderland story,s Mad Hatter. The hatters of that time actually made fur felt hats with mercury. In 1685 in England, France and Danbury, Connecticut, hatters routinely went mad. They don't use mercury for hat-making any more, but they still use it for gold mining. They are still using it along the Amazon River. National Geographic has done some pictures of the underwater wreckage of ships that sunk on the way over here, and you can see the leather pouches still down there with mercury sometimes spewing out of them. The ships returning had gold. The first ship on the way back always carried the gold.   ACRES U.S.A. Can you explain the attachment or mechanism of using mercury in these inoculations that we lavish on troops going into war zones and on our children at very tender ages?   MOORE. Eli Lily, in 1929, did a study and found that by using a product called thimerosal they could preserve medicines. They gave these shots to dying people, who of course all died, and based on that decided it was safe. There is just one small problem with this' thimerosal contains elemental mercury, which is the most toxic item known on the planet that is not radioactive. You cannot contain it in any form, glass' metal or anything " it goes right through it. They hop that up a thousand times to convert it to methyl mercury, which thus is a thousand times more toxic than elemental mercury, and then they move it up to ethyl mercury, which is even more toxic. But they are not satisfied with that, the vaccine manufacturers throw in aluminum, and that hops it up 10 times more.   ACRES U.S.A. What is the purpose of this?   MOORE. They are using it as a preservative, that is the purpose. It is 10,000 times more toxic than elemental mercury.   ACRES U.S.A. They are able to preserve this vaccine, but what does it do to people on the receiving end?   MOORE. The Autism Research Institute, in their 65-page report, at the very top it says' "Autism: A Unique Form of Mercury Poisoning. They have done studies on children just coming out of the womb, and they are born with mercury in their systems. You know how everyone says how radiant pregnant women look? They should look radiant, because in a way the child is cleaning out the mother,s body as they both use the same blood supply. The child comes out of the womb with mercury from either the mother,s vaccines' fillings in her teeth, or fish she may have been eating. The child comes out already contaminated with mercury, which causes birth defects. According to the Merck Veterinary Manual, mercury causes birth defects' it is a carcinogen' and it is embryocidal all of those conditions' however, appear to be missing in the Merck Manual for humans. I think that is very interesting.   It causes damage to the central nervous system. When the child is born they begin to receive shots " right after birth the baby is given a Hepatitis B shot. The child has to be able to make bile in order to get mercury out of the body, that is' if they are able to get mercury out of the body. It takes six months for that to occur; infants do not make bile for the first six months of life. So all of the shots these children get before that age carry a great risk.   ACRES U.S.A. They are getting loaded with a handicap right up front.   MOORE. Our children are being poisoned on a massive scale. You may have heard that there are 26 law firms that are after the vaccine manufacturers' suing them because of this. With the Homeland Security Act, the government exonerated Eli Lily and one other vaccine manufacturer that made the smallpox vaccine.   ACRES U.S.A. They did this by legislation and took them off the hook?   MOORE. Yes. I have heard that portion of the act has been rescinded, although I don't know that for certain. There was a lot of flack raised over the thing. The interesting part of this story is that when the smallpox vaccine scare came out and they wanted all the healthcare people in this country to get vaccinated, they made 400,000 vaccines up for the healthcare industry. Approximately 12,000 people took the vaccines' but the other 388,000 told them thank you' but no thank you! When they were asked why, the labor union said, "Until you come up with a screening process to tell us who is at most risk for this vaccine, and until you come up with a compensation plan to pay the people who are injured by it, we don't want any part of it. I was following the smallpox vaccine story as they went around the country and did these trial studies in universities' supposedly on some of our healthiest individuals. They gave these college kids the vaccines' and in every single study group every person in the group got sick " some were so sick they required antibiotics to come out of it. This is the vaccine they wanted to give to the 400,000 healthcare workers in this country.   ACRES U.S.A. And which they were talking about giving to the entire population. What is the status of a person who does not want to have his children receive these many inoculations that are required to admit children into school?   MOORE. The bottom line is that every school district gets $50 to $100 for every child they enroll who gets all their vaccine shots. This comes from Health and Human Services. Just as an interesting aside, Dr. Jonathan Wright has reported that schools are getting up to $1,000 per child to get them on Ritilin. He reported this in one of his newsletters. Now I understand why they are forcing children into these programs. When the CDC was asked the question' are your children required to take the immunization shots? The answer that the CDC gave was an absolute no, it is not mandatory. The schools' however, want you to think that vaccines are mandatory because they have a dollar sign in front of each child. There is nowhere, anywhere that I am aware of, where it is currently mandatory " except perhaps in Minnesota, where they were trying to force through a Homeland Security type of thing that would allow them to force you to get vaccines' and they are trying to do this everywhere.   ACRES U.S.A. But the schools are the ones that enforce it, and they won't let the children in without the vaccines.   MOORE. It,s more simple than that. If a principal or school board is keeping a child out of school because they do not have vaccines' you tell them this: you will be happy to have the child inoculated provided the principal (or whomever) will sign a form that says they will pay for any damage caused to your child as a result of that shot for the rest of its life. Most of them are not prepared to do that. Parents can ask for the exemption form. I have a friend who has for six years now gone to the school district " his kids are now 12 and 13 " and every year the school district says' "Your children have to have shots or they cannot go to school. Each year he has asks for the exemption form. He finally has them pretty well educated to the fact that he is not going to do it, but you have to be willing to fight. Do you know who it is that decides what vaccines your child is going to have? It is the CDC in Atlanta, the Center for Disease Control. The question is' who tells them? It is a committee. The committee that the CDC relies on to inform them about vaccine requirements is made up of vaccine manufacturing representatives. We are talking about the fox watching the chicken coop.   ACRES U.S.A. So they are, in effect, poisoning America for profit just as badly as people who are putting pesticides in' around and on the food supply.   MOORE. That,s exactly right. It is a $7 billion-a-year industry. Incidentally, all the flu and pneumonia shots that we all, especially seniors' get every year " those are all preserved with thimerosal, the mercury preservative. The rest of the story is that the vaccine manufacturers have started to say that their vaccines are mercury- free. I got some of the drug sheets on some of the so-called mercury-free shots' and if you read the drug sheet, you can see how much thimerosal is in there. That is like saying you can have a mercury-free amalgam filling. With the amount of thimerosal that are in vaccines' by the time children are 2 years of age they are so poisoned it is incredible. And they do use it in vet vaccines' as well. It is used to preserve at least some, if not all, of the IVs we get in the hospital. If you walk into a hospital or nursing home you are going to find it is mercury poisoned, because you have so many people in there just off-gassing mercury.   ACRES U.S.A. What is the mechanism " how does mercury work? We know it gets in the brain and the nervous system. Is the river of blood in the body used as a conduit for mercury?   MOORE. There were sheep studies done at the University of Calgary around 1989 or 1990, in which they put radioactive mercury in fillings' which were then placed in sheep. They used a very minor amount as a trace element. The reason they used radioactive mercury was so that it would be distinguishable from any other mercury that might already be present in the sheep. What they found was that within 28 or 29 days the mercury went through the entire system of the animal, including crossing the placental membrane and going into the fetus. The animals were euthanized and tested using a radio scope, and they found mercury literally everywhere in the body, massively in the gastrointestinal area. It goes everywhere very rapidly. They did the sheep study because sheep chew a lot, and researchers wanted to see if there was any kind of release into the system. Had there been no release, that would have been the end of the study. Based on their findings' however, they went and did a monkey study. Once again they put radioactive mercury in the fillings' and again they found that within 28 or 29 days it migrated throughout the entire system, maybe not quite to the degree in each of the areas' but it certainly went throughout the entire system in that time period.   ACRES U.S.A. So it just rapidly contaminates the body?   MOORE. Mercury has many, many mechanisms' but one that is really crucial is the fact that it can off-gas. As I said before, it is the gas that gets us more than anything. In some cases' the mercury gets on the red blood cell. There are four oxygen sites on every blood cell. Now oxygen' let,s say, has a 1x affinity for that oxygen site " in other words' a bonding affinity for that site. I will also add carbon monoxide to the mix because people have usually one or both of these. Carbon monoxide has a 500x affinity for that binding site. Mercury vapor, however, has an affinity in the thousands for that bonding site. The mercury bond to the cell is incredibly tight. You cannot simply take in more oxygen or hyperbaric or ozone and kick the mercury or the carbon monoxide off of the red blood cell, it simply will not go away.   ACRES U.S.A. How can you kick off the mercury, then?   MOORE. You have to be able to detox. You have to have a binding agent that the mercury will bond to so that you can then pull it out of the system.   ACRES U.S.A. And what would that be?   MOORE. There are a whole bunch of them out there right now, but I personally use Nature,s Balance chlorella, and only that chlorella, because of the way it is grown.   ACRES U.S.A. What about DNPS?   MOORE. I am very nervous about DNPS. It is a chelation that you can take like an IV drip of vitamin C into your system. You can also use it as a push, where you can inject it into the vein. It takes 15 minutes to do the injection' whereas if you do the IV, it takes about 3.5 hours. A fel- low from Finland came to the International Academy of Oral Medicine Toxicology here about seven years ago. He had taken one DNPS IV chelation. He lost his liver, kidney and spleen' and his IQ dropped from 188 down to 100. He told everybody not to ever do an DNPS IV chelation. I would agree with him because I have worked with a lot of people, and I get the calls that the doctors never get. I see the downside risk with that treatment, and I am just not happy with it. There are some things you can do to ameliorate the downside risks' but I don't see any reason to suggest that someone try that initially. There are other ways to do it without these risks.   ACRES U.S.A. What is a safer method?   MOORE. As I said, I use Nature,s Balance chlorella. There are a multitude of brands out there, but this is the one I like. Chlorella is a nutritional supplement that has a binding agent in it that loves to grab the heavy metals. Because of this' when you grow it in a medium that has heavy metals in it, it will pick up those heavy metals. I stick with the one company because I know how they grow it. The detoxing problem has to be taken care of very carefully. The transit time to the rectum has to be down to 14 hours. I use a product called Homozone to do that. It is an oxygen product, and a special formulation of magnesium oxide goes in and cleans out the bowel. You mix a teaspoon of Homozone in water and drink it, and you follow it with another glass of water with a third of a lemon in it, and they mix in the stomach.   ACRES U.S.A. What is the connection' if any, between renal disease and mercury?   MOORE. The material safety data sheets are put out by Dents' Ply, Caulk, which is one of the largest manufactures of vaccines. There is a page and a half of symptoms' and kidney failure is one of them. The kidney, liver and spleen all filter the system and pull out these heavy metals' so the metals tend to settle in these filters.   ACRES U.S.A. The renal patient may have gotten into that position because of mercury contamination.   MOORE. There is a very good possibility. It is usually either mercury poisoning and/or parasites. They could also have an adjustment out of place on the spine that is impairing the energy flow to the kidney, as well. These are the three areas to look into to.   ACRES U.S.A. We know we are living in a contaminated world. We have all these products made with plastic. It is nearly impossible to get a piece of furniture made with wood anymore. But even so, you think that this long-held practice of the dental industry pushing amalgam fillings may have been more of a serious threat to the human condition than the rest of this?   MOORE. In my opinion' mercury is probably the most toxic material known on the planet, and in amalgam fillings it is permanently implanted into our mouths to be released into the system for the balance of the life of the filling or the patient, whichever comes first.   ACRES U.S.A. And people who are chewing gum all the time are releasing it faster, more than from eating?   MOORE. Pressure releases it dramatically. Let me give you another example. This is an amazing story. My friend Nick used to be part of Fiorito Construction' which put through one of our major freeway systems here in the late ,50s and early ,60s. He had 300 cement finishers who worked for him. Part of Nick,s job was to go down to the jail every morning to bail out the finishers who had gotten drunk or in fights in the bars the night before. It turns out that the Portland Cement Company is one of the largest consumers of mercury on the planet, and they put it in cement, probably to stop fungal growth. It turns out that dentists have the highest rate of alcohol and drug use of any profession' and many of them smoke cigarettes that have opium in the white paper of the cigarette. All three of those things shut down the nervous system. You could envision your central nervous system on mercury being like someone with Parkinson's disease in their hands. The central nervous system is shaking constantly. If you go and use alcohol, drugs and smoking, it anesthetizes the nervous system and stops the shaking. These people are literally self- medicating, but they don't realize why. Nick said that many of his cement finishers were alcoholics.   ACRES U.S.A. Wasn't there a dentist in Canada who was a proponent of amalgam and then changed his mind, or was that fluoride?   MOORE. That was fluoride. He was the main proponent of fluoride in Canada and then changed his mind after he looked at the research.   ACRES U.S.A. Is there a connection between fluoride and mercury?   MOORE. I don't know that there is a direct connection between the two. The metals have synergistic affects between them, I do know that.   ACRES U.S.A. What about mercury and stannous fluoride?   MOORE. To the best of my knowledge, none of the research on any type of fluo- ride has been able to come up with results that say fluoride does anything but mottle the teeth and weaken tooth structure. This is 180 degrees out of sync with what the industry and the dentists have been telling everybody for ages. They were trying to get rid of the fluoride as an industrial byproduct The fluoride they use now comes from the phosphorous fertilizer industry in Florida. They have to separate the phosphorous from the fluoride, and that is what they put in toothpaste. If you have seen toothpaste packages now, they say that if your child ingests any amount of the toothpaste, you should call poison control. If a child ate a tube of toothpaste, it could be fatal.   ACRES U.S.A. Let,s move on to the enzyme systems.   MOORE. It is the 85 enzyme systems in the body that fluoride shuts down. A friend of mine was a dentist in World War II. He had people come to him from the   highest naturally fluoridated areas of the country. He found that the sort of drill he would normally use to do one filling could do three or four fillings on people from high-fluoride areas. The enamel was very soft in these individuals. It is like a mercury amalgam filling. There is no study anywhere that says this stuff is OK to put into the human body, and I don't know of a single study that proves fluo- ride is good for teeth. There is a lot of money floating around and changing hands so that the dentists and the ADA will support the fluoride issue, but there is no science.   ACRES U.S.A. Is there anything else you want to share with our readers?   MOORE. One of the things I usually start with when I speak is to say, "My dentist forgot to tell me something. My dentist forgot to tell me that half the filling material he was going to put in my mouth was a highly toxic poison that could make me go blind or die and was it OK with me if he did that.   ACRES U.S.A. You are speaking of silver amalgam fillings.   MOORE. Yes. It is very hard to find a dentist who does not use amalgam. I know a fellow up here who called me and wanted to know how to detox from mercury. He is a dentist who has stopped using it. He had read that King County, here in Washington' has passed a law that the dentists' beginning this past July, have to have mercury separators in their offices. When he read about this' he realized that something was very wrong. The dentists who use amalgam are the biggest mercury polluters on the planet. Mercury enters our streams and wastewater from dentists' offices. I have been involved with a lot of the hearings of the department of ecology here in the state of Washington' only to find that much of our efforts are going down the drains of dentists' offices. It goes into the sewage system, and the guys who run the sewage system do not pull it out because it is not cost effective for them to do so. The current price, about six months ago, was about $2.10 per pound for mercury. You can make a lot of thimerosal and put a lot of fillings in for $2.10 a pound. They make so much money.   ACRES U.S.A. It seems money is the issue at bottom.   MOORE. Here is one of the big problems that nobody realizes " in 1974 or thereabouts' the Hunt brothers were playing with the price of silver on the commodities market. The dentists from 1819 to 1974 had a formulation of 50-52 percent mercury for fillings " it fluctuates depending on the actual alloy " with 30 percent silver, 4 percent copper, 14 percent tin and zinc. But in 1974, when the price of silver went up, they decided to switch the copper and silver in amalgam. They came out with what was called the high-copper amalgam. This amalgam actually releases both mercury and copper 50 times faster than the old fillings had done. Instead of taking 30 to 40 years to build up enough mercury in the system to cause a major system breakdown' you now get that in three to five years. This is a huge compression of time. Dentists may or may not be around to see what they,ve done " typically they live about 50 years' and often they commit suicide, which is a classic symptom of mercury poisoning.   ACRES U.S.A. Haven't some of the Scandinavian countries made steps toward removing amalgam from the profession?   MOORE. Yes. Sweden has been the leader in this' and Norway is following suit. The Norwegian change is just now coming online. In 1994 Sweden banned the use of amalgam for environmental reasons. Just recently I heard that Dr. Mats Berlin of Sweden did several studies at the World Health Organization on the effects of mercury, and he recently completed a review of the literature from 1997 through 2003 and has made a recommendation to the government of Sweden. Sweden is now working toward getting mercury banned, first in the European Union and then worldwide. They have found such a turnaround in their people with the withdrawal of mercury fillings. With their socialized medicine I think the government pays up to 48 percent of the cost of removing fillings. Germany, I believe, has a ban on giving mercury fillings to children under 19 years and women of childbearing age. Denmark and Austria have similar bans. The one that is really impressive is Switzerland, which has now stopped teaching the use of mercury in their dental schools.   ACRES U.S.A. But not the dental schools of America.   MOORE. You might be interested to know who actually sets these programs up for the universities in this country. The American Dental Association certifies universities as to what they will teach and when they will teach it. Of course, when you get out of dental school, you join the American Dental Association. They also indirectly control the dental quality assurance commissions or dental boards at the state level to insure that their policies are mandated. They have actually pulled dentist,s licenses' such as that of Dr. Huggins and others' until these doctors started getting attorneys and fighting back.   ACRES U.S.A. You mean they have tried to get rid of dentists over this amalgam issue?   MOORE. That,s right. In 1987 the ADA changed their code of ethics' and if your dentist even told you that half the filling material was mercury and the ADA found out about it, they could arrange for the disciplinary boards to pull his or her license. I,d say at that point it became a wholesale coverup. One of the top mercury researchers has said that 95 percent of our health problems emanate from mercury. That is a huge number.   ACRES U.S.A. One of the growth industries in the United States' you probably have observed, is the construction and operation of dialysis clinics. This connection with the mercury syndrome seems obvious' but renal doctors do not seem to be aware of either the fungus or the mercury connection to renal disease.   MOORE. Here is the problem: It is not possible to find the mercury in the blood or the urine.   ACRES U.S.A. In other words' it finds hiding places so secure you cannot even detect it, but you have to postulate it is there because of its general ubiquitous presence in the environment.   MOORE. Here is the bottom line: Dr. Huggins found that four to eight micrograms of mercury per liter of urine was our normal exposure rate. In my case, it was 0.7, which means I was holding onto it. A doctor who looks at that report thinking that 20 micrograms or more is of concern is going to think I am clean as can be. So all of the dentist,s studies " if they have even been done " will pull the blood and the urine. They won't find it there. Most of the time they won't find it in the hair, either. You can take a sample of your hair and not find it, but interestingly, if you detox for six months and take another hair sample it will show up. You have to know the footprint of mercury, how it works and what it does in the human body, and then you can begin to address it " but until you do that, you can't see it.     ** Sidebar **   Evil Molecule = Slow Death   It takes over the four oxygen sites on the red blood cell. If all are taken over, death of the cell follows promptly. That, in a nutshell, is the story of mercury. All else is merely elaboration. It is possible for 37/8 of the sites to be taken over and still have life.   Mercury, whatever its source, kills the oxygen off its normally occupied sites. This is a way of saying the oxygen cannot compete with this non- radioactive toxin. There is a big connection between mercury and renal disease, which may explain why dialysis clinics are springing up like shacks in a gold field. Mercury has a stubborn cling capacity. It defies testing and gives up the sites it occupies with pig-headed reluctance. Cellulase, a plant enzyme, will pull mercury out of the body and reduce the burden greatly, but without kidney function' only redistribution takes place.   Students of the subject not affiliated with government-approved clinics claim that renal failure is caused by a mercury overload and parasites. Mercury has to be chelated out, albeit not with EDTA or IV DNPs' according to this line of thinking; or the IV push. Perhaps one capsule of DNPS orally with a challenge test describes this cautious conventional wisdom.   Whatever so-called settled science turns out to be, finding the source of mercury poisoning rates first attention. Its transport to the brain demands a reading of history " the careless growth of technology and the needless expansion of its use in plastics' building materials and medicines stand as a monument to the stupidity of man. Its use to cure syphilis is legend, and so is the danger of the cure. It has been and remains the base poison on the planet. Once mercury becomes involved, a dementia takes over. Poison becomes medicine, and medicine becomes poison.   DuPont rode to fame as a munitions maker. Modern war without mercury is not possible. Nor is Gresham,s money good without gold, and gold invites mercury in its historical extraction process. The rule of thumb among the sourdoughs was that to get one ounce of gold, it took four ounces of mercury. The curse of gold " Robert Service style " the debilitation of the miner has to do with metabolic corruption' mercury vapor being implicated.   Like the dental folly, gold is an amalgam product. Mercury releases the gold trapped in ore. Early on' alchemists tried to turn base metals into gold, the universal currency. Alexander Pope best described the high-and-mighty leaders who could afford mercury as medicine:   a.. See the blind beggar dance, the cripple sing, b.. The sot a hero, lunatic a King. Then as now, doctors killed their patients.   MODERN ALCHEMISTS   When DuPont decided everything could be made out of a test tube, it was the end of organic man. Hemp gas' hemp oil, hemp medicine were proscribed. Cannabis-based medicine became anathema. The wipeout enabled DuPont, Hearst, Getty and their lackeys to reorganize society. Marijuana became tied to parts of society deemed alien' and the lie called coal-tar derivative drugs became the Matrix slavery of modernity.   When DuPont patented biodegradable plastics in 1937 " stronger than carbon fiber " mercury was used in the process. Mercury became a constituent part of paper manufacturing, concrete products' automobile motors' and, not least, mercury came to medicines.   The symbol Hg conjures up the firm M.G. Merck " short for mercury. The new medicines do not work with nature. They short-circuit and destroy the components of the body while treating one specific thing. All are toxic packages.   The unfolding consequence has been the outlawing of holistic medicine. Cannabis' extracts' tinctures' all have been relegated to the underworld. Food, fuel, fiber, clothing, and crop pests were no longer a factor, reformulation became the new deity. But the throne of this new deity had to be made of mercury.   A new car is almost 90 percent plastic inside. Leave the windows rolled up for two or three days in hot weather, and a haze will coat the windows. That,s the chemistry of mercury escaping.   Mercury stops fungus. It stops it in well over 4,000 products. Preparation H, spermicides' vaginal lubricants' all survive in the market because they comply with the modern make-it-to-the-door test. If you make it to the door after using the product, then you haven't been hurt.   CULTURES   Men who build medicines build labs. The weapons of mass destruction are afloat on the planet everywhere. One of the greatest weapons has been put in the mouths of people with the blessings of scientists and dentists who are not much more advanced in real knowledge than shamans in the Stone Age. Resultant neurological damage is evident, especially in those with too much ready access to fine hospitals' legislative chambers and imperial stations of government.   The lethal passenger rides along in the red blood cells. The body sees such cells as non-cells and destroys them.   The 1974 dumping law must have concluded that plastics were too toxic to be dumped. Therefore, the judgement was made to use the stuff as fertilizer, thereby feeding it back to people, much as fluoride is fed to people in the water supply.   Among 1.25 billion pounds of pesticides for crop rescue, all the industrial waste fertilizers' and all the heavy metal wastes lives the hapless human being. The only caveat seems to be that metaphor in Genesis about tasting the forbidden fruit. The interview on these pages' along with this codicil, should cause readers to think long and hard about their daily load.   So far the only remedy from the leaders has been to ship industry out to poverty pockets of the world.   For 160 years dentists were asked to sign a pledge never to use amalgam. When a majority vetoed the code, the new leaders formed the American Dental Association. The decision is understandable. The proponents of mercury fillings already had poisoning and were exhibiting a loss of mental acuity. Gold fever was ever triumphant.   It can be calculated that the people in power have a higher mercury load than the non-industrial worker, perhaps a high as a concrete finisher. The Pentagon drills and fills. Gulf War soldiers have an average of 12 fillings. The shots they receive often exceed two dozen.   There may be evil empires. Certainly we have weapons of mass destruction even if none are found lying around. Above all, we have mercury, some 20 million tons a year, according to best estimates.   The evil molecule = slow death.

Hg Poisoning - Year 1926

The Dangerousness of Mercury Vapor
By Alfred Stock, Berlin-Dahlem
Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut fuer Chemie
(Eingeg. Febr. 9, 1926)
Translated by Birgit Calhoun

When I am making the decision to report without hesitation to a wider circle about my personal problems, which ordinarily wouldn't concern others and would not be worthy of publication, I am driven by the intense desire to warn emphatically all those who have to deal with metallic mercury about the dangers of this unstable metal, and to save them from the horrible experiences which have spoiled a great part of my life. Today I can speak about them freely because luckily they have been concluded, and they are behind me with sufficient distance.

The insidious horror of mercury is not nearly sufficiently well known and is being taken note of too little in those places where one is particularly threatened by it, in chemical and physical laboratories.

For nearly 25 years I have suffered from ailments, which, in the beginning, arose only occasionally, then gradually got worse and worse and finally increased to unbearable proportions so that I disparingly doubted my ability to continue to work scientifically. The cause was understood neither by me nor many outstanding physicians. They thought that it was possible that it could be found in the especially narrow built of the nasal passages and an unusual irritability of the nasal mucosa. Because of this, I underwent decades of treatments of the nose with cauterizations, burnings, massages, electrification, and bloody operations. Without success. Two years ago--a few of my colleagues fell ill with similar symptoms--it was accidentally discovered that it had to do with an insidious poisoning by mercury vapor. In my chemical work, which involves testing of volatile substances by the "vacuum method," which uses mercury-tubs, -pumps, -manometers, and -valves¹⁾, I had been in constant contact with mercury for 25 years.

Today there is no doubt about the diagnosis any more because all my symptoms, although not gone completely, have more or less been diminished, after having avoided inhaling mercury vapors for the last two years without the use of any other healing methods.

First I am describing the difficulties as they developed in me over time. They are identical to an insidious mercury poisoning in every detail. I was able to convince myself of this through my colleagues and other peers, who suffered and still suffer from mercury vapor poisoning. Some of them, it is noted, were not cognizant of the origin of their difficulties. Many pertinent symptoms have, up to now, been insufficiently described. At any rate, insidious mercury vapor poisoning has not received the attention it deserves.

With me the situation began with slight intermittent headaches and mild drowsiness, which increased gradually, over the years, to constant nervous restlessness and "jitteriness." Head-pressure impaired the ability to think. It worsened and finally became an almost uninterrupted vexing headache (sits mostly over the eyes). I had strong vertigo, which was occasionally connected with visual disturbances (unclear and double vision). Soon the upper air passages were involved as well. This started with a slight transient nose cold. This was followed by a constant "stuffy nose," which later turned into severe nose, throat and sinus infections. They were followed, one by one, almost without interruption, by pussy, often bloody, mucosal discharge and scabbing, frequent sore throats and ear aches connected to auditory loss and loss of smell (some sense of smell remained; e.g. cyanic acid). There was a distaste for tobacco smoke. During the last years prior to recognition of the poisoning, there were added signs: a strong flow of saliva, a sour, insipid taste in the mouth, infections of the eyes and oral mucosa. There were little blisters, sensitive and sore areas on the tongue, the palate, the gums and the insides of the lips and cheeks. There was reddening of the gums and slight bleeding while brushing the teeth. There were toothaches, receding of the gums and formation of "pockets" and temporary loosening of individual teeth. The mouth and tooth signs revealed themselves only (in part they only reached their peak months after recognition of the poisoning) because, since my youth, I have been taking good care of my teeth (among other things nightly long rinses with 1 and 1/2% hydrogen peroxyde solution and sodium bicarbonate). If this hadn't been the case, I might possibly have become aware of the cause of my problems through mouth infections.

Other signs were: Mental weariness and exhaustion, lack of inclination and inability to perform any, particularly mental, work, and increased need for sleep. There were tremors of the spread-out fingers and also sometimes the eyelids. There was pain in various locations of the body, tearing in the back and limbs, and pressure in the liver area. At times, there were disturbances of stomach and intestinal activity, loss of appetite, sudden bladder pressure, isolated bouts of diarrhea, which occurred without other possible causes. There were sudden blistery rashes, e.g. on the insides of the arms and thighs.

The most depressing accompanying sign relating to mental work was the diminshment of memory. My memory, which had previously been excellent, left more and more to be desired and became worse and worse until, two years ago, I suffered from nearly complete memory loss.

Only with the help of extensive notes and great effort was I able to put together a scientific paper or deliver a lecture. I forgot the telephone number on the way from the telephone book to the telephone. I forgot everything that I had once learned by heart. I forgot the content of the book or theater play I had just read or seen as well as my own work, which had been published. It was impossible for me to remember numbers and names. Often even the names of good acquaintances were lost. Specifically, I lost the ability for arithmetic and mathematical figuring. Also my chess playing ability suffered. The impairment of memory, particularly that of people memory and the worsening ability to do arithmetic, seem to be signs peculiar to insidious mercury vapor poisoning. This showed itself in blatant form in my co-workers and other people whom I got to know who had been under the influence of mercury for a longer period of time. Soon after all of us in the laboratory had found out what was wrong with us, we sat down together to put down on paper a completed piece of work where we had to do a lot of mathematics. None of us was able to add up columns of ten to twenty multi-digit numbers without making mistakes.

While my physical ability, e.g. mountain climbing, did not seem to have been weakened, the ability to work mentally suffered a little, although not in as devastating a fashion as had been the case with memory. Added to that were depression, and a vexing inner restlessness, which later also caused restless sleep. By nature companionable and loving life, I withdrew moodily into myself, shied away from the public, stayed away from people and social activity, and unlearned the joy in art and nature. Humor became rusty. Obstacles, which formerly I would have overlooked smilingly (and am overlooking again today), seemed insurmountable. Scientific work caused great effort. I forced myself to go to the laboratory without being able to get anything useful accomplished in spite of all efforts. Thought came laboriously and pedantically. I had to deny myself working on solutions to questions beyond the nearest tasks at hand. The lecture that used to be a pleasure became a torture. The preparations for a lecture, the writing of a dissertation, or merely a simple letter caused unending effort in styling the material and wrestling with the language. Not seldom did it happen that I misspelled words or left out letters. It was not nice to be aware of these shortcomings, not to know their cause, not to know a way to their elimination, and to have to fear further deterioration.

All attempts to improve the situation went awry. Staying in the mountains for many weeks did not help. I felt hardly less ill than in Berlin. The nose treatments and operations sometimes brought short-lived, yet never lasting relief. It was peculiar that all mental difficulties disappeared for hours when the physician treated certain areas of the mucosa of the upper nose with cocaine. When the right spot was hit, headache and vertigo disappeared sometimes in a few minutes; memory, inclination to work, and good mood reappeared, but, sadly, only as fleeting guests. Sometimes I made use of this possibility to call them up before a lecture, an important meeting etc.

As already indicated, my colleagues in the laboratory, my assistants, doctorants [PhD Candidates], and female lab workers had already suffered for some time from all kinds of problems: Fatigue without recognizable cause, worsened memory, mild headaches and drowsiness, occasional digestive disturbances, limb aches, slight mouth inflammation, nose colds [runny nose], sinusitis etc. The difficulties expressed themselves differently from person to person, whereby they came to light foremost in the areas of lowest resistance. All of them showed fatigue and diminished ability to perform mental tasks [work]. But nobody had the idea that the cause of it could be the same for all of us. Only the convergence of several lucky/unlucky circumstances finally opened our eyes.

In 1921, out of frugality, we had switched off the much more expensive power consuming electrical ventilation system of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institute for Chemistry. Since the middle of 1923, two of my colleagues, an assistant and a Spanish guest, were working on gas density measurements, which required maintaining a constant temperature, and for this reason kept the windows and doors closed if possible. The work had to be done by the spring of 1924 because my assistant wanted to go into industry, and the Spanish colleague wanted to return home. The work was performed hastily so that our ordinarily scrupulous cleanliness suffered in every room. Spilled mercury remained unattended, and much of it lay under tripods, in cracks and slits between the floor boards and on tables. Thus the conditions presented themselves that, instead of the slow insidious mercury poisoning, the more easily recognizable acute mercury poisoning became apparent. The assistant fell ill more seriously, not only with headaches, mental fatigue etc., but also with stronger bodily deterioration; with tooth abscesses and such. His brother, a physician, suspected that the symptom complex pointed to mercury poisoning. The experienced poison researcher L. Lewin [Louis Lewin, 1850-1929] whom we consulted checked out all laboratory personnel and declared that, based on his experience, he was certain that all of us were suffering from mercury poisoning. Indeed the test showed (according to the procedure described in the following memorandum) mercury in the air of the workrooms as well as in the urine of all involved. The mercury content of the air in the individual rooms was quite varied: Depending on the results of the specimens it showed thousandth or hundredth of mg, i.e. only a small fraction of what the air under saturation with mercury vapor can accomodate. At room temperature, taking .001 mm mercury saturation pressure as its base value, this figures to be about 12 mg per cubic meter. Since man breathes in about 1/2 cubic meter air per hour, and the inhaled mercury apparently³⁾ is retained for the most part in the lungs, it would require a very extended period of time in mercury saturated air to suffer from acute mercury poisoning. However it takes a long time after inhaling mercury containing air before the poisoning becomes obvious. For one or more years the signs may be limited to fatigue and slow diminuition of mental performance and memory. Thus the already mentioned Spanish colleague, for example, showed outward signs of inflammation of the oral cavity only at the very end of the year he stayed in our laboratory. The symptoms reached their climax months after he had left us, and after he was removed from the influence of mercury. He had noticed the mental effects much earlier without being able to explain the cause. "For me, it was," he said, "as if I was getting dumber and dumber in Germany." And I had to make similar observations with my remaining co-workers. Thus all my PhD candidates had difficulty withstanding the rigors of the doctor's exams. The PhD candidates and assistants recovered after a few years, once they had left the laboratory without being aware of the mercury poisoning. As for me, the effects of the minute amounts of mercury increased over the course of decades as described in the following narrative.

Particularly significant for insidious mercury poisoning is a noticeable coming and going of symptoms. Following a few days or weeks of improved well-being comes, sometimes setting in suddenly, a time of increased ill health. This also happens in the form of frequent relapses during the recovery period. As soon as my illness had reached its pinnacle, there were, as a rule, one or two tolerable days. Then the saliva flow, runny nose, and sinusitis, starting from the nose down to the throat and sliding down to the bronchi, increased again. There were tooth inflammations, highest fatigability and drowsiness, vexing headache, often also tearing and diarrhea. Headache, drowsiness and memory loss are connected to the irritation of the nerves leading to the upper part of the nose seen in the already mentioned effect of cocaine application on the nasal mucosa.

Apparently there are many similarities between insidious mercury poisoning and the better known lead poisoning. The [latter] is more thoroughly researched because it happens more often in industry. It, too, concerns mainly the nervous system and shows the same waxing and waning of the symptom complex⁴⁾. "After a period of health the poison can suddenly, without cause, display its effects again by evoking an attack of lead colic or other symptoms. This phenomenon can only be explained by the poison having been encapsulated for a long time in a place in the body to which, suddenly, the circulation has access again..."⁵⁾. According to F. Schuetz and H. Bernhardt⁶⁾ lead deposits itself preferably in the spleen, gall bladder, and brain, and is primarily excreted with the bile, possibly also through the colon wall. The kidneys, in this case, are less involved in the acute and chronic course of poisoning. Mercury seems to act similarly. After one year of excluding mercury as the cause of mercury poisoning, it could not be detected in my urine, in spite of the fact that there were still very strong signs of illness. The saliva, however, still contained mercury⁷⁾.

After we had recognized the source of our illness, our first worry was how to protect ourselves from mercury in the future. The first thing, of course, was to remove carefully everything on tables, in drawers, slits, cracks and joints, and under damaged areas of the linoleum flooring, whereby a modified "vacuum cleaner" (consisting of suction connection, suction bottle with a long rubber hose in front of which was attached a cut-burner type widened glass nozzle) served us well. We had the linoleum repaired. All cracks in the work tables were eliminated. The dangerous corners between floors and the so-called scrub molding were rounded off (putty, painted with oil paint) so that they were more easily accessible for cleaning. Wherever tripods stood for a longer period of time, the joints between tripod and table tops were also closed off with putty. All open mercury surfaces on tubs, manometer holders etc. were covered as completely as possible with fit-cut cellon plates. We avoided eating in the work rooms or saving food and took especially good care cleaning our hands (particularly brushing our finger nails) after handling mercury. We also paid good attention so that no mercury fell into pockets and folds of the work coats. Moreover we gave full attention to the airing out of the work rooms by testing the success with air analyses (Compare the following memorandum). It was soon apparent that the reinstallation of the strong house ventilation system (very strong ventilators in the attic suck the air out through hoods; fresh air enters from channels through flaps above the doors) was not nearly sufficient enough to make the air mercury free. The situation in our laboratory is inopportune in that we are working with particularly many mercury apparatuses whereby open mercury surfaces and occasional sprinkling of mercury is not altogether avoidable. An added factor is that the work rooms in the very modern and well-built and furnished Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut for Chemistry are so large (several hundred cubic meters air space) that the air does not get renewed fast enough by the ventilation system. In this regard smaller rooms may be advantageous because, naturally, the same ventilation works better and causes faster replacement of the air⁸⁾. Sufficiently airing ventilation, in this case, as it turned out, is obtainable only through constantly opening windows and creating a draft (regulated by temperature, windspeed, and -direction). At the same time the ventilation system is at work. Because it rests at night, the laboratory is being supplied with fesh air through opening the windows wide. This measure is repeated at noon. Thus we have succeded in keeping the laboratory air so clean that traces are detectable only in small quantities, and we can continue working with our mercury apparatuses without having to fear new health problems.

Whenever one deals with mercury one should devote great care to the testing and cleanliness of the air. One should check the airstream situation in the work space⁹⁾ and provide for as much fresh air as possible. It goes without saying that all work with mercury, if at all possible, should be performed under hoods¹⁰⁾. That is the only way that protects from damage with certainty. These precautions are necessary even if one has to choose the path through the Scylla of mercury poisoning and the Charybdis of a cold. A chemical removal of mercury cannot be obtained according to our experiences. It had been suggested to distribute sulfur powder or zinc dust in the work place. We also tried large foil flags that were hung in long rows from the ceiling. Although tin foil amalgamates quickly if you put it into a closed container next to mercury, it failed in this case: The mercury content in the air did not lessen noticeably; one tin flag (33 X 100cm area; weighing 57g), which had hung for 11 months over a mercury apparatus, was weighed afterwards. It contained only .005 mg mercury.

The recovery from insidious mercury poisoning, after the removal of the poison source, takes place very slowly. Professor Lewin predicted this, and the development of our wellbeing confirmed this. The time period is visibly connected to the duration of the poisoning, and possibly also to how old you are. My co-workers who had left the laboratory were, thankfully, rid of their problems in the course of 1 - 2 years and have fully recovered the freshness of their thinking ability and memory. Nevertheless, even they had to suffer for a long time from relapses not only of mental but also of physical nature (particularly mouth inflammation). Some assistants and female lab workers continued to work here where they, unfortunately, cannot operate without mercury. Even today, after two years, they are still suffering from clearly visible, but steadily diminishing, after-effects of the poisoning. As for me, who was exposed to the damaging influences for over 20 years, the recovery apparently is taking the longest. All in all, I recovered the ability to work. I had only occasional relapses (headaches, drowsiness and mild mouth inflammation). Considering the course of the recovery up to now, I do not doubt, however, that my last co-workers and I will lose our symptoms completely. It seems that you have to count on it to take years to excrete the mercury again that took years to build up in the body. In this regard the following case has been educational to me recently, which at the same time proves that it is irrelevant for the course of insidious mercury poisoning whether the poison gets into the body via the lungs or through the skin^.

A medical assistant who had applied mercury salve therapy on his patients fell ill in 1905 with those symptoms (moodiness, headache, vertigo), which gradually got worse (fatigue, unbearable headache, oral inflammation, loosening and loss of teeth, constant runny nose, sinusitis, sore throat, ringing in the ears, hearing and vision disturbances). Only in 1911 was the situation recognized as mercury poisoning. The man stopped applying the salve therapy, but still needed many years before he lost his symptoms. After 1914, when he went to war he suffered from headaches and drowsiness. Today as a fifty-five-year-old he is again the picture of health and quite youthful.

It seems that an existing mercury intoxication preconditions a special sensitivity vis-a-vis renewed exposure from mercury vapor. Some of us who, at our work, and also during occasional mistakes with ventilation, had come in contact again with more mercury, noticed this soon because of the stronger symptomaology after the relapses. That is not surprising because, as the long development period of the insidious illness shows, a certain borderline value has to be reached before noticeable symptoms appear. The borderline value is certainly exceeded for a long time, even during recovery, so that each added amount of mercury worsens your well being at once.

On doctor's orders we tried to hasten the recovery in various ways through use of diuretics and emetics, through hot baths and prolonged use of small amounts of sodium iodide. I do not get the impression that healing was particularly accelerated. The iodide has the reputation of bringing the metal into soluble form from insoluble organic mercury compounds. This is the form in which the mercury is probably anchored in the body. As far as I am concerned, there was no proof that significantly more mercury was excreted after addition of iodide. No progress was to be expected from diuretics, as already mentioned, since the mercury excretion in the urine had stopped relatively soon altogether. The healing arts are sadly lacking in medicines that detoxify mercury in the body ¹²⁾.

Exercise in fresh air is still best suited to make the subjective symptoms less noticeable. With milder headaches and vertigo Novalgin has been proven worthwhile as a palliative. All in all, it has to be left to time to become master over this destroyer of peace. For me even a four-week long stay in the high mountains and an ocean voyage to southerly latitudes brought hardly any progress, (which normally occurs with unaffected people), although, naturally, the mental relaxation helped the nerves.

Why were our illnesses not recognized sooner as being mercury poisoning? I have often asked myself this question, not without self-accusations. The first signs, those that preceded the oral signs of slow mercury poisoning, are hardly known by the medical profession.¹³⁾ They consist only of fatigue, lowering of thinking and memory skills, slight headaches and drowsiness and rare occasional diarrhea. In the same way, it was little known until now that the nose and remaining breathing passages are being compromised in the form of a runny nose and sinusitis. But exactly these symptoms brought me and the physicians who treated me on the wrong track, and have been misleading in other cases that I have come to know about. Thus one of my assistants was treated for a long time for a sinus infection before the true cause came to light. By the way, balanced judgment of the bad situation becomes impaired in those who are affected exactly because of the existing drowsiness: "Quem Mercurius perdere vult, dementat prius!" [Whom Mercury wants to destroy, he first robs of his mind!]

At this time I would like to warn about a little known source of insidious mercury poisoning: It is amalgam tooth fillings. Professor Lewin suggested to me at once, when he noticed mercury poisoning in me, to replace all amalgam fillings--of which I had a considerable number in my mouth since early youth--with other fillings. Telling me this, he recalled a case of a university colleague who was at the edge of mental and physical collapse when the cause was found just in time. It was found in the numerous amalgam fillings stemming from the time when he was young. After their removal slow recovery followed.¹⁴⁾

Dentists used to prefer copper and cadmium amalgams and now often use the so-called silver amalgams for tooth fillings because these amalgams are easy to work with and fill out the cavities well. Silver amalgam is superior to the earlier named amalgams, which corode and rot over time. However it, too, releases mercury at room temperature as the following assays¹⁵⁾ proved to us:

We enclosed silver amalgam samples in an evacuated glass tube, which was bent [in the middle] at a ninety-degree angle with the ends melted shut. The horizontal tube shank with the amalgam piece was kept warm at 30-35 degrees C; the other shank serving as a recepticle, was cooled with ice or liquid air. We then measured the mercury that had sublimated in the receptacle in all cases.

• I. Amalgam piece carefully made for this purpose by dentist in the state-of-the-art method from metal powder and mercury: .801 g. Enclosed by melting into glass tube 24 hours after manufacture. Warmed [30-35 degrees] for 23 days. Receptacle in ice. Distilled mercury = 11.2 mg
  
  
• II. Same as above: .810 g. Kept for three weeks to make hardening as complete as possible.  Only after that period of time was it enclosed by melting into glass tube. Warmed [30-35 degrees] for 12 days.  Receptacle in liquid air.  Distilled mercury = 15.3 mg
  
  
• III. Amalgam piece made by taking care using as little mercury as possible: 1.000 g. As in II. was kept in the open for three weeks. Warmed [30-35 degrees] for 9 days. Receptacle in ice. Distilled mercury = 8.2 mg
  
  
• IV. Amalgam filling, which had been in a tooth for years and had fallen out: .894 g. Warmed [30-35 degrees] for 14 days. Receptacle in liquid air. Distilled mercury = 29.4 mg

Without doubt, the fillings that were used here in the laboratory would have allowed mercury to evaporate from the mouth as well and supplied the inhaled air with a small amount of mercury, which, in the long run, has to be harmful. The old copper and cadmium amalgams are likely to be even more harmful.

For some time, one of my faculty colleagues had been suffering from occasional headaches and drowsiness the cause of which he couldn't explain. After he had an old amalgam filling removed, which had caused a slight infection near the tooth in question, his symptoms disappeared gradually. After its removal the filling showed itself as crumbly and laced with mercury droplets, throughout.

Dental medicine should do without the application of amalgam as means for filling teeth altogether or, at least, wherever at all possible. There is no doubt that many complaints such as fatigue, memory weakness, oral inflammation, diarrhea, lack of appetite, chronic runny nose and sinusitis are sometimes caused by mercury that has been directed to the body from amalgam fillings, maybe only in small quantities, but constantly. The physicians should give this fact the most serious attention. Then it will probably become apparent that the frivolous introduction of amalgams as tooth filling device was a nasty sin against humanity.

Insidious mercury poisonings are certainly much more common than ordinarily thought. This is true particularly for chemists and physicists who so often have to work with it. The great danger here is being noted much too little, and the true cause of symptoms and illness is often not recognized. In literature you find almost nothing about this.¹⁶⁾ Since the discovery of our misfortune I have found out about a dozen certain cases of insidious mercury poisoning, just in the circle of my acquaintances. They almost always have the same symptoms. Often the correct cause was missed and therefore the correct treatment was missed as well. An important example is that of a foreign colleague who had been working with mercury apparatus' for a long time. When he visited me and I asked him whether he had ever felt any mercury poisoning, he decidedly said that he had not. Upon further questioning about his health he then admitted: "I am in bad shape. For years I have been suffering from neurasthenia and had to stay away from the laboratory from time to time." The doctors had tried all kinds of things with him. They had treated him for stomach, intestinal, and ribcage disease with a special diet etc. In reality what he had been dealing with was full-blown mercury poisoning without doubt.

One unknowing victim of mercury poisoning has probably been Faraday. In the last two to three decades of his life, which came to an end in his late seventies, he was bothered increasingly by health problems, which made his scientific work more and more difficult, and which played a significant role in his letters and descriptions of his life. They were diagnosed by physicians as neurasthenia and early onset arteriosclerosis. They consisted of, at times, strong mental and physical fatigue, "irritable weakness," headaches, vertigo, "rheumatism" and, more than anything else, constant increasing memory loss.¹⁷⁾

Faraday, being spared serious "bodily" illnesses, was even in old age a strong hiker and swimmer. But he avoided people for the last third of his life. Scientific work, including his lectures, were continued with long interruptions into the last decade of his life. It is heart rending to read in the great researcher's letters that he went to see his physician friend so often to complain to him about vertigo and headache, that he couldn't remember names, that he was losing the connections with his colleagues, that he was forgetting his own work and notes, that he was forgetting his letter writing, and that he didn't know any more how to write words. "The affected organ is my head. The result is loss of memory and clarity and vertigo." All these symptoms make it most likely that Faraday suffered from an insidious mercury poisoning from the vapors used in the laboratory. It makes you shudder to think how, in all likelihood, this rich intellect could have been freed from this suffering, and what gifts he could have given to science if the cause of his illness could have been recognized and remedied.

Maybe--Professor Jaensch (Marburg) brings this to my attention--the mysterious sickness the mathematician, physicist, and philosopher, Blaise Pascal (1623-1661), succumbed to when he was still young was mercury poisoning. Pascal worked with mercury in his well-known barometer research. His suffering from sustained headaches, vertigo, toothache, loss of appetite, and lasting bad colic complete the picture of advanced slow mercury poisoning.

No doubt mercury, the use of which sadly cannot be done away with in research, has done heavy damage to science in the past as it still does today in the way it curtailed the output of many a researcher. May this present-day warning help us pay better attention and avoid the dangers of this insidious metal.