Ralph Moss, Electron Acceptors, and Cancer

For a few decades a few scientists, some of them Nobel laureates, have believed that antioxidants may prevent and even help to treat cancer. Some of the ideas and clinical results have been very promising, but have not received the attention they deserve. Even worse, unsubstantiated and even false claims have been bandied about by some of those who claim to know everything about the antioxidants, which has served to make anyone who touches the subject appear to be disreputable.

The scientist who probably put the most effort into studying cancer and what antioxidants can do to treat it probably was Albert von Szent-Györgyi, some of whose ideas are described in previous posts. Szent-Györgyi certainly had a colorful life. He was married four times; one marriage already troubled by his wife's increasing dominance developed, as they say, "irreconcilable differences" when he was shocked to catch his wife in bed - with another woman. He twice entered into matrimony at an age at which he would have qualified for membership in the AARP if not Social Security payments. But then again, he enjoyed excellent health, and continued working into his 90s, an achievement he attributed to his consuming sizable quantities of Vitamin C and wheat germ, which is very rich in Vitamin E, daily.

The scion of a illustrious family of doctors, Szent-Györgyi studied medicine in Budapest; his first research was of the structure of the skin around the anus; a doctor uncle of his, afflicted with hemorrhoids, had stipulated that he do so in the hope that his nephew's work might help him overcome his painful condition. During the First World War, Szent-Györgyi served with distinction, until he came to conclusion that the war was a fraud; that Europe's old men were wasting Europe's youth on their vanity. Not keen to die for a useless cause, and keen to save his talents for medical research, he shot himself in the arm, reported it as enemy action, and thus escaped from the war. After the war, he wound up at a university in Holland, where at one point his financial conditions was so bleak that he seriously mulled suicide. The tides of fortune changed; he wound up studying biochemistry at Cambridge and then teaching it in Hungary. He came extremely close to identifying the citric acid cycle now known as as the Krebs Cycle, after Sir Hans Krebs who beat him to the discovery. He was the first scientist to isolate Vitamin C from the paprikas for which Hungary is famous, a discovery that earned him the Nobel Prize.

During the 1930s and 1940s he was the rector of the University of Szeged, had some confrontations with the Hungary's pro-Nazi elements, worked as a secret agent for the British during the war, disappeared when he heard that Adolf Hitler literally wanted his head because he'd tried to broker a deal in which Hungary's would have left the war and joined the Allies, was offered the presidency of Hungary by the Russians after they possessed Hungary. After six fruitless months of trying to reach some reasonable modus vivendi with the Russians, Szent-Györgyi left Hungary for the United States, where he ultimately co-founded the National Center for Cancer Research, and spent his last decades pondering cancer as an electronic syndrome, as previously blogged.

One of Szent-Györgyi's close friends was Ralph Moss, who obtained a PhD in Classics at Stanford University before he found employment as a science writer at Sloan-Kettering. He eventually found the atmosphere at Sloan-Kettering uncongenial - science fiction was not his avocation - and left to devote his time to studying and writing about alternatives in medicine; it was on this quest that he met and befriended Szent-Györgyi, and learned about his understandings of cancer and wayward electrons. Moss wrote an excellent biography of Albert Szent-Györgyi, which is well worth reading.

Electron acceptors, which prevent electron donors from donating their electrons to other molecules, or oxidizing them, are, of course, also known as antioxidants. One of Moss's books "Antioxidants Against Cancer" is about the scientific basis for recommending, or not recommending, antioxidants to cancer patients. He's done a first-rate job of poring through myriad journals and papers and establishing which ideas about the use of antioxidants have a solid scientific basis; he references no less than 460 papers on the subject, in other words, every contention is well documented. It certainly isn't a rah-rah book; Moss carefully explains that certain antioxidants are known to worsen certain cancers; this is a field in which carelessness is particularly disastrous.

Dr. Moss's book is full to tidbits that I would desperately want to know if I were fighting cancer; for example:

• Scientists at the National Institutes of Health conducted a 1,300 patient study that looked into whether a low dose of selenium had any effect on the rate of skin cancer in people with a history of skin cancer over a span of 8 years. The results didn't reveal any significant difference in skin cancer rates; but when they looked at the rates of other cancers, the group taking selenium had a death rate from the more serious cancers such as those of lung, colon, rectum and prostrate that was half of the death rate in the placebo group! Rates of prostrate cancer dropped by 63%!
  

• In a study too small to allow any general conclusions to be drawn, one case of breast cancer went into regression when the patient dramatically increased the dosage of the antioxidant she took of her own accord. In another case, a case of liver cancer with metastases cleared up when the same antioxidant was administered. Regrettably, this phenomenon hasn't been studied in sufficient detail to allow scientists to draw any conclusive conclusions, much less make any recommendations.

• One chemotherapy medication was found to decrease cancer growth by 37%, but when given together with an antioxidant, the decrease in cancer growth was 85%.

I don't want to excerpt Dr. Moss's entire book, but I do know that if I had cancer, I would definitely want to consult his book. Dr. Moss also runs an information service through which advises interested patients about his ideas about alternatives in the treatment of cancer.



Links:


Dr. Moss's website: www.cancerdecisions.com

Dr. Moss's gives Grand Rounds at the University of Arizona.


Books:


Ralph Moss: Antioxidants Against Cancer

Ralph Moss: Albert Szent-Györgyi: Free Radical

I Could Not Dig: I Dared Not Rob: Therefore I Lied to Please the Mob. Now All my Lies are Proved Untrue, And I Must Face the Men I Slew.

Rudyard Kipling is one of those poets who mainly spoke for, and captured the hearts of, the common people, and not the effete literati of his day. Born in what was then British India, he spoke Hindi long before he was able to speak English. After boarding school in England, he returned to India, where he began his career as a journalist. His writing won him a reputation; he became the Poet Laureate of the British Empire in all but name. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature, and now reposes in Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey.

Some insist that that Kipling was a white supremacist or arch-imperialist; neither of these claims holds water. Yes, he invented the term "White Man's Burden", but understood this as the "White" Man's duty to spread his technology to the less technologically advanced people. Not once did he suggest that any race was superior to another; quite the opposite.

One criticism of him that I think is legitimate is that he did have a period during which he at the very least came perilously close to glorifying war. Kipling was almost obsessive in his animosity to German expansionism, and his disdain of those with less fervent beliefs. It wasn't until his only son, who had bent the rules to get to the front, fell, that he rethought and repudiated his glorification of war. In memory of his son, Kipling devoted a lot of his time to serving on the Imperial War Graves Commission.

Incidentally, Theodore Roosevelt, in whose memory Kipling wrote an elegiac poem, underwent the same transformation, when his son, who had memorized an eye exam chart in order to get into the war as an aviator, was shot down and died. To fathom the depths of Kipling's transformation, recall that Kipling's cousin served Her Britannic Majesty as her Prime Minister three separate times; his lines disparaging a dead statesman are not platitudes.

Epitaphs of the War

1914 - 18

Rudyard Kipling

---

“EQUALITY OF SACRIFICE” A. “I was a Have.” B. “I was a ‘have-not.’” (Together.) “What hast thou given which I gave not?”

A SERVANT We were together since the War began. He was my servant—and the better man.

A SON My son was killed while laughing at some jest. I would I knew What it was, and it might serve me in a time when jests are few.

AN ONLY SON I have slain none except my Mother. She (Blessing her slayer) died of grief for me.

EX-CLERK Pity not! The Army gave Freedom to a timid slave: In which Freedom did he find Strength of body, will, and mind: By which strength he came to prove Mirth, Companionship, and Love: For which Love to Death he went: In which Death he lies content.

THE WONDER Body and Spirit I surrendered whole To harsh Instructors—and received a soul . . . If mortal man could change me through and through From all I was—what may The God not do?

HINDU SEPOY IN FRANCE This man in his own country prayed we know not to what Powers. We pray Them to reward him for his bravery in ours.

THE COWARD I could not look on Death, which being known, Men led me to him, blindfold and alone.

SHOCK My name, my speech, my self I had forgot. My wife and children came—I knew them not. I died. My Mother followed. At her call And on her bosom I remembered all.

A GRAVE NEAR CAIRO Gods of the Nile, should this stout fellow here Get out—get out! He knows not shame nor fear.

PELICANS IN THE WILDERNESS (A Grave Near Halfa) The blown sand heaps on me, that none may learn Where I am laid for whom my children grieve. . . . O wings that beat at dawning, ye return Out of the desert to your young at eve!

THE FAVOUR Death favoured me from the first, well knowing I could not endure To wait on him day by day. He quitted my betters and came Whistling over the fields, and, when he had made all sure, “Thy line is at end,” he said, “but at least I have saved its name.”

THE BEGINNER On the first hour of my first day In the front trench I fell. (Children in boxes at a play Stand up to watch it well.)

R.A.F. (AGED EIGHTEEN) Laughing through clouds, his milk-teeth still unshed, Cities and men he smote from overhead. His deaths delivered, he returned to play Childlike, with childish things now put away.

THE REFINED MAN I was of delicate mind. I stepped aside for my needs, Disdaining the common office. I was seen from afar and killed. . . . How is this matter for mirth? Let each man be judged by his deeds. I have paid my price to live with myself on the terms that I willed.

NATIVE WATER-CARRIER (M.E.F.) Prometheus brought down fire to men. This brought up water. The Gods are jealous—now, as then, Giving no quarter.

BOMBED IN LONDON On land and sea I strove with anxious care To escape conscription. It was in the air!

THE SLEEPY SENTINEL Faithless the watch that I kept: now I have none to keep. I was slain because I slept: now I am slain I sleep. Let no man reproach me again; whatever watch is unkept— I sleep because I am slain. They slew me because I slept.

BATTERIES OUT OF AMMUNITION If any mourn us in the workshop, say We died because the shift kept holiday.

COMMON FORM If any question why we died, Tell them, because our fathers lied.

A DEAD STATESMAN I could not dig: I dared not rob: Therefore I lied to please the mob. Now all my lies are proved untrue And I must face the men I slew. What tale shall serve me here among Mine angry and defrauded young?

THE REBEL If I had clamoured at Thy Gate For gift of Life on Earth, And, thrusting through the souls that wait, Flung headlong into birth— Even then, even then, for gin and snare About my pathway spread, Lord, I had mocked Thy thoughtful care Before I joined the Dead! But now? . . . I was beneath Thy Hand Ere yet the Planets came. And now—though Planets pass, I stand The witness to Thy shame.

THE OBEDIENT Daily, though no ears attended, Did my prayers arise. Daily, though no fire descended Did I sacrifice. Though my darkness did not lift, Though I faced no lighter odds, Though the Gods bestowed no gift, None the less, None the less, I served the Gods!

A DRIFTER OFF TARENTUM He from the wind-bitten north with ship and companions descended. Searching for eggs of death spawned by invisible hulls. Many he found and drew forth. Of a sudden the fishery ended In flame and a clamorous breath not new to the eye-pecking gulls.

DESTROYERS IN COLLISION For Fog and Fate no charm is found To lighten or amend. I, hurrying to my bride, was drowned— Cut down by my best friend.

CONVOY ESCORT I was a shepherd to fools Causelessly bold or afraid. They would not abide by my rules. Yet they escaped. For I stayed.

UNKNOWN FEMALE CORPSE Headless, lacking foot and hand, Horrible I come to land. I beseech all women’s sons Know I was a mother once.

RAPED AND REVENGED One used and butchered me: another spied Me broken—for which thing an hundred died. So it was learned among the heathen hosts How much a freeborn woman’s favour costs.

SALONIKAN GRAVE I have watched a thousand days Push out and crawl into night Slowly as tortoises. Now I, too, follow these. It is fever, and not the fight— Time, not battle—that slays.

THE BRIDEGROOM Call me not false, beloved, If, from thy scarce-known breast So little time removed, In other arms I rest. For this more ancient bride Whom coldly I embrace Was constant at my side Before I saw thy face. Our marriage, often set— By miracle delayed— At last is consummate, And cannot be unmade. Live, then, whom Life shall cure. Almost, of Memory, And leave us to endure Its immortality.

V. A. D. (MEDITERRANEAN) Ah, would swift ships had never been, for then we ne’er had found, These harsh Ægean rocks between, this little virgin drowned, Whom neither spouse nor child shall mourn, but men she nursed through pain And—certain keels for whose return the heathen look in vain.

ACTORS On a Memorial Tablet in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-on-Avon We counterfeited once for your disport Men’s joy and sorrow: but our day has passed. We pray you pardon all where we fell short Seeing we were your servants to this last.

JOURNALISTS

On a Panel in the Hall of the Institute of Journalists

We have served our day.

Carl Pfeiffer and Orthomolecular Medicine

Carl Curt Pfeiffer, MD, PhD, was the Chair of the Pharmacology Department at the Emory University, which is known for its superb psychiatric research. At some point in his career, the State of New Jersey tasked him with investigating the causes of the more serious mental illness such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Not only do these illnesses cause huge disruptions in the lives of those so afflicted, but they also pose a significant burden to the taxpayer.

After doing all sorts of tests - examining patients' blood and urine for unusual substances and characteristics, looking at hair mineral contents and much, much, more Dr. Pfeiffer, (and some coworkers) announced that they had made a number of breakthroughs.

• 30 to 40 some percent of this patient population, they announced, had a previously unknown form of Wilson's disease, a disease in which toxic copper accumulates in the brain.
  
• Another 30 to 40 some percent had a disorder in their body's ability to synthesize hemoglobin, which caused the depletion of vitamin B6 and Zinc, which are crucial to a well-tempered brain. Other scientists, mainly Abram Hoffer had identified this anomaly, which involves unusual amounts of a pyrole in the urine, by comparing the stain that results when the urine of schizophrenics is applied to blotting paper to the stain that results when the urine of healthy individuals is applied to blotting paper. (Pyroluria in the orthomolecular lexicon.)
  
• Another 10 or so percent had very unusual blood chemistries, (Histadelia in the orthomolecular lexicon)
  
• another 4 percent or so suffered under food allergies which had not been diagnosed because they only affected the brain.
  
• Dr. Pfeiffer attributed the last 10 percent to various rare causes including, among others, lead poisoning, an anomaly in monoamine oxidase, and some unidentifiable causes.
  

Even more dramatically, Dr. Pfeiffer and his co-workers found that most of the conditions he had discovered could be treated with nutritional supplements instead of expensive and side-effect laden medications. Interestingly enough, Ashley Bush, a neurologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, is reporting that some forms of Alzheimer's most likely are caused by the same tendency to accumulate copper that Dr. Pfeiffer identified as a cause of schizophrenia.

At the time that Pfeiffer published all this, psychiatric treatment in the United States, even for bipolar disorder, consisted of sessions of psychoanalysis of questionable efficacy, and strong medications. If there is a very real biological problem at the root of the illness, no amount of talking about one's early childhood or supposed repressed sexual frustrations will do the patient any good from a medical or financial point of view. Dr. Pfeiffer's findings that these illnesses had clear biological causes, and could quickly be cured by the use of nutritional supplements - that is without patented medications - and by general practitioners - was not entirely welcome.

The American Psychiatric Association convened a panel to investigate Dr. Pfeiffer's findings. To this day it is unclear if they got a fair hearing; one member of the panel went into it saying that even if every other psychiatrist in the United States would adopt Dr. Pfeiffer's therapies, he would refuse to believe that they worked. In any event, the panel found that there was no evidence that Dr. Pfeiffer's diagnostic or therapeutic guidelines had any validity. Nor did the panel deign to answer the rebuttal to its findings. This is not to claim that all the members of this panel were hellbent on promoting patented pharmacological preparations; one of the experts, Loren Mosher, once responsible for such research at the NIH, had sacrificed his career to advance his own non-mainstream views that such disorders (sometimes) remit without any pharmacological intervention, an approach now sometimes practiced in Europe. It has yet to be explained why a man so fanatically intent on grinding his axe was included in a panel ostensibly intended to be impartial.

Curiously enough, there is a clinic on the outskirts of Chicago devoted to treating patients according to Dr. Pfeiffer's guidelines. Among its thousands and thousands of patients, it has managed to successfully treat 65% of its patients without patented medications; in another 25% they see marked improvements. Either they have some of the best placebos known to mankind, or else Dr. Pfeiffer and his co-workers were onto something. I suspect that some further discoveries have been made in the years since Dr. Pfeiffer and his co-workers did their investigation. Specifically, there is much evidence to suggest that heavy metals can cause the unusual substances found in the urine (kryptopyroles) and the unusual blood counts (histadelia) of which Dr. Pfeiffer wrote.

Be all this as it may, if I, or one of my loved ones, labored under the illnesses Dr. Pfeiffer sought to treat, I would be sure to acquaint myself with his work, and see what relief could be obtained. This book is the perfect introduction to his findings for lay readers.

Links:

International Society for Orthomolecular Medicine

The Pfeiffer Treatment Center

Earth House. Founded by Dr. Carl Pfeiffer.



Books:

Carl Pfeiffer, MD, PhD, Nutrition and Mental Illness: An Orthomolecular Approach to Balancing Body Chemistry An excellent introduction to Dr. Pfeiffer and his work.

Eva Edelmann, Natural Healing for Schizophrenia: And Other Common Mental Disorders A more thorough, extremely well documented resource for those interested by the work of Drs. Pfeiffer, Hoffer et al.

Szent-Györgyi's Alpha and Beta States

Here's a concise summary of Szent-Györgyi's understanding of the alpha and beta states. The relevance to cancer may be apparent. Excerpted from and a synopsis of "Electronic Biology and Cancer; A New Theory of Cancer" by Albert Szent-Györgyi.


Properties of resting (ß) and proliferative (α) states in cells (scroll down; blogspot does not like tables)

α State	ß State
High D/A, low pε	Low D/A, high pε
Unbridled proliferation	Regulation of cell division
Undifferentiated, molecular dispersion	Differentiated
lack of structures	insoluble structures
Soluble proteins	Insoluble proteins
No contact inhibition	Contact inhibition
Fermentation	Oxidation
No carbonyls	carbonyls and carbonyl-biogen amine
Free SH	Complexed SH
Anaerobic reactions	Aerobic reactions
dark	photosynthesis
Dielectric	Semiconductor
Closed-shell molecules	Charge transfer complexes
molecular reactions	Free radicals, electronic reactions
Structured water	Random water
Lack of color	Colored
Fetal proteins	No fetal proteins

Priorities

Rudyard Kipling: The Betrothed

“You must choose between me and your cigar.”
— Breach of Promise Case, circa 1885.


OPEN the old cigar-box, get me a Cuba stout,
For things are running crossways, and Maggie and I are out.

We quarrelled about Havanas—we fought o’er a good cheroot,
And I knew she is exacting, and she says I am a brute.

Open the old cigar-box—let me consider a space;
In the soft blue veil of the vapour musing on Maggie’s face.

Maggie is pretty to look at—Maggie’s a loving lass,
But the prettiest cheeks must wrinkle, the truest of loves must pass.

There’s peace in a Larranaga, there’s calm in a Henry Clay;
But the best cigar in an hour is finished and thrown away—

Thrown away for another as perfect and ripe and brown—
But I could not throw away Maggie for fear o’ the talk o’ the town!

Maggie, my wife at fifty—grey and dour and old—
With never another Maggie to purchase for love or gold!

And the light of Days that have Been the dark of the Days that Are,
And Love’s torch stinking and stale, like the butt of a dead cigar—

The butt of a dead cigar you are bound to keep in your pocket—
With never a new one to light tho’ it’s charred and black to the socket!

Open the old cigar-box—let me consider a while.
Here is a mild Manila—there is a wifely smile.

Which is the better portion—bondage bought with a ring,
Or a harem of dusky beauties, fifty tied in a string?

Counsellors cunning and silent—comforters true and tried,
And never a one of the fifty to sneer at a rival bride?

Thought in the early morning, solace in time of woes,
Peace in the hush of the twilight, balm ere my eyelids close,

This will the fifty give me, asking nought in return,
With only a Suttee’s passion—to do their duty and burn.

This will the fifty give me. When they are spent and dead,
Five times other fifties shall be my servants instead.

The furrows of far-off Java, the isles of the Spanish Main,
When they hear my harem is empty will send me my brides again.

I will take no heed to their raiment, nor food for their mouths withal,
So long as the gulls are nesting, so long as the showers fall.

I will scent ’em with best vanilla, with tea will I temper their hides,
And the Moor and the Mormon shall envy who read of the tale of my brides.

For Maggie has written a letter to give me my choice between
The wee little whimpering Love and the great god Nick o’ Teen.

And I have been servant of Love for barely a twelvemonth clear,
But I have been Priest of Cabanas a matter of seven year;

And the gloom of my bachelor days is flecked with the cheery light
Of stumps that I burned to Friendship and Pleasure and Work and Fight.

And I turn my eyes to the future that Maggie and I must prove,
But the only light on the marshes is the Will-o’-the-Wisp of Love.

Will it see me safe through my journey or leave me bogged in the mire?
Since a puff of tobacco can cloud it, shall I follow the fitful fire?

Open the old cigar-box—let me consider anew—
Old friends, and who is Maggie that I should abandon you?

A million surplus Maggies are willing to bear the yoke;
And a woman is only a woman, but a good Cigar is a Smoke.

Light me another Cuba—I hold to my first-sworn vows.
If Maggie will have no rival, I’ll have no Maggie for Spouse!

Dental Amalgams: "Huge Sin Against Humanity" or Completely Safe? Part I

There are few topics about which I have read more than what in polite circles is known as the "controversy" about dental amalgams.

My opinions of the science behind the amalgam issue could not be more different than those of the American Dental Association and sundry other high priests of dentistry, who claim - at least in public - that their views are facts. Even the best doctor has made mistakes, even the best medical product has side-effects, and the road to the morgue is plastered with packaging inserts for products withdrawn by the FDA, so I think it's imprudent to accept any claim about the art of medicine as an eternal God-given verity. In any issue where there are huge differences of opinions, the verifiable facts are far more germane than the opinions. This is why I offer my opinions not as facts, but as opinions, and a good starting point for you to do your own thinking and research, which I strongly encourage.

My opinions are based on many discussions with patients, doctors and dentists, who rely on their observations, and have reached conclusions at odds with the world according to the ADA. Nor am I alone, Congresswoman Diane Watson shares some of my concerns.

What are dental amalgams?

Dental "amalgam" fillings are fillings used to fill cavities which consist of mixture of metals, of which mercury accounts for 40-50% by weight. From a structural point of view, there is no better substance than mercury amalgams; they're cheap, much easier to mold than anything else, and almost indestructible. The problem is that mercury is extremely toxic, and there is ample evidence that when mercury evaporates from these fillings, as it does, it can have serious, even lethal, side-effects.

If They're So Dangerous, Why Doesn't Everyone Know This? Different Excretion Rates, Different Symptoms, and the Naked Emperor Effect

The short answers are: their historical legacy, that not everyone gets hurt by them, the multitude of completely different sets of symptoms, and, perhaps, the stakes involved.


Mercury in Medicine from the Middle Ages to the 1930s.

Mercury was introduced to medicine by Paracelsus (1493-1591), one of the greatest doctors of all times. Mercury-based salves are extremely potent disinfectants, and were the first treatment that were of any use at all for treating syphilis. Mercury, in fact, was a hailed as a "wonder drug" in its day, not unlike penicillin. From those days until recently, mercury-based disinfectants have had their place in medicine.

When amalgam fillings were introduced into medicine in the 1850s, there was a huge controversy about their safety. In my opinion, it's not unlikely, perhaps even probable, that when amalgam fillings were introduced into dentistry in the 1850s, they were a huge step forward. At the time, average life expectancy in Western Europe and the United States was between 30 and 40 years, and probably closer to 30 years. There were no antibiotics; mercury -based salves were the disinfectants of choice. In the 1850s some doctors used mercury, in the form of calomel, on just about any wound, even though the patients occasionally went insane. If patients were going to be exposed to significant quantities of mercury one way or another, using it in dentistry was just another use.

Filling teeth serves a useful purpose; if you don't remove the decayed part of the tooth, you'll loose the tooth. If you don't fill the decayed part, your chances of not seeing the tooth decay anew are minimal. Back in the 1850s, when there were no antibiotics, and surgical procedures were far cruder than today; not having anesthetics, dentists would hire big strong men to hold their patients still while they worked on their teeth. To this day, having an undiagnosed infected tooth is a good way to get a chronic heart infection or even chronic neurological problems. Back in the 1850s, when even if such an infection was caught, the odds of a patient surviving it were much worse, the imperative of avoiding tooth loss was far greater than it is today.

And even if fillings were very bad news for a sizable minority of their patients 30 or 40 years down the road, with the average life expectancy being between 30 and 40 years, only very few people stood to be around and predisposed to experience these baneful effects. I think it's conceivable, even probable, that, when they were introduced, the gains that resulted from amalgam fillings far exceeded the long-term problems they caused. In the 1850s, slavery was generally considered "normal," as was the fact that most Congressman chewed and spat out tobacco in the halls of the Capitol. This has changed, and our understanding of the sciences and dentistry far surpasses that of 150 years ago; I think the time has come to question whether amalgam fillings are "normal."


The amalgam controversy re-erupted in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s; scientists, among them Alfred Stock, one of Germany's most respected chemists, wanted to ban amalgam fillings. At the time, Germany was, far and away, the country with the most respected scientists. Students at Harvard University pined to study at the University of Göttingen, today, it's the other way around. Stock had found that he was becoming more and more forgetful, to the point that he couldn't work anymore, and eventually traced the cause of his declining health to the mercury vapors emanating from the fillings in his teeth. After he had his amalgam fillings removed, he slowly began to recover.

You can get some impression of just how toxic Stock thought that mercury is, when you consider that Stock taught and conducted research at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, which, until parvenus foisted their noxious notions onto Germany, was one of the most prestigious institute for medical research in the world. One of the researchers at the institute won two Nobel Prizes. Yet when Stock was offered a teaching position at another university that guaranteed a mercury-free work environment, he quickly left the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute.

In the 1930s Germany was plagued by a plethora of problems, but its scientists were on a tear; they got smoking in public banned, proved that asbestos is a carcinogen and were working on getting it banned. Stock, who published articles on the mercury levels in cadavers' brains and the high levels he found, and others were pushing for an immediate ban on the most dangerous (high copper) amalgams and the ban of all amalgams as soon as replacements could be developed. As late as 1939, Stock was publishing on the detrimental health effects that amalgams cause. Alfred Stock's literal words are "One day the world will come to realize that the uncritical use of amalgam in dental fillings was a huge sin against humanity." Unfortunately, Germany's bigger insanities overwhelmed their efforts to bring sanity to dentistry.


Wildly Disparate Mercury Tolerances Among Humans

When I had a few amalgams put in, my dentist told me that it was known that mercury does slowly evaporate from these fillings, and that the vast majority of people are able to excrete it as it evaporates, but that a tiny minority of people do get poisoned by them; when this happened, he told me, it was always caught by doctors.

In the time since the 1850s, we've come to a much better understanding of what mercury does and doesn't do in humans. Paracelsus not only introduced mercury into medicine, but is also known for his saying that "Everything is poison, and nothing is poison, only the dosage determines the toxicity." When regulators determined the highest safe levels of mercury, they apparently did so by going into factories where a mercury was used, and measuring the exposures that the workers tolerated without getting sick. Unfortunately, the idea that all men may not be created equal when it came to tolerating mercury seems to have never crossed their mind. Even worse, this caveat has yet to be reconsidered, despite the fact that a multitude of differences among humans are well-documented; some become sick if they consume lactose, some become sick if they consume gluten and so forth. We know that there are genetic illnesses in which humans can't deal with other metals. Some humans tend to accumulate toxic levels of iron, others toxic levels of copper. Could it be that some people tend to accumulate toxic levels of mercury at exposures that others tolerate? I believe this to be the case.


The Insidiousness of Mercury Intoxications


If mercury does accumulate indeed accumulate in the body, the obvious question is what the symptoms of mercury toxicity are. Alfred Stock described mercury intoxications as "insidious," because they are so hard to diagnose. Intoxications with poisons such as strychnine, whose molecules are relatively large and have relatively complicated structures, produce relatively clear cut symptoms, because they only disturb relatively few molecular processes. Poisons such as cyanide and mercury, which have minute structures or are salts are much less limited in the number of processes they can disturb. As the pathways they preferably inhibit depend on the genetic makeup of the individual, low level intoxications do not have specific clear cut symptoms. Trying to identify a single set of symptoms of mercury intoxications is as foolish as seeking a consensus on what a Rorschach blot represents; every individual is different.

If mercury intoxications don't produce clear cut set of symptoms, the only to identify what symptoms it does cause is to take people exposed to mercury, remove them from their sources of exposure, and observe the results. This has been done repeatedly, with spectacular results. Two of the best reports on this are Health Observations After the Removal of Amalgam, and Is Migraine an Incurable Illness. There's also a fairly comprehensive summary of all such investigations.

Removing mercury amalgams reportedly can result in the following woes disappearing:

• Migraines
• Headaches
• Gastrointestinal Disturbances
• Neck tensions
• Paresthesias
• Dizziness
• Allergies
• Vision Disturbances
• Back pains
• psychiatric disturbances
• joint pains
• shoulder and arm pains

68% of the 88 patients reported that their health was "much better", 12 % that it was "better", and 7% that it was "somewhat better" after their amalgam fillings were removed. Most doctors would be quite happy to perform a procedure that results in 87% of their patients reporting noticeable improvements in their health. Even more tantalizing is the fact that these huge improvements are only the result of removing the amalgams; often when someone is seriously intoxicated, doctors will use medications to remove the toxin.

But there's even more. Alfred Stock recovered from having a severely diminished memory; there's a credible report of an Alzheimer's patient who recovered from Alzheimer's after having had his fillings removed. Tom Warren the man in question, went on to write a book on his experience of recovering from Alzheimer's an illness irreversible according to the lore of "mainstream medicine": Beating Alzheimer's: A Step Towards Unlocking the Mysteries of Brain Diseases. Interestingly, he believes that in his case, Alzheimer's was the result of a combination of mercury and aluminium intoxications.

Even Sheep Get Mercury in Their Brains

If you have any doubt that mercury evaporates from the fillings and is deposited in various organs of the body, this article proving that a radioactive isotope of mercury quickly made its way into the brain and other organs after it was inserted into sheeps' teeth. Bear in mind that toxins exert synergistic effects, such that a mercury dosage that may only be lethal in 1 rat out of a hundred will be lethal in 100 rats out of 100 in the presence of another toxin at a concentration that is only lethal in 1 rat out of a hundred.

In the ongoing debate about the safety of dental amalgams, one of the contentions of the advocates of their safety was mercury does not escape from the amalgam fillings in any meaningful amounts. There are two theoretical reasons why this is highly unlikely. The first is that every liquid evaporates at room temperature. Unless mercury has properties heretofore unknown to physicists, it, too, must evaporate. The second reason is that dental amalgams are mixtures of metals. Anytime you put two metals touch, or are connected by water or saliva, electric current results; in other words, amalgam fillings are batteries, with their very own electromagnetic field. This results in corrosion, and the release of mercury from amalgams.


(As an aside, it also results in electromagnetic fields (EMF) just as power lines do; since the strength of a such a field diminishes in proportion to the square of the distance from it's source, a filling 5 centimeters from your brain, and a power line with an EMF a million times stronger that is 50 meters from your brain will both exert the same effect on your brain. If the qi that oriental medicine and acupuncturists posit flows through your body is electro-magnetic in nature, this may not be totally without consequences.)

To conclusively prove that mercury does escape from amalgams, Vimy and Lorscheider implanted amalgam fillings containing a radioactive isotope of mercury into sheep, and then looked where this mercury went. Here are their results, with pictures. Note that mercury levels in the brain are elevated, even though mercury concentrations were measured only a month after the amalgams were implanted. If mercury is deposited in the brain, but at a much slower pace than it is in the kidneys or gut, then it would appear that in the long-term, a lot more mercury will accumulate in the brain.

Mercury in Medicine from the 1930s to Today

Among the dentists aware of Alfred Stock's research were a husband and wife who were both dentists in Brazil. They had first been introduced to the notion that amalgam can be dangerous when parents brought a girl dying of leukemia to the husband's practice, and asked him, as a last resort, to please remove the amalgam fillings. Within a matter of days, the girl had recovered . The doctors aware of the case insisted that this was a coincidence, so the husband reinserted amalgam fillings, and the girl came down with leukemia again. And when he removed the fillings, the girl recovered. Nevertheless, the doctors, in their cult-like devotion to the holy scriptures they had learned in medical school, continued to insist that this was a coincidence.

Their son, Olympio Pinto, studied dentistry, and then went to the United States, where he hoped to further research the baneful effects that dental amagalms may cause. According to Hal Huggins in his book It's All in Your Head, the National Institute of Dental Research, - part of the National Institutes of Health - offered him the choice of abandoning his research or being deported. Hal Huggins, was so shocked by what he learned from this researcher, that he wound up devoting his life to studying and documenting the health effects of amalgam. After he made it onto 60 Minutes, he found himself embroiled in regulatory hearings that led to his license being revoked. What I don't know is whether he left the hearings mumbling "E pur si muove." What I do know is that he reports suffering continuous harassment that continues to the present day.

Mercury and the Immune System

One of the areas in which Dr. Huggins has truly distinguished himself is in researching the effects of mercury on the immune system. He realized that a degree in dental science would never suffice to thoroughly understand what all damage mercury can do to the immune system, so he returned to university to get a Masters in Immunology.

Most interesting is that amalgam fillings appear to affect the immune system. In "Mercury and Other Toxic Metals in Humans: Proceedings of the First International Conference on Biocompatiblity of Materials, Huggins reports that simply looking at basic blood work is enough to allow him to determine if a person has amalgam fillings or not. This of course, could be taken to mean that mercury is part of the etiology of "autoimmune illnesses of unknown origin."

Very interesting, and perhaps the topic of another post is that Huggins writes that his "thesis" after following changes in the blood work of patients with amalgams, without amalgams, and after the removal of amalgams is that, among other things, an elevation in basophils, and changes to the white blood cell count, lymphocytes, monocytes, and eosinophiles can correlate with being exposed to amalgams and then having them removed. The source for this is in Dr. Huggins' contribution to the Proceedings mentioned above.

Interestingly, a professor at Emory University, by the name of Carl Pfeiffer MD, PhD, found that some of the more severe psychiatric syndromes are accompanied by unusually high basophil and histamine levels. Histamine is a neurotransmitter that is stored in the basophils. Like serotonin and noradrenalin, histamine is active in the brain. An excess of histamine definitely is a "chemical imbalance." Could mercury - basophils - histamine be cause and effect?

There also is evidence to suggest that mercury exposure plays some role in some, perhaps most, cases of MS. Once again, Dr. Huggins has done truly spectacular work. Although it's not definitive proof, Huggins and a friend of his Thomas Levy, extracted cerebrospinal fluid from the spines of patients with MS, removed their amalgam fillings, and then redrew cerebrospinal fluid. The unusual proteins that are typical of MS in the "after" CSF specimens, though, as Huggins and Levy note, it is unclear if this is due to their absence or that they were no longer picked up by the lab technique. This certainly could explain why one of Dr. Engel's patients was diagnosed with MS, and then recovered after he had the kindness to remove her amalgams. Dr. Huggins has written a great book, Solving the MS Mystery: Help, Hope and Recovery, which, while I don't think is the final word on every aspect of mercury poisoning, is a truly spectacular book. I don't understand how a sentient human can read this book with its multitudinous citations, and honestly deny the MS-mercury connection.

What Other Diseases Could Possibly be Caused by Mercury?

One of the cardinal symptoms of a mercury intoxication is the patient's having rapidly shifting moods, or, in other words, poor impulse control.

• Could this (partially) explain why Dr. Engel saw patients recover from psychiatric problems after he removed their amalgam fillings?
  
• Could this (partially) explain why a study of patients afflicted with bipolar disorder found that some of the uncommon personality traits associated with bipolar disorder cleared up when amalgam fillings were removed?
• Could this (partially) explain why a study of patients afflicted with schizophrenia found that some of the uncommon personality traits associated with schizophrenia cleared up when amalgam fillings were removed?
• Could this explain why the National Instutites of Health prefer to investigate healthy songbirds rather than sick people? Could it be that the NIMH - and the entire government health research establishment - is "for the birds?"
  

The old joke comes to mind about the drunk who's been searching for his keys under a street light for several hours. Eventually a cop comes to him, and asks him what the problems is. He replies that he lost his keys in the ditch "over there," and has been looking for them ever since. The cop asks him why he's looking for his keys under a street light if he lost them in a ditch. The drunk replies that he's doing so because it's so much easier to search where the lighting is good...

I'm not a physician, and wouldn't want to delve into all the illnesses that could possibly be caused by amalgams. The Department of Truth aka "the FDA" has just rejected a report that concluded dental fillings used by millions of patients are safe, saying "further study" of the mercury-laden amalgam is needed.



Perhaps some good starting points to make educated guesses about why they may not be safe are to note that:

• mercury affects the immune system and is toxic,
  
• accumulates in the gut and is toxic,
  
• accumulates in the brain and pituitary gland, the preeminent endocrine gland, and is toxic,
• accumulates in the kidneys, where it is also toxic,
• mercury is known to be a potent carcinogen,
  
• it probably isn't coincidental that in the hearts of patients with idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy, mercury levels were found to be 22,000 times higher than in controls
  
• mercury is one of those gifts that keeps on giving; it's known to cause birth defects.
  

To top it off, it can be quite hard to diagnose mercury intoxications; all of this means that at the very least it's conceivable that more than a few illnesses "of unknown origin" actually are manifestations of, or caused by, mercury intoxications. Just look at what all Dr. Engel found.

It's time for you to do your own research and thinking.

Links:

Dr. Paul Engel's publications:

Observations After the Removal of Amalgams The Best Before and After Amalgam Removal Comparison

Migraine an Incurable Illness?

Mercury on the Mind by Donald Miller MD (focuses on the Alzheimer's connection)

IAOMT The International Academy for Oral Medicine and Toxicology (Dentists who question the party line.)

DAMS Patients who question the party line.



Books:

Hal Huggins, DDS. It's All in Your Head The Link Between Mercury Amalgams and Illness: This is not only the best introduction to the debate about amalgams and the history of the debate about their safety, it probably is the best book that could be written about it.

Hal Huggins, DDS. Solving the MS Mystery: Help, Hope and Recovery. In this book Hal Huggins describes his research into, and understanding of the cause(s) of MS. I don't think this book is the last word on amalgams and MS, but I think it's an excellent resource if you question the party line.

Tom Warren. Beating Alzheimer's: A Step Towards Unlocking the Mysteries of Brain Diseases The amazing story of how one man was diagnosed with Alzheimer's told to prepare to die, and recovered. Worth reading, especially if you like books in which someone takes the system on, and resoundingly triumphs.

A Memorable Birthday: Leonhard Euler Turns 300 Today.

Today is the 300^th birthday of Leonard Euler, a supernova of a mathematician. He's universally regarded as the greatest mathematician of the 18th century, and by some as the greatest mathematician of all time.

Wikipedia has a fairly good biography of Euler, and his contributions to mathematics, so I need not add much detail.

A few pieces of trivia offer an idea of his accomplishments: Euler

• studied and taught at the Courts of Catherine the Great and Frederick the Great
• graduated from university at the age of 16
• fathered 13 children, of whom 5 lived to become adults
  
• knew the entire Aeneid by heart, including the page numbers of each line
• could do math in his head that most accomplished mathematicians couldn't do on paper
• knew Voltaire, disapproved of the philosophe, but liked to debate with him. On one occasion, Diderot allegedly gave a long-winded speech in which he claimed to prove the inexistence of God. At the end of the speech, Euler, a pastor's son, and a man thoroughly conventional in his politics and religion, went up to the blackboard, and wrote e^(i*(pi)(=-1, ergo God exists. Whichever pretentious French philosophe it was, realized that he had no hope of understanding this discovery of Euler's, much less debating Euler on it, so that was the end of the discussion.
  

Physicists and mathematicians sometimes joke that, in order to avoid naming everything after Euler, discoveries or theorems are named after the "first person after Euler to discover it".

De Condorceret described Euler's death with the following words: "He ceased to calculate and to live."

Is Man the Ultimate Semiconductor; Does a "Cheap, Safe," Drug Kill Most Cancers?

Lately the New Scientist has been all atwitter about the notion that a "Cheap, 'safe,' drug kills most cancers."

To quote the article:

"Evangelos Michelakis of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, and his colleagues tested DCA (dichloroacetate) on human cells cultured outside the body and found that it killed lung, breast and brain cancer cells, but not healthy cells. Tumours in rats deliberately infected with human cancer also shrank drastically when they were fed DCA-laced water for several weeks."

and:

"Paul Clarke, a cancer cell biologist at the University of Dundee in the UK, says the findings challenge the current assumption that mutations, not metabolism, spark off cancers. “The question is: which comes first?” he says."

Of course, at present we don't know if DCA works or not; we hope it does, but a few things are interesting.

If DCA works, it may vindicate the work of two Nobel Laureates who spent a lot of time thinking about cancer, but whose ideas have faded into oblivion: Otto Warburg, who first discovered that the metabolic processes in healthy cells and in cancer cells are completely different, and Albert Szent-Györgyi, who devoted the later years of his life to studying what life, and cancer is. Szent-Györgyi came to an understanding of life that is substantially more subtle than that of many people in his, and our, time.

What does this have to do with DCA? Szent-Györgyi came to understand life, and pathologies of life such as cancer, not merely as a material or molecular processes, but also as an energetic, electronic, or submolecular processes. He noted that:

• life on this planet has existed in two forms, and what he called the "alpha form" which originated in an oxygen free environment, and is anaerobic in its metabolism (the fermentation seen in mitochondria and cancer cells,) and what he called the "beta form," which evolved later, and is aerobic (that is relies on oxidation.)
  
• living substances have ESR signatures (proof of electronic activity) that are quite different from inanimate objects, and noted that comparable cancer cells do not have normal, and sometimes not even discernible ESR signatures.
• contrary to the wide-spread belief that these ESR signatures, and the free radicals that cause them, are "artifacts" of rare processes, they, and the electron transfer in various organs that they prove is happening, is central to the health and functioning of the body.
  

Szent-Györgyi believed that life is much more subtle than the textbooks of his day would have, and that the process of life also involves making changes to the configuration of the electron shells of proteins and more. In the jargon of today's computer scientists, man is a semiconductor and "quantum computer." Szent-Györgyi believed that life uses some chemicals to "dope" the proteins that make up or body, that is to allow them to more easily transfer electrons, just as silicon and germanium semi-conductors are manufactured with inherent impurities, without which the chips made from them would be useless. Interestingly enough, DCA's chemical structure is far from entirely dissimilar to that of the substance which he discussed as the primary doping agent.

If Warburg and Szent-Györgyi prove to have been correct, it will open some extremely interesting new vistas into our understanding of life, health, and the treatment of cancer.


Books: Albert Szent-Györgyi Living State and Cancer. Workshop of the Natl Foundation for Cancer Research, and Marine Biological Lab, Woods Hole, Mass