otected the mercury filling racket that has brought so much harm to so many people. For over a hundred years, a cabal of "mercury mongers" made up of the American Dental Association, mercury filling manufacturers and indignant dentists have reaped windfall profits by implanting toxic fillings into the mouths of children, all while insisting that mercury -- one of the most toxic heavy metals known to modern science -- posed no health threat whatsoever.

Today, that reign of toxicity is about to end. Thanks to the tireless, multi-year efforts of people like Charles Brown, National Counsel for Consumers for Dental Choice (www.ToxicTeeth.org), the FDA has now been forced to acknowledge a fact so fundamental that, by any measure of honest science, it should have adopted the position decades ago. What position is that? Simply that mercury is toxic to humans.

Why the FDA has to be sued to do its job of protecting consumers

The FDA's stonewalling on this issue has been nothing less than a circus of politically-motivated denials, much like the Big Tobacco executives swearing under oath that "Nicotine is not addictive." In similar style, the FDA insisted for decades that "Mercury is not toxic." Both statements, as any sane person can readily conclude, are the outbursts of lunatics. Sadly, those lunatics somehow remain in charge of our nation's food, drugs and cosmetics (and dental care), meaning that any real progress to protect the People must come from outside the FDA.

And that's exactly what just happened. Consumers for Dental Choice teamed up with Moms Against Mercury (www.MomsAgainstMercury.org) to sue the FDA and its commissioner whose name sounds like an evil-minded villian right out of a Marvel comic book: Von Eschenbach. The lawsuit, entitled, Moms Against Mercury et al. v. Von Eschenbach, Commissioner, et al was concluded earlier this week with a reluctant agreement by the FDA to both change its website on the issue of mercury and to reclassify mercury within one year, following a period of public comment (which the agency will no doubt try to drag out as long as possible in order to avoid actually sticking to the terms of the lawsuit agreement).

Remarkably, the FDA's website no longer claims mercury is harmless. The language has now been changed in dramatic fashion, reading: "Dental amalgams contain mercury, which may have neurotoxic effects on the nervous systems of developing children and fetus."

There's still a lot of fudging there. Note the careful use of the word "may," which means the FDA still isn't sure whether mercury is neurotoxic, but it might be. This is the FDA's way of continuing to stonewall this issue, even as it lost its lawsuit. For any FDA officials who don't yet think mercury is toxic to the human nervous system, I invite them to chug a few milliliters of the substance themselves and find out what the effects might be. It certainly couldn't make them any more mad than they are already!

Why the FDA is as mad as a hatter

Speaking of people going mad with mercury, that's the history of the term "as mad as a hatter." As explained by Wikipedia:

There is scientific evidence behind the meaning of insanity. Mercury was used in the process of curing felt used in some hats. It was impossible for hatters to avoid inhaling the mercury fumes given off during the hat making process. Hatters and other men in working mills died early due to the residual mercury caused neurological damage, as well as confused speech and distorted vision. As the mercury poisoning progressed to dangerously high levels, sufferers could also experience psychotic symptoms, such as hallucinations. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_hatter... to read more.

Interestingly, the symptoms of mercury toxicity quite accurately describe the mental state of the top decision makers at both the FDA and the American Dental Association, both of which have hallucinated for decades that mercury was safe for children to swallow! These people also exhibit symptoms of serious neurological damage such as malfunctioning frontal lobes -- the part of the brain responsible for reasoning. They also seem to lack proper functioning in the part of brain responsible for empathy and compassion towards fellow human beings.

Perhaps top FDA and ADA officials have been chemically lobotomized in some way, and there's no question that the leaders in conventional dentistry suffer from advanced stages of psychosis, too. This could very well be due to the fact that their ongoing use of mercury fillings has exposed them to decades of mercury vapors and airborne particles which have entered their nervous systems and damaged their brains, making them appear quite mad.

Thus, the modern version of "mad as a hatter" might be, "mad as a dentist."

Not all dentists are mad, mind you, but the ones that still work with mercury no doubt suffer very real neurological damage as a result.

What's next for the FDA

Despite this lawsuit victory, please keep in mind that the FDA has not agreed to immediately ban toxic mercury fillings. They have merely agreed to consider reclassifying mercury at some future date -- a commitment they will probably break, given their history of lying about mercury and refusing to do what they've agreed to do on this subject (see the interview, below, for more details on that).

At every opportunity throughout recent history, the FDA has gone out of its way to censor the truth about the toxicity of mercury fillings, thereby directly supporting the continued exposure of literally hundreds of millions of children, adults and senior citizens to a substance that every reasonable scientist in the modern world knows to be highly toxic to the human nervous system. And in this way, the FDA is guilty of crimes against the People. To know that a substance is highly toxic, and yet to continue allowing it to be implanted into the mouths of children, teens and adults (even when you have the power to ban it) is not merely irresponsible, it is downright criminal.

I can only hope that a nationwide class action lawsuit against the ADA, the FDA, local dentists and mercury manufacturers will emerge from this action. Countless Americans have been poisoned by mercury fillings, and the whole scam has been orchestrated by the usual suspects: Powerful corporations and industry groups that sought to exploit the People for profits, regardless of the harm it might cause them. The fact that a substance as toxic as mercury has been allowed to be implanted into the mouths of children for so long reveals precisely how corrupt, outdated and downright dangerous our system of modern dentistry has really become. Much of what comes out of the mouths of dentists, it turns out, is pure poison... and not coincidentally, that's exactly what those same dentists put into the mouths of their own patients!

But I don't want to give the impression that all dentists are evil. In fact, more and more dentists are now practicing mercury-free dentistry, and I strongly recommend that if you need to see a dentist in the future, insist on seeing one that has given up using mercury. This is more than a personal health issue, it's also an environmental issue. Where do you think all the mercury goes after you chew on those silver fillings and swallow little mercury bits? The mercury molecules that aren't absorbed by your body and lodged in your brain cells are eliminated from the body and flow right into the environment. Ever wonder why all the seafood bring harvested from the ocean these days is contaminated with mercury? Well now you know: It's due to all the toxic consumers peeing away the mercury they've swallowed from their silver fillings!

See my related CounterThink Cartoon, Seafood Mercury Warning at http://www.naturalnews.com/021690.html

The FDA remains steadfastly clueless about mercury

So now, thanks to this lawsuit, the FDA has changed its website to read: "Pregnant women and persons who may have a health condition that makes them more sensitive to mercury exposure, including individuals with existing high levels of mercury bioburden, should not avoid seeking dental care, but should discuss options with their health practitioner."

This sentence says nothing conclusive of course, and it doesn't urge consumers to avoid mercury in any way, but it does at least imply that perhaps there is a link between dental care and mercury poisoning. If you're interested in being amused, you can read all this distorted language yourself at: http://www.fda.gov/cdrh/consumer/amalgams.html

This document, by the way, reveals the outright stupidity of FDA "experts" as they stumble from one topic to the next. For example, one question asked on the page is:

Should pregnant women and young children use or avoid amalgam fillings?

The FDA's answer to that is: The recent advisory panel believed that there was not enough information to answer this question.

In other words, the FDA advisory panel selectively chose to avoid all the evidence showing mercury to be extremely harmful to the nervous system of a fetus or a child, and they have decided to pretend to be uninformed on the subject rather than take any real stance on protecting human beings from the toxicity of mercury. Wow, and to think, these are the people running our national food supply and drug approval processes, too! Is it any wonder so many drugs are deadly? If the FDA thinks mercury is safe, no wonder they think deadly pharmaceuticals don't harm people either!

Exclusive interview with Charles Brown, Consumers for Dental Choice

In the days leading up to this lawsuit with the FDA, I spoke to Charles Brown over the phone and explored the timeline of events involving the FDA and mercury. This interview, published below, is nothing short of astonishing! In it, you'll learn about the FDA's stonewalling tactics, the lies and deceptions of the American Dental Association, and why it took an outside consumer group suing the FDA to get the agency to do its job of protecting consumers from toxic mercury.

Here's the full interview. Be sure to learn more at www.ToxicTeeth.org

Mike: The story here is that you and the organization – Consumers for Dental Choice are now suing the Food & Drug Administration to seek removal of mercury fillings from the U.S. marketplace. Can you give us some details about this lawsuit? Why you think suing the FDA is the best way to go here.

Charlie: Well sure Mike, the FDA is the spoke of the wheel here. I mean they are the ones that make decisions on whether products should be on the market or should not be on the market. They approve, they classify. In the case of devices – a device is something that is used in healthcare and it is separately regulated under a set of rules. One category of devices is implants. Implants are what goes in the body but does not dissolve. It stays in the body at least six months and does not dissolve.

Dental fillings are an implant. The FDA is deciding instead of classifying, instead of regulating it, it will do nothing and it has done nothing on mercury amalgam – encapsulated mercury fillings - decade after decade. They continue to promise to act and actually, last year they made me a written promise and I foolishly believed them. I actually thought when they promised, in writing, that they would begin the classifying process and put together the first step.

They promised me specifically what the step would be, I naively thought, "Well, gee maybe these people are honorable and telling the truth." Actually, once again, they have just pretended. Under pressure, they will say they are going to do something – pressure from Congress, pressure from the Courts, pressure from petitioners, pressure from the press.

They will say, "Sure, we are going to do something." They do nothing. They have left this mercury amalgam out there unclassified, unregulated with no warnings and just a few news releases, which have nothing to do with what they are supposed to be doing.

Mike: So mercury fillings – let me just get this straight from the beginning here, have never been classified by the FDA, which means they have never been really approved by the FDA, correct?

Charlie: Correct, this is a primitive filling in the first place but the pre-primitive – the pre-historic system in the 19th and early 20th Century was where was the dentist mixed the mercury with a powder. That lasted until the 20th Century with the old-fashioned offices. It is now prohibited in several states but that was the way where the dentists would mix a bottle of mercury and powder. That has been classified – not together, but the powder has been classified and the bottle of mercury.

No dentist does that anymore. They are not allowed to do it that way where the ADA tells them not to do it. The state government tells them not to do it. Everybody tells them they cannot do it that way and they do not do it that way. They take the capsule that they receive in the mail. The capsule has never been classified. The FDA knows to classify. Any step that the FDA takes, that the Food & Drug Administration takes toward addressing mercury fillings they know it is the beginning of the end.

Mike: That is my next question. Do you think there will be a cascading effect here? I mean if the FDA honestly begins to apply the law; it would then have to mean the end of mercury.

Charlie: It is the end of the mercury fillings if they apply law so they have intentionally done nothing. If they classify amalgam, they know they are going to have to classify it similar to other mercury devices so they do not do it.

Mike: They just try to delay this and hope no one notices.

Charlie: They will delay until they retire – not delay until next week. They will delay until they retire. Then they will get the golden retirement egg from the American Dental Association. They also know that if they did an Environmental Impact Statement it is the end of mercury fillings.

Mike: Well, that is my next question.

The environmental impact of mercury fillings in dentistry

Charlie: Environmental... yes, sure – the Environmental Impact Statement says it does not require you to go a certain step but if you say if we use mercury fillings, it is the largest source of mercury in the wastewater. Its cremation is the largest source of mercury in the air except in communities that have many power plants is something.

In communities with no other industrial mercury uses it is the largest source of mercury in the air and is the largest source of mercury in the water in every community in America -- the huge contributor in coming out of cemeteries and so on. So you say if we continue mercury fillings, it is an environmental disaster. If we ban them, it is environmentally the right thing to do. Once they have done that the logical step since you could go either way is to take the environmentally friendly move.

They will not do an Environmental Impact Statement. It is a conscious decision inside FDA of protectors of mercury fillings – people like Susan Runner, people like Norris Alderson who have decided that they will protect the use of these fillings on behalf of organized dentistry and they will defy the laws of the land to do so.

Mike: I have so many questions to ask you about this. Let us start with one that I think any intelligent reader would be asking himself or herself and that is if this mercury is so toxic to human biochemistry and if it has such a detrimental impact on the environment, how could so many dentists and the American Dental Association be in such strong support of it.

Charlie: Yes, it is amazing. It is amazing. It really goes to the foundation stone. Clearly if we had it to do over again we would not build the combustion engine. The invention of the combustion engine may have been the decision that destroys our planet unless we can reverse that. I mean clearly that is the main reason we are turning our planet into a heat box.

However, the foundation stone is the combustion engine in which Henry Ford put us. The foundation stone of dentistry is mercury fillings. If there had been no mercury fillings, there would have been no dental profession. That is a certainty. We now have physicians of the ear, nose, and throat. In the 19th Century, there were physicians of the mouth. They said to use mercury is malpractice.

The barbers put the mercury in. It worked better than gold, which was very hot then. It hurt you to go in. Whereas, the mercury was nice and smooth and people were drinking mercury for syphilis so they were able to put it in there because medicine had not yet pushed it out of their profession. They pushed it out again not counting vaccines but they pushed it out of medicine around 1900, but dentistry was something different.

By then dentistry had gotten their market niche. Their market niche was we are going to take care of the mouth. They created an entirely different profession – one that basically is not related to healthcare. They take the position the mouth is so different from the rest of the body we will just worry about the mouth and nothing else and you doctors will not worry about the mouth at all. We have the most grotesque healthcare system where physicians even refuse to look at the mouth. People in the hospital – you can be in the hospital, you can be so sick and nobody is going to look at your mouth except the dentist.

It is like a division of labor where they both make their money and the person harmed is the public, so organized dentistry took the position since mercury is safe by definition because we use it and we are doctors, anything we put in the mouth is safe. They just put in... they put beryllium in there.

They put anything in there with the idea of we are immune because we are doctors. We know what we are doing and it is just a tragedy. It is just unbelievable that we ended up with a profession so wedded to the most neuro-toxic element on the planet.

Why dentists are walking away from mercury fillings

Mike: Well, you hinted at the arrogance of the professionals who continue to support this mercury and you mentioned the history quite a bit there. I have to wonder that given that nearly a hundred years have passed since this was being widely introduced into dentistry and with all the information about mercury's toxicity over the years, how could dentists still say that this substance is not harmful? What is their argument now?

Charlie: Well, half of them do not use it now. See half of them have walked away from it. Here is what happened – enter the institutional powerhouse, the American Dental Association, to impose a top down system. The ADA realizing that they had a secret. The ADA became the whole player on the field. The ADA is opposite the AMA in many ways and I am not – believe me I am not a supporter of the American Medical Association. I do not mean to say that but in this one area the AMA has a set of ethics that make sense, which is we do not endorse products for money. The AMA ventured into that I think in about the '30s and decided they had better stop and then they ventured into it again in the '90s and they realized they could not.

They promised their membership. They had to fire their executive director, break this contract with Sunbeam, and promise they will never endorse products for money. That is the AMA's ethical position and it is an ethical position. The ADA – the American Dental Association has no such ethics, Mike. They endorse products for money.

The ADA, starting in the '50s really, the 1950's, they really took off at that point. A product endorsement system, business studies show that Crest was a minor toothpaste product compared to Colgate. Crest surpassed Colgate because the they poured money into the ADA coffers and the ADA, in turn, gave their name to Crest to say we endorse this Crest toothpaste. It became such an advantage for Crest that the other toothpaste makers decided they would slop money to the ADA too, which they did.

The ADA was not only unethically telling the public a product is safe when they did not know if it was safe. They were not testing it. The ADA was even taking money from their members for joining and then turning around and saying to their members you should use this product because we endorse it, because it is safe and effective when they had no idea if it was safe and effective.

They were serving two masters but the corporate master to ADA was paramount and so they took these sums of money from every dental products manufacturer, became a dental products endorsement machine more than a professional group – much more than a professional group. You had that basic powerhouse – the ADA saying go buy these products.

Then the ADA saw the criticism of mercury amalgam coming in the 1980's and they knew they had to do something because they were getting money from the manufacturers and they had dentists that did not want the public to know. The ADA adopted a gag rule in their code of ethics in 1987 and it said that dentists should not tell anybody about the toxicity of mercury.

Mike: Really?

Charlie: Yes, absolutely.

Mike: They adopted a gag rule about mercury fillings?

Charlie: They adopted a gag rule. In the Goldwater Center, the Phoenix based Goldwater Center wrote an essay condemning the gag rule in 1998 – a decade later. They were the first ones to do it.

They are a think tank, kind of a libertarian think tank I guess you would call it – the Goldwater Center. Modeled after the thinking of their namesake of the group, of course, Senator Goldwater... he did not found it but it was founded on his principles and Congressman Flake was the executive director. He is now a Congressman.

When he was executive director, Mark Gingrich – a former reporter at the Arizona Republic, who joined that group, wrote a whole report on the gag rule and how bad it was. That was the libertarian from the right if you will. The libertarian on the left – the American Civil Liberties Union, took the same position. They sued the Connecticut Dental Board here on the other coast, said you cannot have this gag rule, and won.

Then the attorney general of Oregon, the attorney general of Iowa said you have to stop the gag rule so bit by bit, piece by piece, the gag rule has been dismantled but the value of it was the ADA protecting its product.

I will tell you something else when they adopted the gag rule, I left this out: the ADA had patents on mercury amalgam. Not only did they get money for promoting the product. They even got patents on amalgam to protect its use, then told dentists do not talk about this product.

Mike: This sounds like just a financial racket here.

Charlie: The ADA is a financial racket. There is no question about it. To break the control over mercury fillings you not only have the history, they have to protect their profession, which was founded on mercury. I mean it is not that now but it was founded on mercury – the foundation stone. They have to protect their own history and their own pocketbooks.

Now with the gag rule crumbling they have many problems. The ADA has huge problems with this. They are in retreat. Mike, the one thing is they are definitely this year they began retreating. We gave them an exit strategy. December of 2006 I sat down in the ADA headquarters and said you guys know you have to get out of this and I have a cost-free exit strategy that will not destroy your reputation. We presented – Consumers for Dental Choice presented the ADA – the American Dental Association with an exit strategy on mercury fillings based on the environment where the ADA could say they would not have to concede any health issues. They would say we recognize that mercury amalgam is an environmental problem. Alternatives exist, therefore, we are announcing a phase out over the following number of years.

I asked for one year and they said it would have to be longer and I said okay, but I said we have to have an end. People have said to me well let us take them on like cigarettes and I will tell that is about the worst prototype I can think of where the lawyers became billionaires and kids are still smoking.

I am not going to tolerate that kind of end where a bunch of people get rich and the kids are still harmed... because poor kids are still getting mercury fillings and poor Latino pregnant women and Native American children and so on are getting this. We are not going to accept that. There has to be an end date.

They were willing to do it. The lawyers were willing to do it at this discussion – December 14, 2006 at the ADA offices in Chicago but they just could not pull the trigger with the ADA. They just could not have a second meeting. They have decided instead through 2007 they are doing a gradual retreat. There is no question they are. It is coming, but the gradual retreat continues to harm millions of people in America and around the world. Their gradual retreat is not acceptable. We are not going to have a Vietnam ending where we have eight years to withdraw.

Mike: Right, now, I mean obviously the ADA does not want to admit that mercury fillings were ever a hazard because then they could open themselves up to huge class-action lawsuits, right.

Charlie: Absolutely and I told them I hope they do get huge class-action lawsuits and some day they will because they would not walk away from it. They had their chance and they continued to give this nonsensical stuff about how mercury exposure is okay as long as they do it. It is just outrageous. It is morally outrageous and they know it.

The scientific reports that they produce are cooked. They are unethical. They have no scientific aspect. They are simply PR machines where they find some dentist – not a real scientist but just their fellow dentists to write reports. It is an effort to say we are going to protect ourselves, we are going to have our government do it, the government is going to do it for us, and the FDA is about as compliant a government agency as ever existed.

Mike: Now, what happens if your lawsuit succeeds with the FDA? I mean essentially, what has to happen next for the FDA to ban mercury fillings?

Charlie: Well, they could take many routes. They could just ban it. They could start doing their job. If they start the classifying process then amalgam is gone. The ADA has admitted that. The ADA warned its members the FDA is probably going to put restrictions on amalgam. That process has started. They promised us they were starting then the FDA just stopped. They just stopped because within the organization they reversed the course and decided effectively that dentists are more important to them than consumers. It is just so tragic that dental economics out-trumps children's health but that is the way the FDA operates.

Mike: Well but that cannot be a surprise to anyone who follows the FDA...

Charlie: Well it is a surprise to those of us that had an assumption that we actually believed what we were told. I know if you follow FDA, it is not a surprise. The FDA needs to be totally reorganized. They need to stop having a system where those with a self-interest in the product are the ones that get to make the decisions.

The idea that Susan Runner, a practicing dentist, is at the FDA doing the work for the ADA and has actually had a sort of agenda to cover up mercury decade after decade and it is still being covered up in the Dental Devices Branch. The fact that Dan Schultz – the physician who's head of Devices will not remove her or allow anybody but a dentist to be in charge, this shows the professional courtesy that physicians give to dentists. Schultz simply closes his eyes.

He knows it is a problem but he is a physician. He wants dentists in charge because that is the deal they made a hundred years ago that dentists are in charge of the mouth and the public is shut out and physicians are to blame as well on this for shutting their eyes. Dan Schultz is as morally culpable and legally culpable at the FDA as Susan Runner is. That is why we sued him and sued her both and several other people.

Arresting top FDA officials and charging them with crimes against the People

Mike: Now, I am on the record saying that I believe the FBI should march into the FDA offices and arrest these individuals and we should prosecute them for criminal behavior against the American people. Do you think that is going way too far or do you think that's quite reasonable?

Charlie: That is probably not going too far. We filed a series of complaints with the Inspector General. We filed complaints with the in-house FDA Inspector and then filed a complaint with the U.S. Inspector General last Fall. They have decided they will not comply with the law. They know they have to classify mercury amalgam. They will not do it.

They know environmental impact statements are required or environmental assessments are required – the first step. They will not do it. They know that they warn about all of the mercury exposures such as fish or they warn against as a matter of precaution mercury exposure to children from all other sources. They banned mercurochrome years ago. They took it out of childhood vaccines – actually not of them but they said they would take it out of all of them.

They gave warnings on fish for children and pregnant women. They have decided that they will stand silent on mercury and it is truly a conspiracy of silence. That is why our lawsuit did not just sue the FDA. We sued five deep into the bureaucracy. We know whom the players are who are ignoring their duty and we have named them because we are tired of the FDA having a system where they all can hide behind each other. I hope that system ends and our lawsuit plays a role in exposing it.

Mike: Now, you just mentioned mercury in fish and that is a great point. Do you happen to know how many times more mercury there is in a typical filling than would be found in a serving of fish?

Charlie: Well, it is a more severe exposure because in the fish it is locked in. The mercury from the fish is mainly going through the body. It is a lesser exposure. The mercury in the amalgam is implanted. The mercury in the fillings is thousands of times more because it is half a gram. That is 500,000 micrograms per filling.

Mike: Where we are talking micrograms in the fish, right?

Charlie: Yes, yes we are. We are so I mean it is so much more but it is a way for medicine and dentistry to change the subject and to blame the fish. It is the fish's fault.

Mike: So the FDA says well, mercury in fish is dangerous to you but mercury in your mouth, in your teeth is harmless.

Charlie: Well, the FDA has said that. You know the FDA does not speak through its news releases. The FDA speaks through its regulations and its warnings. It has never officially said anything about mercury amalgam. They know it cannot stand the light of day. Yes, they make off-the-cuff comments.

They come out with a white paper, which has nothing to do with a regulation – and they refuse to say who wrote it. If FDA staff has furtively sneaked out interviews, white papers, other ways to say mercury fillings are safe but officially, FDA is not saying that at all. Officially, FDA is taking the position that they have never taken a position that it is safe.

When forced by the Court to say is mercury safe or not in the first lawsuit we filed, the first bombs against mercury versus FDA, the FDA admitted five times that it does not know if mercury fillings are safe. I can give you all five quotations from their brief or I can give people the website to look it up.

Meet Consumers for Dental Choice

Mike: Can you tell us a little bit, about where your passion comes from on this topic and people would like to know a bit about your background and your organization – Consumers for Dental Choice.

Charlie: Well, sure. Consumers for Dental Choice were founded a decade ago. Came up with the idea in 1996 – it was an idea of Bob Jones who is an inventor from Colorado and now in Texas. He is a former airline pilot, former U2 pilot earlier than that. He is just an outstanding man and inventor and an engineer. He has many patents.

He got very sick from mercury fillings and realized the impact of them was severe. He got to know many of the pioneering dentists like Hal Huggins and Scott McAdoo. He was out west and in the east Sue Ann Taylor, a journalist in Atlanta came up with the idea that we really need a consumer movement to fight this. Bob Jones had a conference, which he paid for and sponsored in Denver in 1996.

I was in a law firm that represented a lot of alternative health practitioners and interests and consumer groups in the kind of cutting edge alternative health issues many of which no longer were cutting edge because of the work of the senior partner, Jim Turner.

Anyway so Jim Turner and I went to that and we decided we would start up the group but Jim came up with the idea we called it the Consumers for Dental Choice and it became a project of another non-profit and then became its own organization in 1999.

Then it became a spin off, I left the law firm with it in 2002 to become a full-time consumer group with an office and so on. It has been around for 12 years. It has been a stand-alone organization for six. I got into it representing alternative health groups. I represented many alternative health ideas. I have been a state attorney general of West Virginia in the 1980's. I have been a political activist in the past and had interesting kinds of legal challenges I think.

This has just appealed to me and I guess the more I get into it the more I realize how many children are being hurt and how many animals are being poisoned and we have to do something. The way to do it is to have a very aggressive activist organization. It needs to get right in the face of federal or state regulators or the private sector interests like manufacturers or the ADA.

Mike: What about your funding? Where does your funding come from?

Charlie: We get some money from foundations – the Garfield Foundation is a wonderful funder, has funded us for seven years. For a long time we were funded by the Wallis Research Foundation, a family foundation. The patriarch was H. B. Wallis, an inventor from Iowa. He then lived in Scottsdale near you Mike.

He died a couple of years ago and that funding ended at that point from the Wallis Research Foundation but Garfield funds us and then individual dentists and that number grows each year... dentists who have decided to give money off their credit card every month or give an annual contribution and it is very exciting. These people are mercury-free. They are the people who know the ADA is wrong and know we need to fight and they are so much a part of our team that quite a few of them give money. It is terrific.

Mike: How quickly is that movement accelerating towards mercury-free dental care?

Charlie: Well, fast. The number of mercury-free dentists, if that is any measurement, was 9% in 1995. This is according to the Clinical Research Associates run by the preeminent dentist scholar, very neutral. He has no dog in our fight – Gordon Christensen out of Orem, Utah.

One of the things he surveys in dentists is who is mercury-free and it was 9% in 1995. Then 27% of dentists were mercury-free by 2001; by 2005, it was 32%. In 2007, a different survey – this was by a dental magazine said that 52% of the dentists are now mercury-free. It may have reached that number. It may have reached half. It may have reached the tipping point. The progress on dentists is huge. The progress of consumers, the number of mercury fillings was far over 50% when we started, like 60% or something like that I believe or more.

The ADA says it is fewer than 30%. I am sure it is but that is the good news. The bad news is it could well get frozen at that number where we have two-tier dentistry where middle-class adults get no mercury but the poor, the children, the working class people, minorities, children, they keep getting mercury and that is absolutely both immoral and unacceptable.

Mike: How much mercury is actually released into the environment or put into people's mouths each year through dentistry?

Charlie: Well, I do not have that but the expert is the Mercury Policy Project and Michael Bender. They are really the experts. Their website is www.MercuryPolicy.org. Michael has written just some seminal reports on this. About every two years, he writes another one. If the folks want to go to www.MercuryPolicy.org they will definitely see what they need to do.

Mike: While we are mentioning websites, I want to mention yours again. It is www.ToxicTeeth.org

Charlie: Yes it is.

Mike: Can consumers also financially support your organization with a donation?

Charlie: Sure, our address is 316 F Street Northeast, Suite 316, Washington, D.C. 20002 and again our website is www.ToxicTeeth.org

Why conventional dentists are so arrogant about mercury and fluoride

Mike: Okay and I will check out www.MercuryPolicy.org too. I will take a close look at that. Getting back to the dentists themselves it is encouraging to see that perhaps as many as half of practicing dentists are now shunning the use of mercury. You have to wonder what the other half are thinking though.

I have had numerous conversations, debates, arguments with dentists. I find that those who are still using mercury also still support mass fluoridation of the water supply. They are some of the most arrogant people I have ever met. It is infuriating because his or her position is that no one has any right to question mercury or fluoridation. It makes you wonder. Where are these people coming from that they think they already know so much about mercury that they have declared it to be harmless and no one can challenge that?

Charlie: Albert Einstein once said it is always unusual to find someone for whom curiosity survives a formal education. There are so many dentists and they are not alone in this among professionals who get that degree and now they can turn off their brain and make money. These people have decided just to read the ADA propaganda and that is it.

You hear that these pro-mercury dentists defend their use of mercury fillings and they will not use the word "mercury" they will give false information as if it is inert. It is not. They know it is not. If they read anything, they know it is not inert.

They may just decide to believe it themselves and their big rationale and every pro-mercury dentist that you talk to will give this rationale within the first two minutes. We know it is safe because we have used it for 150 years. Now, I guess the first response to that is what other part of pre-civil war medicine do you endorse?

The second point is that it is the most absurd scientific reasoning to say something has been used a long time and therefore is safe. I mean cigarettes must be safe. I have this article, a copy of it, from the British Lancet. Lancet is the British equivalent of the American Medical Association Journal but it is much better. It is much less sleazy in its connection to special interest groups, which the AMA Journal certainly is.

The Lancet had an article in 1860, an editorial in 1860 that said cigarettes are the universal product around. If it were dangerous as if its critics said people would be dropping dead in the streets, and clearly its universal use proves that it is safe and it is time to quit criticizing it. That is what things are with amalgam. They make jokes. Well, nobody dropped dead in my office, they say.

Well, if somebody gets sick later he or she does not go back to the dentist. The dentist says I am just in charge of the mouth and just the metals I put in the mouth. I do not have any other role. If I cut you while I am putting it in, well I know I have to deal with that because then I have done something that is in the mouth.

Any total body effect of what I do leaves with the patient. They get that patient out of the office. They are done with them and then they have this wall of silence and nobody can get back in and beat them in court, although we are going to beat them in court soon. Dentists literally say it is safe because we have done it for 150 years. Does that make it good? – is this good if we do it for 150 years?

It was the same argument for slavery. It was the same argument for cigarettes. It is the same argument for everything. If we do it long enough it must be good. That is just the most absurd thing for a man of science or a woman of science to say but by goodness, they do.

Mike: Yes, they do. I know you are not focusing on fluoridation but of course, this issue extends to fluoridation where I personally find many of the same similarities – a complete lack of scientific evidence supporting it, a denial of the dangers of fluoridation and the extreme arrogance and unwillingness to consider any possibility that they might be wrong.

Charlie: Yes, absolutely, absolutely and I think that is why you would say well how could this continue for so long. I mean how segregation could continue for a hundred years. I mean how could it take 70 years to ban lead in gasoline?

In the early 1920's as they started to mass produce gasoline with lead in it the people started dying. Workers died. Workers died in large numbers and everyone knew lead was the culprit... I mean everyone knew. Just as everyone knows mercury is toxic. Everyone knew lead in the 1920's knew lead was toxic.

The gasoline industry and the oil industry came up with two solutions. One is they thought of the funny word that said we have added ethyl to the gas. It means lead but they thought just as the dentists say silver fillings or amalgam. To protect the workers they raised the steam stacks in the plants where the gasoline was made.

In other words, rather than the workers getting sick and dying immediately from the lead exposure, the chimneys were raised so high that the lead went into the higher atmosphere and started just polluting the whole country. The workers were semi-saved in the sense they were not dying on the spot and the whole country was getting to the point of huge toxicity.

The study showed that as we took the lead out of gasoline in the '70s the level of violence committed by teenagers started going down immediately because each year they were less lead-toxic and the ones growing up were not starting out with lead toxicity. Lead toxicity like mercury toxicity causes people to be violent because they are poisoned. They just strike out.

It took from the '20s to the late '70s and everybody knew it was toxic and again with mercury fillings because the oil industry had such well-placed lobbyists and they were able to revert the question, saying we do not have to prove it is safe, you have to prove it is unsafe. That is what the dentists keep doing. We have done it for 150 years so prove it. Well, okay we can prove it. But they say, now you are not going to prove it with us having the government in our pocket.

The government people are in their pocket. Randall Luter, who had a lot of promise, he was Deputy Commissioner. He has just decided to sleep on it. Let the dentists and the bureaucrats' be back in charge of this issue at FDA; those people have decided we do not care. We are going to protect special interest groups or we are going to let others at FDA protect special interest groups so we have a similar resolve.

How to stop the FDA with a lawsuit

Mike: To conclude this – getting back to the lawsuit itself, if you win the lawsuit can it force the FDA to rule on this? Why cannot the FDA just say we will deal with it later? I mean can they not just continue to delay even if you win the lawsuit?

Charlie: Well, that is a challenge. You pointed to that. I mean if a court just looks at the FDA and says hurry up and do it, the FDA will nod, oh your honor we certainly will. We will hurry as fast as we can. In that sense, it may not do anything. We are trying to build accountability of public officials and that is why we have asked for the remedy that the court should simply take it off the market until FDA does its job.

Then I will bet they start moving fast. That is a challenge – a challenge to get that kind of remedy. Nonetheless, we have to begin. We sued them in the U.S. Court of Appeals. The Court of Appeals gave us a roadmap to go to district court. We were all set to file in May of 2007 and the FDA said no they would like a meeting. Please do not file. They would like a meeting. We had a meeting. We said we need an answer in 30 days.

In 30 days, the FDA answered and said yes, we will do an advanced notice and a proposed rule. I got a letter from the lawyer for the FDA, Wendy Vincente saying speaking for the FDA we will do this... we assumed that the FDA was telling us the truth. We were wrong so we waited and waited and waited because we would have filed this suit in June.

The FDA just bought six, seven months of time simply by telling another bald faced lie, which was that they were going to start moving forward to classify amalgam when... I think some people at the FDA probably have that intention. I think there was good faith from some people but the bureaucrats – the ones that want to keep mercury fillings unclassified, protected for dentistry like Susan Runner - have won out.

The FDA is so badly organized, its lead scientist – the Associate Commissioner for Science, the top science person of the agency, degree is in veterinarian medicine.

Mike: Their degree is in veterinarian medicine?

Charlie: Veterinarian medicine – not a toxicologist, not a chemist, the top person has a degree in veterinarian medicine.

Mike: Well, let me just say right here let me offer that when it comes time to apply grassroots pressure give me a call because we can put out an action alert to our reader base, which is now over one million people.

Charlie: That is fantastic.

Mike: If we coordinate it with what you are doing then we can create this real surge of grassroots pressure because I think what you are finding out is that if you take the FDA's word on anything, then nothing is done. If we can pressure them from another angle that can really assist your lawsuit effort or other efforts in applying pressure. What we need is a re-launch of a campaign as you had "Mothers Against Mercury." We need, what I call, a Web sticker – like a bumper sticker on the Web. We need a little graphic, name like that "Mothers Against Mercury", launch this campaign, and let it go viral all across the Web tied to action items such as grass roots complaints or protests – those kinds of things.

Charlie: Well, I will tell you where we are going to work grass roots and I am happy because I have already told the company we are, Dentsply, is the second largest manufacturer of mercury fillings. They make others. They make resin. They make composite.

They also make the alternatives – porcelain and so on I think. I know they make a resin composite. They make many other dental products and Wall Street report said Dentsply would be better off if amalgam was banned, they would be more profitable. Dentsply nonetheless has dug in its heels and said we are going to keep making mercury fillings. Basically, Dentsply has turned its back on its own shareholders.

The Wall Street has said stop and they said we are not going to stop. Now whether this is just some kind of backroom deal with the ADA or pressure from the ADA that they cannot stand or some other reason that they will not explain to me. I have written them and their counsel wrote me back a "back of the hand" letter... about a two-paragraph letter or three paragraphs saying [nothing substantial]. Dentsply is not only harming consumers and dentists – dental employees, dental workers, the environment all of which they could be sued for.

They have an easy exit route. They could make the non-mercury fillings. That is an area we are going to work on – they are based in York, Pennsylvania. I think their day is going to come.

Mike: Well, what if we can organize all kinds of protests around that company even maybe not in person but phone calls, faxes, emails...

Charlie: Well, why not in person? Anybody who is listening to this and wants to contact me or anybody around the York, PA area or anybody in Pennsylvania that wants to help us ought to contact me that want to go in person. My email is Charlie@ToxicTeeth.org We would like to get people to write but we want folks that are somewhere in the Maryland, eastern half of Pennsylvania...

Mike: We have readers all over the country and I know we could get people there. I do not know how many. I do not know if it is ten, 100, or what but I know we have people emailing us all the time asking what we can do. What can we do to fight these evil corporations? If we get some people out there protesting with signs – "Mercury poisoned my child" on their sign. If we get that up on YouTube this could have just a huge domino effect not only make more people aware of your organization but also the mercury toxicity issue.

Charlie: Okay, I will. Thank you sir.

Prologue

Following this interview, Charles Brown won a significant court victory over the FDA, and now the FDA has promised it will reclassify mercury by June, 2009. Between now and then, NaturalNews will be working closely with ToxicTeeth.org to rally grassroots support for an outright ban on mercury amalgam fillings.

Stand by for action alerts on internet protests, petitions, and perhaps even in-person protests. We must work together to demand that toxic mercury fillings be banned. Then we will end the hundred-year reign of neurotoxic terror that has been orchestrated by the ADA, the FDA and the conventional dentistry industry. We will also support a national class-action lawsuit against not just the ADA and FDA, but even against the individual dentists who have installed these toxic mercury fillings into the mouths of children over the last ten years, despite the incredible amount of scientific evidence proving that mercury fillings cause irreparable harm to human health.

It is time to stop poisoning our children and our planet with mercury. The era of mercury poisoning must come to an end. NOW. And those responsible for this chemical attack against our people must be made to compensate for the harm they have unleashed and serve time for their crimes against the People.

The revolution will be announced via e-mail.

If you're not already subscribed to NaturalNews, get on our e-mail list right now by signing up here: www.NaturalNews.com/readerregistration.html

In the months ahead, we'll announce key action items via e-mail. Join us in protesting against the ADA and FDA about the toxicity of mercury fillings, and be prepared to hammer your Senators and other lawmakers in Washington to urge them to support an outright ban on mercury in dental care.

This poison must be stopped! And it is up to you to help us achieve this important goal for the future of the human race. Literally, it is that important. We are talking about the future of human life on this planet. If we hope to live, if we hope to have seafood, or ocean ecosystems, or fully-functioning brains and healthy babies, we must stop mercury now.

Join the revolution. Stay tuned to NaturalNews. Watch your e-mail for important announcements from us.

And be sure to visit www.ToxicTeeth.org and join their e-mail list, too. Stay informed. Empower yourself. Demand real change. And when the day comes, I ask for your support in urging the arrest and prosecution of the criminals at the ADA the FDA who have orchestrated this mass poisoning of the American people. It is time to arrest, prosecute and imprison these criminals who are, in every sense, an imminent threat to the health and safety of the American people.

I do not believe in using violence to resolve problems, and I do not believe that these people should be dragged out of their offices and hanged in a public forum, as some other writers have suggested, but I do believe that we must strip them of their power and influence, and we must hold a public court session so that all the world can see the degree of evil that has been operating inside the ADA and FDA for so many years. We must bring this issue into the light, and let the truth be told about this hundred-year lie so that future generations can learn what happens when you allow corporate profits to dictate health regulatory decisions in any society.

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