Majority DDSs (52%) now
mercury-free - Tipping point at hand!
By Charles G. Brown,
National Counsel, Consumers For Dental Choice
Monday, May 21st, 2007
The tipping point against mercury
fillings, my friends, has arrived. A dentist magazine
surveyed its dentist readers, and finds that 52% of
American dentists now are mercury-free.
www.toxicteeth.org/Mercury%20survey.pdf
Wow.
This new dentist majority brings
colossal ramifications upon America ’s protectors of mercury
fillings -- the American Dental Association and the
Food and Drug
Administration.
I wrote the head of the ADA to
inform him that the ADA has missed the boat by not exiting
the mercury fillings business last year. (I even went to
Chicago
in December to hand them a graceful exit plan.) Choosing
instead to stay mired in the 19th century, ADA
’s pro-mercury members are likely to be picked off via
lawsuits, one-by-ones. The ADA , I advised Dr. Bramson,
will morph into a numerical shadow of itself, as its members
wake up to the fact that this rallying around mercury has
been a sham;
www.toxicteeth.org/52%25%20mercury-free,%20Dr.Bramson.pdf
With
this new evidence, if the ADA refuses to warn its dwindling
band of pro-mercury dentists to abandon mercury, the ADA
likewise will be sitting in the litigation dock.
Our legal team -- Bob Reeves,
Sandy Duffy, Kele Onyejekwe and I – was on the brink of
filing the re-match lawsuit in the U.S. District Court, (Moms
Against Mercury v.
FDA II).
But FDA
lawyers agreed at the 11th hour to a meeting. On
May 10, they assembled a number of top officials, and I
brought the nation’s #1 food and drug lawyer on the
consumer’s side, Jim Turner. We had what diplomats describe
as a “frank” session. By letter afterwards, I asked
FDA to meet with IAOMT ’s Science Advisory
Board (see our web site,
www.toxicteeth.org, third item); IAOMT ’s
liaison, Dr. Rich Fischer, is following through.
As the summer opens, we begin a
short intense period where
FDA will decide whether to abandon its policy
protecting mercury fillings and comply with the law, adhere
to the science, and apply plain common sense (the
precautionary principle of health care) – or continue its
position that the health of children and pregnant women rank
below professional courtesy to the dental establishment. My
fellow lawyers join me in assuring you our powder is dry.
The press corps that cover
FDA are closely following our
battle; see
www.toxicteeth.org/natCamp_BNA-FDAMAM.cfm
and
www.toxicteeth.org/FDA%20Week%204.20.07.pdf
For your community (regardless of
whether it has reached the magic 51% threshold), this
development is huge. Regardless of whether you are a health
professional or a consumer, please call in to talk shows;
write a letter to the editor; write a letter to your state
and federal lawmakers and your state dental board, with a
message like this:
A majority of dentists are now
mercury-free! Why are the old-fashioned dentists sticking
with this primitive 19th-century device in the 21st
century? It’s time to stop using mercury in dentistry.
Charlie Brown, 5/16/07
Charles G. Brown,
National Counsel,
Consumers for
Dental Choice
1725 K St., N.W., Suite 511,
Washington DC 20006
Ph.
202.822-6307;
fax 822-6309
charlie@toxicteeth.org,
www.toxicteeth.org
