In regards to your comment that I’m trying to “scare people into becoming patients,” it’s hard to substantiate when you look at our web statistics and see that more than 93% of our web visitors come from outside San Diego County. In fact, a large portion of our visitors come from overseas. Most of our business comes from referrals from patients who are very happy with the dental care we provide and have never seen our website (nor will they ever see it). And while we do perform safe mercury removals, we are selective in who we provide this service to and perform very few (nor do we care to — they are labor and time-intensive procedures with very little profit margin).

Our main goal on the website is to inform the public. Most of our visitors come via web searches for specific information on the dangers of mercury. There are a disproportionate number of websites providing information that will extol the benefits of amalgam fillings and applaud the ADA for maintaining their position on amalgam and ignoring the scientific research at hand (in fact, contrary to popular belief, amalgam fillings have a higher profit potential for most dentists because they are a much easier filling material to work with and many insurance companies will pay for them).

The notion that organic mercury is neurotoxin is indisputable. What most people don’t understand is that toxicity does not often occur via mass exposure (as happened in the Minamata incident you mentioned), but rather, via accumulation of the toxin in low doses over long periods of time. While no one will probably “explode” as a result of this “ticking time bomb,” being exposed to low doses (as are found in mercury amalgam fillings) can have an adverse affect on one’s health. It’s similar to asbestos (another toxin that was deemed safe by authorities before it was finally proven dangerous and rapidly removed from schools and everywhere else it had been used). Very few people have immediate health issues as a result of mass exposure to asbestos. Rather, the health affects are incurred over time as a result of consistent, low-level exposure.

I appreciate your comment. I don’t have the false belief that everyone will agree with our positions — quite the contrary — and I appreciate the impassioned and educated response.

Dr. Marvin

With regards to vaccines, go to any physician and they’ll tell you that thimerosal preserved vaccines make up only a small percentage of the available options out there. I like that Dr. Marvin referenced the link to the John’s Hopkins report – and anyone who took the time to peruse the report will find that for almost every thimerosal preserved vaccine, there are 3 or 4 non-thimerosol options that most physicians will recommend. Of course no obvious mention of this was made, and the blog entry continues to infer that vaccines are bad and you’re going to accumulate a mass amount of neurotoxin that will become lethal over time. Forget the fact that 200-500 thousand people die from the flu every year, yet mercury related deaths are so insignificant that you would be hard pressed to find official numbers on the subject. The most significant mercury poisoning episode in recent human history was the Minamata, Japan incident, which killed less than 2000 people…and that was more than 60 years ago. These poor souls were DIRECTLY exposed to high levels of mercury on a daily basis via wastewater from a nearby plant…nothing close to the amount of mercury sitting in your molars or in a vaccine.

In Dr. Marvin’s defense, I applaud his marketing prowess in going after a market that most conventional dentists probably ignore, that is the i’ll-try-any-product-with-the-word-natural-in-it holistic population. Everyone needs to make a buck…nothing wrong with that at all.

While you are correct that I pointed to the differences between ethyl and methyl mercury (with Thimerasol containing ethyl mercury), the truth of the matter is that both ethyl and methyl mercury are organic forms of mercury (as stated in the CDC paper I referenced: “There are three forms of mercury. One form is an organic mercury, of which the two primary forms and ethyl and methylmercury. Ethylmercury is the form used in some vaccines.”). It has been “assumed” that ethyl mercury is excreted faster from the body, based on studies conducted on monkeys.

Your comment and concern centers around the link between mercury and autism, although the article I wrote makes only one mention of autism and does not directly tie vaccinations to autism (as written in the article: “Organic mercury is a well-known neurotoxin that can accumulate in the body’s soft tissue, such as the brain, and has been linked to problems such as Alzheimer’s, dementia, autism, and much more.”) The fact is that no causal relationship has been scientifically proven between autism and anything; all relationships involving autism — including your argument that no relationship exists between mercury and autism — are assumptions. What we do know is that organic mercury is a neurotoxin and that ethylmercury — which is in Thimerasol — is one form of organic mercury.

In 1999, after the 1997 FDA Modernization Act, the FDA “concluded that infants who received thimerosal-containing vaccines at several visits could exceed the total mercury exposure recommended by Environmental Protection Agency guidelines. These guidelines for exposure were set to avoid toxicity to the fetus.” By saying that the maximum exposure from vaccines “only exceeded the guidelines of the EPA” you’re saying that “2 out of 3 ain’t bad.” In actuality, the FDA acknowledged the guidelines set by the EPA and, in conjunction with the AAP, recommended that Thimerasol be removed from vaccines as a precautionary measure.

In no way is the article meant to dissuade people from receiving vaccinations. The fact remains that people are concerned with the amount of mercury administered in vaccines. My article links to the Johns Hopkins report as a reference for people that have such concerns so they can be armed with the knowledge they need. Most vaccination clinics won’t know how much mercury is in a vaccine. This arms people with the knowledge they may be seeking. By providing the information, I hope people will also see that there are mercury-free vaccines available if that is what they are seeking.

If the article sounds “alarmist” then I apologize. It is meant to provide information that is not readily available to those who are seeking it. It is not an article on the links between autism and ethylmercury. It’s an article referencing the amount of organic mercury in current vaccines with background information so people will know some of the controversy surrounding Thimerasol. Hopefully a safe, mercury-free alternative to Thimerasol will be developed soon. It’s something the FDA, CDC, and AAP have already called for, and something that will put this issue to rest for good.

Dr. Marvin

Thank you for collecting some of the facts about Thimerosal. Unfortunately, despite the facts, your article makes illogical leaps, ignores some of the facts, and thence takes on an alarmist tone.

As you explained, the mercury in Thimerosal is *ethyl* mercury, not “organic”/naturally occurring methyl mercury. The difference is significant. Ethyl mercury was chosen for Thimerosal because it is eliminated from the body much quicker than methyl mercury. After mentioning this distinction, the rest of your article ignores it and simply refers to “mercury,” which is disingenuous and insulting to the reader.

When public health officials looked into the “mercury” content of vaccines in the late 1990s, they had to use the guidelines for *methyl* mercury because there were none for ethyl mercury. They found that the maximum exposure from all vaccines combined (187.5 micrograms) did not exceed the guidelines of the FDA or the Agency for Toxic Substances Disease Registry (ATSDR) for *methyl* mercury. It only exceeded the guidelines of the EPA.

Also note that the average breast-fed baby ingests about 360 micrograms of *methyl* mercury in its first six months of life, *twice* the highest possible dose of the *ethyl* mercury in Thimerosal. There is also methyl mercury in water and in infant formula. It is an unavoidable natural substance.

You state in your article that “mercury” has been “linked to” autism. This has since been scientifically discredited (the Wakefield article was nothing but speculation to begin with) and was partially the result of a broadening of the criteria for autism. Some people remain convinced of a link, however, due to the fact that the signs of autism usually become apparent during the second year of life, which is also when vaccines tend to be administered (producing the occasional anecdote of coincidental onset after inoculation). A study of children in Canada receiving vaccines over the years when the Thimerosal content varied (from 125 ug in 1987 to 225 ug from 1992-95 to *zero* ug since) found that the incidence of autism was higher in babies who received no Thimerosal in their vaccines whatsoever.

To get to the point, I believe you are beating a dead horse. There is *no* *causal* connection between Thimerosal and autism. Ethyl mercury should not be conflated with methyl mercury. The amount of *ethyl* mercury in Thimerosal is a fraction of the quantity of the more dangerous *methyl* mercury that we all take in from the environment.

More importantly, alarmist articles like this one endanger lives. They panic parents into withholding vaccines from their children, who are then subject to awful, sometimes fatal diseases, the horror of which people my age do not remember. No one has ever died from Thimerosal in vaccines, but people have died from influenza, measles, and the other diseases that vaccines had previously banished to the margins of civilization. Within months of parents withholding vaccines in England and Ireland, children were turning up in hospitals with measles. Three of them died.

For other curious lay-persons (non-doctors) like myself, I recommend the book Vaccinated by Paul A. Offit, M.D. Chapter 10, “An Uncertain Future” reviews the history of this tragic confluence of media hype, attention-seeking behavior, and the natural human propensity for finding patterns even where there are none.

I appreciate your general goal of eliminating needless toxins from our bodies. I just disagree that vaccines are a good way to pursue this goal. They save untold lives every day. Please don’t help to destroy one of our medical miracles with mere innuendo and hype.

Sincerely,
Jason M. Bechtel, MSBS