Grief knows why, but, from time to time, people send us email from Orthomolecular Medicine News Service (Visiting Professor Patrick Holford was the UK representative for some Orthomolecular organisation or other). It’s possibly a subtle plan to wreck our digestion so that people can photograph us taking an OTC Tums lozenge (other products are available) so that there can be a huge exposé of the state of our guts and faux expressions of concern that we really need an IgG food intolerance test or some hugely expensive analysis of our metabolic by-products.[a] Their latest cyberblast is ostensibly about dental amalgams but more about how people’s lack of understanding of thar interwebs leads to all sorts of embarrassing conspiracy theories.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, November 20, 2008
Mercury Dental Amalgams Banned in 3 Countries
FDA, EPA, ADA Still Allow and Encourage Heavy-Metal Fillings
Anyone who is familiar with this issue can probably fill in most of the content of this cyberblast for themselves. Evil conspiracy, “biggest product-liability lawsuit in history”, etc.
If these emails keep the authors and most recipients happy, then that is fine. But, please, I implore the authors, learn how to use a URL validation service like Down for everyone or just me.[b] This sort of thing is just embarrassing.
The original PHS statement was, “The U.S. Public Health Service believes it is inappropriate at this time to recommend any restrictions on the use of dental amalgam . . . (C)urrent scientific evidence does not show that exposure to mercury from amalgam restorations poses a serious health risk in humans.” (CDC/National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. Oral Health Resources. http://www.cdc.gov/OralHealth/publications/factsheets/amalgam.htm, accessed July 31, 2004)
That entire webpage is gone. [Emphasis added.]
No, it isn’t. The webpage is still there. Had the author bothered to check with Down for everyone or just me for this page, they might have managed to look a little less foolish.
Elsewhere, the text rambles about ‘deletions’ from other web-pages that had originally been accessed in July 2004. A revision in 4 years – what were the odds?
One may see the handwriting on the wall. FDA has already deleted this specific statement from its website: “No valid scientific evidence has shown that amalgams cause harm to patients with dental restorations, except in the rare case of allergy.” (http://www.fda.gov/cdrh/consumer/amalgams.html, accessed July 31, 2004)
Oddly enough, the deletion that they complain about is available from the webpage that they think was deleted. The page also provides the dates of its revisions.
They complain about revisions to a statement that had explicitly been updated to include some extra findings or recommendations that were released in 2008.
Apparently, once something is true, it must be true for all time. Because this is what happens in some areas like nutritionism and the religion of supplementation – apparently you only deal in received truths that must never, ever, be modified, no matter what new research, science, or information might indicate.
However, your mileage may vary. You may be happy to take health advice from people who weave conspiracy theories from their own inability to load a webpage and think “Conspiracy” before ‘meh, server glitch, what does Down for Everyone Or Just Me indicate’. (We should mention that Computer Hope offers a similar service.)
I’m addressing the writers of these missives right now: I implore you – learn to read, learn to read a calendar, learn about how to use a search engine to locate a particular phrase, learn how to use an archive service such as Wayback and learn about URL validation. If you could throw in the ability to interpret blobbograms, systematic reviews etc., that would be a bonus. But, baby steps.
Seriously, bicarb, or a Curiously Strong – either of these would help right now.
Update
Nov 24: jdc has covered some of the dental amalgam issues and points out why some of the response about historic law-suits etc. is overblown: The Independent on Mercury Dangers.
Science Based Medicine has some interesting video clips relating to the dental amalgam issue in The (Not-So-) Beautiful (Un)Truth about the Gerson therapy and cancer quackery.
Notes
[a] However, if YorkTest or any other testing laboratory would like us to try out some of their products, then, please, get in touch. We would be delighted to assess some of these products.
[b] We have no affiliation to, or other relationship with, Down for everyone or just me or Computer Hope’s service; ditto for Tums, or any other manufacturer, distributor or retailer of any product we have mentioned.
2 Comments
November 23, 2008 at 12:12 am
This does raise more than a smile but you do have to wonder who does the research for these people. It also makes you wonder just how good mega-doses etc. are for you if it makes you prone to conspiracies rather than being sufficiently in touch with reality to consider server glitches or such.
How is all the nutritional nonsense so persuasive when it is based on this sort of competence?
November 23, 2008 at 8:06 pm
Last time the FDA page on amalgam was revised, Geoffrey Lean wrote a piece in the Independent on similar lines to the OMNS. Apparently, it was a “landmark victory for campaigners”.
Independent.
I blogged it and there’s a link to Science Based Medicine in my post – a cracking piece titled “Mercury Must Be Bad – If Not in Vaccines, In Teeth”.