Dr Huggins:

Dr. Pinto explained that his parents had both been dentists. His father had attended a conference in the 1920s at which a speaker had condemned mercury. The elder Pinto remembered this a while later when he was asked to treat a child dying of leukemia. Her biggest complaint was that her gums hurt. He removed her amalgams qui-etly, and the terminally ill child responded within a few days. "Spontaneous remission!" announced the medical profession. Pinto responded by telling the physician he had removed the amalgams. There was a pecking order at that time, just as there is today, in the health profes-sions. He was academically whiplashed and made to feel inferior and foolish. This was standard procedure. So Pinto quietly replaced an amalgam in the little girl, then told the doctor to watch for a recurrence of the leukemia the next day. There was a recurrence. He removed it, of course, and the child recovered again.

"Then there was the case of Hodgkin's disease," Dr. Pinto continued.

"Hodgkin's?" I retorted. "Wait a minute. You're talking about heavies. Medical diseases! Real diseases! Not allergic reactions."

Dr. Pinto quietly proceeded with diseases and dates. "This type of lymphoma was not noted until 1832, a short time after amalgam was introduced in the area where the disease was discovered. The first amalgam to be placed in an African-American was in 1904. Sickle-cell anemia was noted to move out of the rare in 1906."

"But pathologists weren't very smart then," I challenged. Later I found that some of the most brilliant pathologists the world has ever known were alive then. I also learned that sickle cells are not difficult to identify.

I argued that these could be spontaneous coincidences, that there were no double-blind studies, that.. .. I spluttered while he continued to deluge me with anecdotes. Then he began quoting scientific literature.

"Where did you come up with that information?" I finally asked.

"I was taking a master's degree at Georgetown University. Mercury toxicity was my topic. I compiled the largest bibliography on mercury toxicity that probably existed on the planet at that time," he answered.

"When was your thesis published?" I asked.

"It never was. The National Institute of Dental Research-part of the National Institutes of Health-found out about my project and forced the university to have me stopped. I had a choice of returning to Brazil or changing my topic. I had no choice, but I still have the materials."

Cancer & mercury http://vest.gu.se/~bosse/xCancer.html#List