 The
"Amalgam Wars" have gone on since the introduction of mercury amalgam as a
dental filling material in England and France in the 1820s. Because
"amalgam" by definition means an alloy of various metals mixed with
mercury, it was natural for a great deal of controversy to surround its
use as a dental material. After all, mercury is one of the most toxic
metals known to man. The controversy was confined primarily within the
medical and dental professions, with very little media coverage addressed
to the general population. The basic controversy was between health
professionals: One group concerned that implanting mercury in the human
body presented unacceptable health risks to the patient; the other group
claiming that amalgam was so easy to use that it would permit dentists to
treat large numbers of patients cheaply and that this benefit outweighed
the possible health risk to the patient.
It wasn't until the early 1980s that the
controversy started to spill over into the public domain when scientific
research was published showing that amalgam fillings released mercury
vapor and that this toxic vapor was being continuously inhaled by every
person who had amalgam fillings implanted in their teeth.
The only easily available general source of
information for the media, public and health professional on the subject
of amalgam was the American Dental Association, whose policy since its
inception in the 1850s was that amalgam was an excellent dental material
and was completely safe, presenting no health risk to the general patient
population.
Consequently, there was a great void in the
controversy regarding scientific and clinical information presenting data
contrary to the position of the ADA. It was in 1984 that Bio-Probe was
chartered as a Florida Corporation with the primary purpose of gathering
and making easily available to the health professional, and the patient
population, scientific information on dental amalgam and mercury, both pro
and con.
This effort initially took the form of the
Bio-Probe Newsletter which is scientific in nature and designed
specifically to provide health professionals with abstracts and reviews of
recently published scientific studies dealing with mercury, dental
amalgam, with editorials and comments on the controversy. We at Bio-Probe
were committed to providing dentists who did not want to use mercury
amalgam in their practice with scientific information to support their
decision.
It was also important to provide the
general population with "factual" and scientifically supported information
on the amalgam issue. To this end, we have not only written and published
several books on the subject but also set about to make available the
largest selection of books on the subject. As nutritional support is a
vital component of coping with mercury exposure, it was a natural
evolution for us to start making available well written and scientifically
documented books on nutrition and eventually, a finite selection of
quality nutritional supplements to those patients seriously attempting to
help themselves get through some exceptional health problems.
This information provided by
BioProbe.com |
