5. It is usual in a Clinical Negligence case to include expert opinion in respect of diagnosis. But the Defendants here deny all existence of Amalgam Illness, so must also deny existence of expert experience in diagnosing it.
6. In a context of vicious persecution of medical heretics, diagnosis of Amalgam Illness does not have some recognised school of experience-developed skill like violin-playing, but rather entails an ad hoc judgement of how well the facts of the case accord with the facts of the science. And it really is not (in this case) very complicated, notwithstanding those whose career interests might encourage them to claim otherwise.
7. Any purported such diagnostic expert opinion in this case would be not an enlightening predicate but rather a timewasting added issue in question.
8. This claim involves two causes of action:
(a) Negligent breach of duty of care.
(b) The release of a dangerous thing, namely poisonous mercury vapour, causing foreseeable injurious consequences.
Negligent breach of duty of care
Duty of care
9. The Claimant made a FOI request on 28thFebruary 2010, namely: “Who has responsibility for approving dental amalgam?”. To which the DH replied:
“…. dental amalgam is classified as a medical device under the European Community Medical Devices Directive 93/42/ EEC (MDD). The enforcement of the Directive in the UK is the responsibility of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency ( MHRA). In conjunction with European counterparts, MHRA monitors the use and effects of dental amalgam.
In the light of the MHRA’s advice, it is the Chief Dental Officer’s view that that the use of dental amalgam is free from risk of systemic toxicity and that only a very few cases of adverse reactions occur, despite its widespread use over the past 150 years. ….“
10. The MHRA in giving that advice, and the Chief Dental Officer in expressing that view, function as regulators of clinical practice, with a duty of clinical care towards all those patients in respect of whom their advice and view are to be applied.
“Member States shall take all necessary steps to ensure that devices may be placed on the market and put into service only if they do not compromise the safety and health of patients ….” [Article 2]
and:
“Where a Member State ascertains that the devices referred to in Article 4 (1) and (2) second indent, when correctly installed, maintained and used for their intended purpose, may compromise the health and/or safety of patients, users or, where applicable, other persons, it shall take all appropriate interim measures to withdraw such devices from the market or prohibit or restrict their being placed on the market or put into service. The Member State shall immediately inform the Commission of any such measures, indicating the reasons for its decision and, in particular, whether non-compliance with this Directive is due to: [….] (c) shortcomings in the standards themselves.” [Article 8(1)]
12. The above Articles of the Directive thus make additionally clear that this duty of care to prevent the unsafe usage of amalgam in the UK lies within the Member State (of which the DH is the relevant agency).
13. And in years prior to that EC Directive, the DH likewise had that duty of care.
14. The preceding paragraphs indicate that the Defendants have had at all material times a duty of care to carefully seek and recognise any evidence of harm of usage of dental amalgam and to advise accordingly to prevent its unsafe usage.
Pervasive untruthfulness, misleading statements, and hence lack of credibility of the most expert defenders of amalgam
19. The Defendants, who purport to speak with expertise when they defend dental amalgam as being supposedly safe, habitually fail to mention the evidence which runs counter to their assertions.
(a) Pro-amalgam official reports, authored by committees of supposed experts, fail to mention the studies and facts that run counter to their assertions of safety. (Particulars in Paragraph 23)
(b) Criticisms pointing this out are ignored, as if they did not exist. (Particulars in Para 24)
(c) The defenders then habitually cite those grossly-biased reports as supposedly showing that amalgam is safe, but never cite the other official reports which conclude it is harmful (or uncertain) instead. (Particulars in Para 25)
(d) The CDO recently publicly denied knowledge of the even most basic easily demonstrable facts of dental mercury. (Particulars Para 26)
(e) Whenever patients appear to possibly have dental amalgam poisoning, or themselves suggest that they might have, the Defendants take extensive evasive measures to avoid any proper investigation of the possibility. (Particulars in Para 27)
These habitual omissions and misrepresentations, of which instances are particularised below, call into question whether there exist any genuine experts supporting the Defendants’ position and whether any testimony of the defenders of amalgam is worthy of belief.
Particulars of failing to mention evidence of harm.
20. Historical reasons to suspect harm from mercury vapour
“The principal features of erethism were excessive timidity, diffidence, increasing shyness, loss of self confidence, anxiety, and a desire to remain unobserved and unobtrusive. The victim also had a pathological fear of ridicule and often reacted with an explosive loss of temper when criticised.”
22. 28 studies showing benefits of amalgam removal
(a) Numerous published scientific studies have supported the notion that dental amalgams have serious adverse effects on those having them. Not least are 28 studies of amalgam removal, featuring 6622 patients. There are 25 of these studies cited and discussed in a publicly online meta-review by Mats Hanson (“Effects of amalgam removal on health; 25 studies of 5821 patients”), and three later studies are Prochazkova Sterzl Kucerova 2004; Sterzl Prochazkova Hrda 2006; Wojcik Godfrey Haley 2006.
(c) The EC 1998 report not only contains these same faults of omission and commission, but also complacently mentions in-passing the condition of “when water spray cooling and vacuum suction are used”, while not giving any consideration of the situation when such cooling or suction briefly (or not so briefly) fail to be applied, and the patient consequently breathes in a lungful of the dust. In the Claimant’s own 27 years of personal experience at the Dental Hospital, such breaches of suction were not rare, and there was never any warning to avoid inhaling. Such dust in the lungs causes hugely-increased mercury vaporisation from the large surface area of the dust, hence hugely-increased vapour intake until such later date at which the dust has all vaporised away. This intake can be expected to soon overwhelm the detoxification capability and thereby lead to frank amalgam illness. And yet this very serious likelihood (or rather certainty) is sidestepped.
(d) The “WHO Consensus Statement on Dental Amalgam 1997” does not cite any studies but merely asserts that amalgams are “considered safe”, “not been shown to cause any other [i.e. systemic] adverse health effects”, and “there is no scientific evidence that general symptoms are relieved by the removal of amalgam”. It also falsely claims that “It has been used successfully for more than a century and its quality has improved over the years.” On the contrary, the modern standard non-gamma-2 amalgams were only invented in 1963 and are well-established as emitting 30-50 times more of the toxic mercury vapour, a very strange sort of “improvement”.
(e) The FDA 2002 Proposed Rule likewise misleadingly declared “the significant human experience with amalgam for over 100 years”. It failed to mention the removal studies. It dismissed uncited as “methodologically flawed” all of the many studies that contradicted its premises.
(f) The 53-page Clarkson TW, Magos L. Crit. Rev. Toxicol. 36:609-662, 2006 omitted mention of the large number of contrary studies, while endorsing numerous patently unsound or misleading ones (such as relating to blood and urine levels), as documented by Mutter J, Naumann J, Guethlin C. Crit. Rev. Toxicol. 37:537-549, 2007.
(g) The FDA in their 2009 Final Rule cited that seriously flawed Clarkson/Magos 2006 review but failed to mention the Mutter et al damning commentary on it that was published in that very same journal.
25. Documents citing only reports that support amalgam while omitting any mention of the various ones that contraindicate it.
http://www.dentistry.co.uk/news/news_detail.php?id=1732:
"England's Chief Dental Officer has dismissed a TV documentary highlighting the dangers involving mercury amalgam as ‘scare mongering' and ‘sensationalist'.” But you can see for yourself his supposed expertise (on ITV in 2009) (http://tinyurl.com/chiefdental or
www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMI_em8UPo4 from 5m30s):
“I’m not sure that’s true” (that mercury vapour is continually released);
“not measureably”; and “I’m not sure that’s actually true” (that amalgam is the main source of mercury in the body**).
· Svare, C.W., Peterson, L.C., Reinihardt, J.W., et al. (1981): The effect of dental amalgams on mercury levels in expired air. J Dent Res 60:1668-1671.
· Patterson, J.E., Weissberg, B.G., Dennison, PJ. (1985): Mercury in human breath from dental amalgams. Bull Environ Contam Topical 34:459-468.
· Vimy, M.J., Lorscheider, F.L. (1985): Serial measurements of intra oral air mercury: estimation of daily dose from dental amalgam. J Dent Res 64:1072-1075.
· Berglund, A., Pohl, L., Olsson, S., Bergman M. (1988): Determination of the rate of release of intra-oral mercury vapor from amalgam. J Dent Res 67: 1235-1242.
· Vimy, MJ., Lorscheider, FL. (1985): Intraoral air mercury released from dental amalgam. J Dent Res 64:1069-1071.
· Clarkson, TW., Friberg, L., Hursh, JB., Nylander, M. (1988): The prediction of intake of mercury vapor from amalgams. In: Clarkson, TW., Friberg, L., Nordberg, GF., Sager, P.R. editors. Biological Monitoring of Toxic Metals, New York. Plenum Press: 247-260.
· Vimy, M.J., Lorscheider, F.L. (1990): Dental amalgam mercury daily dose estimated from intra oral vapor measurements: a predictor of mercury accumulation in human tissues. J Trace Elem Exp Med 3:111-123.
· Mackert, J.R., Jr. (1987): Factors affecting estimation of dental amalgam mercury exposure from measurements of mercury vapor levels in intra oral and expired air. J Dent Res 66:1775-1780.
· Olsson,, S., Berglund, A., Pohl, L., Bergman, M. (1989): Model of mercury vapor transport from amalgam restorations in the oral cavity. J Dent Res 68:50~508.
· Olsson, S., Bergman, M. (1987): Intraoral air and calculated inspired dose of mercury [Letter]. J Dent Res 66:1288-1289.
**Criteria 118 WHO 1991 states that amalgam is up to 6x the other sources combined; **Aposhian HV, Environ Health Perspect 1998: – 2/3 comes from amalgam.
**Richardson GM. Assessment of mercury exposure and risks from dental amalgam. Health Canada 1995. Tolerable Daily Intake is exceeded in adults with 4 or more amalgams.
Poison in the Mouth (BBC TV Panorama 1994) stated:
“MANGOLD (BBC): …. It's easy to demonstrate how the mercury vapor escapes from their small fillings. We invited an expert to bring a mercury vapor tester to check. The air around the fillings is measured. [….] This is the actual reading as the needle goes off the scale.”
http://tinyurl.com/amalgam1994 or
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2288515475015225824#
Transcript at http://www.fluoridealert.org/BBC-mercury.htm
“Those investigators who have studied the subject are in almost unanimous agreement that there is a poor correlation between the urinary excretion of mercury and the occurrence of demonstrable evidence of poisoning.”
and a joint statement of the National Institute of Dental Health and the American Dental Association stated in 1984 that:
28. The compilation of facts in paragraphs 19-27 points to an outstanding record of misrepresentation among those purporting to speak as experts in support of the supposed safety of amalgam.
29. These “experts” NEVER ANSWER the criticisms, or even acknowledge their existence. BECAUSE THEY HAVE NO ANSWERS.
30. Even the most key advisors and decision makers on public health policy have participated in this misrepresentation. So it calls into question whether any testimony or documentation of purported experts in defence of amalgam is worthy to be believed, and whether they have any case to present that has merit.
Prof. Boyd Haley (University of Kentucky)
Dr. Murray Vimy (University of Calgary), WHO consultant
Prof. Lars Friberg, the world's leading authority on mercury poisoning and was chief advisor to the WHO on mercury safety
Prof. Fritz Lorscheider (University of Calgary)
Prof. Vasken Aposhian (University of Arizona)
39. These Defendants were responsible (as shown in Paragraphs 9-27) for advice which allowed the release of a dangerous thing, namely substantial levels of toxic mercury vapour, in the Claimant’s mouth, thereby causing foreseeable injuries (as per Paragraphs 42-107 below).
40. In a case of release of poison, the burden of proof was placed on the Defendants to show that the release of the poison was an unavoidable consequence of carrying out their obligations.
41. In the present case, the prolonged (over four decades) release of further mercury vapour into the Claimant’s body could have been prevented by advising changing to non-amalgam restorations in respect of patients starting to show signs of systemic mercury toxicity. So it was not an unavoidable consequence of their obligations.
First installation of the claimant’s amalgams
42. The earliest extant Dental Records show that at least 19 of the 20 amalgams were already in place by age 24. They also state: “Says didn’t visit dentist for a few years before coming here” (which is hardly surprising given the catastrophic mental state indicated below here) and “Doesn’t eat sweets”.
43. It is therefore highly improbable that none were already in place when his disabilities started at age 17. Indeed the Claimant recalls some fillings being installed in his early teens.
Particulars of Injuries
44. List of ill-effects experienced
(Note: NO psychotic/schizophrenic symptoms at any time throughout 40 years of severe mental disability.)
(a) Extreme deficits of memory and concentration
By age 20 this was so severe that he could not get to the end of a sentence without forgetting its beginning, and so reading, writing and listening became nearly-impossible (and he rarely did much speaking anyway).
(b) Much fatigue, lack of energy (mental/physical) for no evident reason.
(c) Extreme indecision (“procrastination”). What most people can decide in moments may take weeks for him to decide.
(d) Severe reaction to hair-washing and bath-ing for 30+ years from ~1973 onward. Consequent phobia of washing and obvious consequent severe social problems. The fact that he smelt unwashed convinced everyone that he must certainly be an insensitive fool. In 2003 he established that this was sensitivity specifically to hot water storage systems and adopted use of shower and kettles in substitute (as per correspondence with the housing co-operative about his problems with the hot water system).
(e) Extreme instability of circadian cycle, such that he was no longer able to get to school on time, and ultimately at best only able to arrive in the afternoon, and in later 1970s regularly unable to get up before 4pm (in the days when banks and offices closed by 4pm). In 1980 he read a science report in The Times which enabled him to invent and construct an effective light-entrainment system which eased this problem substantially thereafter, but still a significant problem.
(f) Extreme shyness, extreme tendency to blushing, various phobias, including severe agoraphobia/social phobia and phobia of writing (and consequently failed English Language O‑level twice) and of communicating in general (Obviously much reduced from earlier). The Claimant would stay in his bedroom till no-one was around before hurrying out; would crouch down to avoid being seen through the window.
(g) Blank mind, like writers’ block applied to life in general.
(h) Prolonged crash after exertion.
(i) Inability to adapt to abrupt changes of temperature, such that on entering any public building in winter he becomes extremely overheated and sweaty however many clothes he took off. (This symptom has not reduced or been adequately worked-around.)
(j) Several years of IBS, now managed by regular consumption of glutamine and avoidance of gluten products (wheat etc).
(k) Constant adrenal deficiency such that he has had to take bottles of salty water with him everywhere for many years.
(l) Muscular weakness to the extent that he could never do press-ups, pull-ups or squats (until improved in recent years following heavily enhanced nutrition).
(m) Exciteable, restless, irritable (zinc/copper ratio keeps this down).
(n) For many years used to get delirious (non-psychotic), used to get hyperactive; both ceased after he started colloidals containing lithium.
(o) Dry skin (recently reduced by coconut oil and humidifying).
(p) Slight jerkiness of fine movements (which he noticed was increased by wind-less days; reduced by installing large nose-level ventilation slots).
(q) Eyebrows red with eczema, constant for last 20 years.
(r) Disappearance of outer ends of eyebrows.
(s) Female-pattern hair-loss.
(t) Low temperatures down to 35.2C (r,s,t = three hypothyroid features).
(u) Easily getting confused, silly mistakes.
(v) Persistently unpleasant effect from drinking alcohol
(so lifelong non‑drinker).
(w) Periodontal disease.
(x) Food allergies.
(y) Depression (till 1978).
(z) Excessive salivation, waking up choking several nights a year.
(aa) Migraines (till 1978).
(bb) Hot flushes, extreme sweating. Etc.
(cc) Neuritic pain (like gnat bites).
(dd) Joint pains.
(ee) Clumsiness (hopeless at sports).
(ff) Biting teeth together produces ringing in ear. [now ceased]
(gg) Temporary muffling of hearing for no apparent reason.
(hh) (etc.)
All the above despite substantial spending on healthcare efforts and entirely avoiding abuses such as drinking, drugs, junk foods or even passive smoking.
45. A report from a medical practitioner detailing the readily observable aspects of the Claimant’s current condition is attached (and is a little inaccurate, e.g.: upper scalp not anterior).
From easy excellence to total failure in formal education and career
48. The graph and data below here show he was still getting high exam rankings at term 14 (age 16), following a previous record of regularly high rankings.
50. Persistent correspondence with universities trying to get admission to undergraduate courses (and re-admission to Aston). He made his final admission attempts in 1996, 24 years after his first.
Exceptionally paradoxical biography
The Claimant’s persistent, consistent lack of distinction in community groups.
60. Over the decades the Claimant has been regularly involved in a number of voluntary community or campaigning groups and attended many meetings thereof (listed below). But his extensive archives of minutes show in every case his involvement has been characterised by marginalness, and paucity of actual contribution, rather than any significant role as would have been expected of an academically excelling, initiative-taking, person.
Woodstock Residents Association. Woodstock Area Caretaker. Push Bikes (Birmingham cycling campaign). Friends of the Earth. Birmingham for People. Stop-the-War Coalition. Ladywood Housing Liaison Board. Summerfield and Ladywood Neighbourhood Management Board. Ladywood Constituency Tenants Group.
63. School reports of the sixth form state:
Term 17: “Frequently absent.” “Frequent late arrival.” “A rather enigmatic personality who does not seem to be putting his heart into the work in which he could do so well…”.
Term 18: “Misses too many lessons.” “Misses too many lessons.” “So often absent.” “Frequently late and absent without any satisfactory reason to offer.” "Chemistry practical absent.”“His knowledge of organic chemistry was far from complete.”
Term 19: “he has surrendered none for marking. A tragic waste of outstanding ability.” “No written work of any description has been submitted this term.” “We all know he has some good qualities. Why does he fail to show them here?”. “He no longer cooperates with the school in any way …. he attends so seldom anyway.”
Term 20: “Attended for only one of the three papers. in this he scored 37/150. A shocking waste of ability.” “If regular absence continues…”. “Rarely present….”. “Contributes absolutely nothing to the lesson.” “He takes no part in school life and very little in lessons.” “His attitude and behaviour perplexes me.”
Term 21: “His attendance has continued to be erratic.” “attendance has been so irregular…”. “has taken no part”. “His enigmatic personality….”.
64. Around the same age, the Claimant developed a sort of phobia of writing and talking. He recalls his perplexity at this, on one occasion in desperation telling his mother he could not write, but they were both at a loss what to do, so he never talked about it again. This longstanding writing phobia was reflected in failing O-levels English language, English Literature, and History, and then failing English Language a second time (despite excellent spelling and grammar). He eventually passed it at age 22, after a concentrated effort on that minimal single objective.
65. In the sixth form, on trying to study the chemistry textbook, for all that the subject fascinated him (and his father was a FRIC and a head of chemistry research who invented a method of analysis) he could never get beyond the first page, he just could not remember it. Contrast Term 12 (Age 16): “Certainly redeems himself when it comes to a test of memory…”.
66. And a problem of disordered waking/sleeping overwhelmed the Claimant, to the extent that he became unable to wake up till the afternoon and unable to get to sleep until breakfast-time.
67. He was intensely embarrassed to be arriving at school in the late afternoon, and increasingly tended not to go at all. No-one offered him any help with what to do about any of these problems. As the preceding excerpts from school reports make clear, they were as utterly baffled as himself, and he was too embarrassed and social-phobic and confused to say anything himself. People with mental disorder/disability tend to be in denial as do their parents due to the stigma.
68. The year after Alcester Grammar School the Claimant studied A-level Music (one year) at Bromsgrove College of FE. The result was a D grade.
69. The next year he re-enrolled at Bromgrove College of FE to retake Music and Physics A-levels. But his symptoms increased again and his attendance became as infrequent as it had been in the last year at the school. He took no exams that year.
70. In the period of some years before or after leaving school, the problems became worse and at some point therein he developed some severe allergic reaction to hair-washing and bath-ing. In consequence he also became very phobic of hair-washing and bath-ing.
71. In an attempt to correct his sleep-wake cycle, the Claimant devised the idea of a week of six “days” each about 27 hours long. In due course this did lead to him waking at 7am and going to college. But the next day he woke at 10am, and the six “days” had been such a horrendous experience that there was no question of trying any such again.
72. His memory and attention deteriorated to the extent that he could not get to the end of a sentence before forgetting its beginning. This made reading, writing, listening and speaking almost impossible. His secret “thinking-books” (detailed below) indicate his attempts at “practicing” of concentrating on listening to the radio, something no normal 20-year old would even think of doing let alone writing down the idea.
73. In an attempt to cope with the severe memory and attention deficits, and try to make progress in understanding and resolving his manifold problems, the Claimant started to write his thinking down in secret thinking-books, to use a process of paper-assisted thinking. The content of these thinking-books was (mainly) not like the organised record-keeping or note-taking of healthy people but rather comparable to the scrap paper a student might use for doing a maths calculation.
74. These secret thinking-books have provided, fortuitously, a comprehensive, direct, and uncontrived record of the symptoms of his illnesses and personal experiences thereof. They contain repeated references to depression, indecision, sleeping disorder, tiredness, allergy, phobias, shyness, social anxieties, difficulties with concentration/ attention, sense of failure and striving to solve the mystery of what had happened and how to regain normal functioning again.
75. He started writing in the first of his secret thinking-books at about the demise of his college attendances at age 20, and he continued through approximately ten of such notebooks till about age 28. The earliest thinking-books contained very primitive, disorganised, unsound ideas as befitted the very naive, very inexperienced and ignorant young person with prematurely truncated educational development.
76. By the time he was writing his lattermost thinking-books, at approximately age 28, the content had greatly advanced in quality such that in parts it was beginning to form the basis of the documents for publication which he started writing at that time. But that improvement was not due to mere maturation or passage of time as will be explained further below.
77. After the collapse of his second year of studying at Bromsgrove COFE, in the summer break he obtained a casual job as an office assistant to the engineers at Redditch District Council. But by the third week he was becoming increasingly overstressed and he gave notice of resignation.
78. Throughout the following academic year he was neither employed nor enrolled in any course. His thinking-books indicate much preoccupation with trying to get accepted by universities.
79. In the academic year after that, he enrolled at Redditch COFE to study English Language O-level and Economics A-level. He also attended two extramural (non-examined) evening classes in psychology at the University of Birmingham. He made an obsessive focus on preparing for the English Language exam, as can be seen in his secret thinking-books. Only in that way did he manage to pass it at last. But his studying of the A‑level Economics collapsed yet again and he did not attend the exam.
80. Meanwhile he had been given a conditional offer by Birmingham University, and an unconditional offer by Aston University, and lacking in confidence that he would pass the Economics he accepted the unconditional offer.
81. Thus, five years behind time, he managed to start on a course of Human Psychology at Aston University, but not due to any improved examination results (apart from at last passing English Language). Within weeks the same problems overwhelmed him and his studying ground to a halt as he became engrossed in trying to understand what was happening to him.
82. The most noticeably troubling problems at this time were the sleep/wake problem, the washing allergy/phobia, paralysing indecision, and crippling social phobias. He also recalls an incident in an experimental class: the students all had to do some tedious arithmetic (this being before the age of calculators) and it took him much longer to do than the other students, long after all the others had finished, to his great embarrassment as if he was making an exhibition of himself as some sort of idiot.
83. In due course he failed all the first year exams (due to uncategorised psychological illness), as is indicated by the letters of correspondence with the university about his appeal against termination and thereafter the possibility of rejoining the course on basis that he was supposedly not ill anyway.
84. At this time, he developed all sorts of peculiar symptoms, including migraines, outbreaks of extreme sweating, hyperactivity, and delirium.
85. A crucial event occurred in the year after the university when the Claimant was a tenant sharing in a house in Moseley, Birmingham. His waking/sleeping problem was still very much present, so he was sitting awake in the kitchen late at night. He noticed a book on a shelf, with its title concealed by a paper wrapping. He opened it and found that it was a very detailed compilation of information about nutrition (Let’s Eat Right to Keep Fit, by Adelle Davis). He could barely read coherently, and barely remember any of what he did read, but he was impressed by the thoroughness and rationality of that book, and so he struggled to carefully study it, re-reading sentences many times over due to the memory difficulty, and started to follow its recommendations.
86. The great importance of that development is that almost all other victims of mercury poisoning have not had that crucial information available to them. The power of that book can be seen in that in the few years before reading it he acquired 19 of the 20 amalgams, whereas in the more than three decades since he has needed only one more (and no lost teeth).
87. That book dated from many years before the present, and did not say anything about mercury poisoning. It was only many years later that nutritionists became commonly familiar with the importance of selenium, zinc, glutathione, in any role let alone in counteracting mercury. But nevertheless, the information that was fortuitously invaluable in counteracting the mercury. That is because one can discern the different nutritional deficiencies from the characteristic symptoms, regardless of what is causing those deficiencies. And mercury produces a whole load of nutritional deficiencies, not least as an anti-antioxidant.
88. Due to following this advice some of the commonplace mercury symptoms became eliminated or reduced to greater or lesser extent. These included depression, obsessions, anxiety, some of the phobias, migraine, periodontal, and the IBS he was burdened by for several years at a later stage.
89. The next month the Claimant moved to an unfit flat (rising damp, dry rot, rats, mice, seriously improper electrics, and rain flooding in six places inter alia) and in the subsequent years he continued working on trying to improve his health and overcome his problems among other things.
90. He spent a lot of time trying to find ways of earning money. Among other things working on trying to develop inventions. He spent much time researching them in the patents libraries. But it is almost impossible to succeed even with a brilliant invention unless one already has substantial personal energy or resources to do the production oneself.
91. Meanwhile, like most mentally disabled people he was very reluctant to think of himself as disabled. He instead registered as able and available for work, though this was partly because he could find no indication that he could get social security benefits otherwise (not having any NI contributions record).
92. But then a new policy was introduced, whereby unemployed claimants had to attend monthly interviews to report their job-seeking attempts. He attended a number of these interviews, and meanwhile attended job application interviews even though they bore no resemblance to any job he wanted to do or would even be capable of actually doing.
93. He was somehow transferred to invalidity benefits instead. He has no recall of how it happened, but guesses that at some point the employers started complaining about a clearly pathological candidate coming to their interviews.
94. In 1980 he read the here-attached science report in the Times about light and sleeping, and this enabled him to invent and make the world’s first effective light-therapy device. This substantially reduced the sleep/wake problem.
95. However, the improvement of sleeping pattern did not resolve the entire collection of problems. He then identified that some key problems were varieties of neuroses, more specifically phobias and to a lesser extent obsessions. There was especially the problem that he regularly tended to blush for no reason (in public), and that he had a phobia of getting in such blushing situations (i.e. just about any public situation). And he found just about any social encounter to be traumatic.
96. He struggled to overcome this social phobia, via a notion that the more one exposed oneself to social situations the less salience any particular situation would have, a sort of habituation. He entered into correspondence with the Society for Behavioural Psychotherapy about this. He thinks eventually the combination of his own habituation therapy, combined with his understanding of the anti-neurotic effect of vitamin B6 substantially resolved these problems.
97. The next year his curiosity was aroused by a report that high IQ of parents was associated with autism, and claims of a seeming relationship of genius with autism. Therefrom he accidentally discovered the first of his still-unchallenged theories, the gene-expression theory of autism (and IQ). Only by huge investment of years of time and effort was he able to write up the theory to publishable form. After nine years the autism theory was accepted for publication by the world’s most-cited-ever scientist HJ Eysenck (“well worth publishing”), and the world’s most famous autism researcher Bernard Rimland wrote of it as “excellent” “fine work” and “Robin P Clarke is one of those rare souls”. But the vast majority of professional scientists are intensely hostile to ideas coming from a person devoid of institutional status or qualifications. Everyone else then assumes that because the “leading” Professor S B-C avoids ever mentioning it (like those non-mentioning amalgam “experts”), it must “therefore” be obviously worthless rubbish anyway.
98. He then moved on to publishing some of the other theories.
99. In 1992 the Claimant enrolled yet again to take A-levels, this time Biology and Sociology at Matthew Boulton COFE. But by the third week he was too exhausted to continue. So he turned back to concentrating on the theories and hopelessly trying to make a success of the many business opportunities that are advertised as relatively easy means to earn an income.
100. In 2003, he at last discovered the (seemingly sole) cause of his several decades of severe reaction to washing/bath-ing. Namely defective hot water systems without a lid on the tank, such that the tank thus became contaminated by dust and thereafter organisms. As part of dealing with this, following fruitless correspondence with his landlords, the Claimant installed a shower and bought some kettles.
101. His expectation was that he had thereby resolved the central cause of his health problems and could now at last start to make progress in his life. But instead he still continued to experience most of the same symptoms as before. He was regularly exhausted or otherwise feeling unwell. Just a modest amount of exercise was enough to bring on familiar threatening sensations (of acute oxidative stress?).
102. After 35 years of illness, he was still struggling unsuccessfully for the ordinary health that others find so casually.
103. When the dental hospital proposed to add yet another amalgam he challenged them to provide evidence of safety. Their reply was unconvincing and they failed to respond to his rejoinder.
104. The NHS would not remove the amalgams, and as a chronic benefits dependant he could not afford the high cost of paying for it himself. So he continued to become more ill from the continuing enforced poisoning.
Present condition
105. Much experience shows that the Claimant’s present symptoms would be much worse or fatal were he not following a very tedious regime of constant precautions. For instance: carefully ensuring a nose-level draught at all times (even when freezing outside); correct levels of selenium and zinc and the full range of essential antioxidants at regular spacing throughout every day; conscientiously avoiding both over-exercising and under-exercising; no junk food (i.e. what most people consider normal food); preventing the IBS by daily intake of glutamine and avoidance of all gluten (wheat etc); avoiding the washing/bath-ing reaction by avoiding all hot-water tank systems; keeping his life very simple with limited activity to avoid mental overload; trying to keep a bit of floss-tape separating the gold from the adjacent amalgam (which makes a big difference to vapour output). All these precautions are born of bitter experience rather than any mere theory or superstition.
106. While he is far less mentally dysfunctional than in the 1970s, he continues to have a serious problem of slow memory, attention, indecision, slowness, sleep/wake, and especially lack of energy and endurance, among other things such as inability to adapt normally to changes of temperature (such that he becomes drenched in sweat while others are nochalantly wearing warm coats). He barely copes now whereas in the 1970s he would not have been coping at all (and wasn’t then running his own household, to any standard).
107. A report from a medical practitioner detailing the readily observable aspects of his current condition is attached.
Causation
108. It is the Claimant’s case on causation that:
(a) had the Defendants not given defective advice concerning usage of dental amalgam, which failed to properly reflect the evidence of harm and lack of evidence of safety, the Injuries as particularised in this Claim would not have occurred;
(b) the defective advice from the Defendants caused NHS personnel to install amalgams, in increasing numbers, and with insufficient caution, and to fail to remove them at any stage;
(c) those amalgams then released mercury, during installation and or thereafter, and as vapour and otherwise, such as to enter the Claimant’s body and thereby cause chronic injuries characteristic of chronic dental mercury poisoning.
109. Numerous facts point towards dental mercury as the cause.
(a) Firstly the predominant and most disabling symptoms are a whole list of some most characteristic features of dental mercury poisoning as reported by many studies and individuals we can cite in evidence.
(b) The symptoms include some quite peculiar ones notably associated with chronic mercury poisoning, such as an unpleasant reaction to alcohol, lengthy crashes starting after stopping exercising, lack of normal temperature adjustment.
(c) This collection of symptoms developed after amalgam had been placed in teenage years, and have not gone away in 40 years since.
(d) The symptoms extend well beyond any standard psychological or metabolic syndrome recognised by the DH etc.
(e) In the 1990s he had taken a tablet of alpha-lipoic acid (ALA), which is considered an exceptionally health-enhancing antioxidant. It made him so ill that he never took a second tablet. Only many years later he learnt that it is a key chelating agent which gets mercury out of the brain but also allows it to flood into the brain. It should not be used until several months after amalgam removal when out-of-brain levels have fallen sufficiently.
(f) He had improvements in the last few years due to his growing understanding of mercury vapour and devising countermeasures thereof. For instance arranging elaborate nose-level ventilation systems, and antidoting with selenomethionine, zinc, mackerel, etc, avoiding everyday chelators, being cautious about excessive exercising.
(g) He had a notable improvement in 1975-6, on getting much outdoor air in those two years of famous drought, to the extent that he was at last accepted into a university.
(h) But then in 1976-7 in his small under-ventilated university room (Stafford Tower), the symptoms rapidly became worse again (effectively ceasing attendance by the second term).
(i) The checklist in Andrew Hall Cutler’s book at page 56-9 gave a score of at least 99.9% certainty of mercury poisoning.
(j) In breach of published Directions For Usage of amalgam, a gold inlay has for many years been placed such that it contacts with amalgam occlusally and proximally. This causes a galvanic battery effect and massively increases mercury output. As AHC’s book says on page 82, “The work has to be re-done immediately, removing all amalgam from contact with a dissimilar metal. This is very dangerous…”. The Claimant’s attempts to get NHS personnel to do anything about this were persistently unsuccessful, so to ameliorate he has tried to keep a piece of floss-tape wedging the gold and amalgam apart. But it falls out and he forgets to reinstate it.
(k) After 40 years of illness in 2009 he at last got two test results confirming a mercury problem. Firstly, the MELISA measurement of abnormal level of immune reactivity which produced 3/3 mercury positive results. This test is not some fanciful pseudoscience but rather is well-attested by numerous studies published by reputable scientists.
111. That mercury affected the Claimant when it did not affect others can be understood as follows:
(a) He had a huge number, nineteen, fitted within a handful of years, and producing the huge vapour intake indicated above.
(b) It only takes a moment of impaired suction to enable the patient to inhale the amalgam dust which then lodges in the lungs where its very large surface area causes a greatly increased intake of mercury vapour.
(c) A reiterated principle in the literature is that a person has a certain amount of initial tolerance of mercury but after continuing intake the capacity for detox/removal becomes impaired and finally exhausted. Thereafter, a level of intake that has no noticeable effect on others, in the words of Tuthill (in concurrence with many others) “makes a mental wreck of its victim”.
(d) Mercury during infancy tends to act as an antiinnatia factor, in lower levels causing increased IQ. It follows that genes reducing mercury removal will tend to cause raised IQ. The Claimant had a particularly high IQ (~180, even higher than his four brothers), which could very likely have been partly due to one or more mercury-retaining genes. And those genes would also cause a genetic vulnerability to mercury poisoning.
(e) There were breaches of Directions For Usage, namely gold in occlusal and proximal contact with amalgam, excessive use, use in a case with immune sensitivity (melisa test).
Any reasonable alternative explanations?
112. No other causal event happened around age 16-17 that could account for this drastic deterioration followed by permanent invalidity. The Claimant had continued living at the same address as for the previous 13 years, and there was no change of household or of school. He continued to share meals with his parents and four brothers, there were no environmental incidents in the locality, and no onset of symptoms among the six other family members or his school colleagues.
113. School reports of the last two years indicate a mystery, not present before: “A rather enigmatic personality”; “Why does he fail to show them here?”; “His attitude and behaviour perplexes me”; “His enigmatic personality….”.
114. The collection of symptoms does not correspond at all well with any recognised syndrome (other than chronic mercury vapour), such as neurosis, schizophrenia, bipolar, dementia, delirium, autism, stroke, etc. The symptoms extend well beyond any purely psychological syndrome.
115. Schizophrenia can begin in late teens but this has clearly never been schizophrenia. The most schizophrenia-diagnostic symptoms have never been present, at any time in approximately 4 decades of mental disability, and most of the symptoms are not at all characteristic of schizophrenia.
Limitation / knowledge
116. This case falls within the scope of Limitation Act 1980 s.11, by which there is normally a time-limitation of 3 years from the “date of knowledge”.
117. The Claimant could not reasonably be expected to file a claim at a time when he lacked knowledge of clear facts and instead had only vague, confidently-dismissed suspicions available to him, such as could not enable a successful claim and would rightly be dismissed as inadequate.
118. In the present case the nearest equivalent of “knowing” these key “facts” would be when the Claimant has received information sufficient to justify confident dissenting views that (a) amalgam toxicity does indeed exist, (b) he himself has been injured by such amalgam toxicity, and (c) the Defendants’ advice was biased to a non-trivial extent.
119. It was only by 2009 that the Claimant could with adequate reasonableness form opinions (i) that the Defendants were unacceptably negligent and (ii) that his own injuries were very much likely caused by the amalgam and hence by that negligence….and reasonably hope that those same facts could persuade a court to the same opinions.
120. Thus the Claim has been filed within the designated limitation period.
121. Furthermore, even if there had been an earlier “date of knowledge” in this case, various criteria for discretionary exclusion indicated in s.33 (1) and s.33(3) would apply.
Particulars of Damages
122. The losses incurred by the Claimant are set out in the Schedule of Losses served with these Particulars of Claim.
123. The Claimant also claims interest pursuant to Section 35A of the Senior Courts Act 1981 on the amount found to be due to the Claimant at such rate and for such period as the Court thinks fit.
AND the Claimant claims:
(1) Damages.
(2) Interest pursuant to Section 35A of the Senior Courts Act 1981, to be assessed.
STATEMENT OF TRUTH
I believe that the facts stated in these particulars of claim are true.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Signed
Robin Philip Clarke
Claimant
CLINICAL NEGLIGENCE (in part)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE CLAIM NO.
QUEENS BENCH DIVISION
Between:-
ROBIN PHILIP CLARKE
Claimant
and
THE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH
/ THE CHIEF DENTAL OFFICER
Defendant
PARTICULARS OF CLAIM
