Archimedes' Lever wrote:
Jay Ts wrote:

That's what the ADA and ADA-trained dentists like to say. It is my
opinion that they are in deep denial regarding the issue. Not surprising
considering that the ADA was formed by a bunch of mercury-using dentists
who got together and decided that dentists in the organization were not
allowed to tell their patients that mercury was bad for them.

More bull****. Back when that organization was formed, silver/mercury
amalgam filling were all there was available for the task. So no
"selling" was required, nor practiced, idiot.

Gold and early plastics were already in use before
amalgams were introduced. Just now I found that information
in the entry for "dentistry" in The New International
Encyclopaedia in Google Books. There were also other materials
in use, including lead and tin. (Note for the dense:
that is me playfully trying to go on-topic again.

According to a Wikipedia article linked below, amalgams
came into use "because they are malleable, durable, and
more affordable than gold or composites."

In other words, because they are _cheap_ and _easy_.

The info in my previous post came to me through a holistic,
mercury-free dentist, who may have been a little biased. The
story was that there were dentists at the time (c. 1850,
roughly) who were against the use of mercury, and started
an organization that included only those dentists. But another
organization was formed by the mercury-using dentists, and they won,
eclipsing the first one. That is now the American Dental Association
(ADA).

The article said that the term "quack" came from the mercury-using
dentists. "Quack" was short for "quicksilver", another term for
mercury. This article at Wikipedia more-or-less supports that
info:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quack

And there is a link at the bottom of that page to this one, on
Dental Amalgam Controversy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dental_amalgam_controversy

Information in that article supports my comment about the
origin of the ADA. See the section, "History and overview".
It does a lot better, but I think I did pretty well considering
I was going on a single article handed to me 8 years ago,
before I had Wikipedia, and I was going just on memory of that.

Jay Ts
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