(Posted by Patrick Sullivan Jr.)
A follow-up from the Charlie on the Moms Against Mercury v. FDA case that was heard on Tuesday:
Report of Oral Argument before U S Court of Appeals
Moms Against Mercury, et al. v. FDA, March 27, 2007In our case to ban mercury fillings based on FDA’s refusal to classify this device, FDA’s lawyer and I presented before three Judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington on March 27. Two of the three Judges appeared skeptical that the Court will consider the merits of the case. Their questions suggested the Court lacks jurisdiction – the authority from Congress to decide the case – because non-action (even for decades) may not equate to action. We were somewhat surprised, because last year two other Judges on the same Court, sitting as the “motions panel,” ruled in our favor on this issue.
Questions from the Judges often appear to signal the direction they may be going, but have no legal weight. All that counts is a court’s written opinion, which will likely issue in the late spring or early summer.
In its circle-the-wagons effort to block a ruling on the merits, FDA had to yield enormous ground to our side. FDA admitted in its brief, five times, that it doesn’t know if mercury fillings are safe or unsafe. FDA’s in-house dentists, protected by the “professional courtesy” policy of the Center on Devices’ do-nothing Director Dan Schultz MD, were told last September by FDA’s scientists, sitting on two Scientific Advisory Committees, that their pro-amalgam position is without merit.
That a federal agency allows untrammeled sales, without even warnings, to children and pregnant women of a product that they themselves can no longer certify is safe is contemptuous. Such depravity means these regulators put their fellow bureaucrats and dentist profits ahead of the health of young children and unborn children.
It is time for one and all to write letters to their newspapers, to their Members of Congress or Parliament, and to their friends & neighbors, saying the U.S. government allows sale of a mercury product it no longer certifies as safe. It is time for every American dentist who values the health of his/her patients, employees, or self – or who doesn’t want to lose their home in a future lawsuit – to abandon mercury fillings forthwith. It is time for all of us to tell our family and friends not to do business with pro-mercury dentists.
Charlie Brown, Counsel
Consumers for Dental Choice
Can't decide whether or not the mercury in amalgams is safe? Maybe a peek at the label will help?
