Saturday, December 30, 2006

Only one more day of the '06

Town Musician

I am glad when the '06 is gone. Today the weather was good. I still found it slightly irritating that I didn't get all the trash of the old year out into the street for the large waste pickup. At least we got rid of something. Now that Hussain is gone we are supposed to breathe easier. I understand no one will claim his body. He has no family in Iraq. It still disturbs me that such a wretched person gets so much attention. To think that he gets more attention than some poor dead soldier in Iraq is obscene. Why should there be any publicity for him. It will only provoke more bloodshed. I am against the death penalty. To kill him took only a second. A just punishment would have been to put him in a cell and have him not be able to read nor write nor receive any visitors. So what about Bush. How many men are on his conscience? Will anyone investigate his recklessness? Next year will be '07. Will we be at sevens just as we were at sixes?

Friday, December 29, 2006

The last few days of 2006

Town Musician

Did I mention that my son Erik is now supposed to see a urologist? Already in 1997 he saw a urologist. The doctor suggested at the time that it would be best if Erik saw a kidney specialist. Now that he has seen a kidney specialist, almost ten years later, and this specialist has nothing further to contribute even though the osteoporosis Erik has is clearly "renal rickets," there is more deadly silence. Every time we go to see a doctor, it seems that there is deafening silence. The lack of interest is overwhelming. Until recently I didn't know that Vitamin D had anything to do with the kidneys. Now I know that the place where Vitamin D becomes active in the form of the hormone calcitriol is the kidney and only the kidney. But that seems to matter very little when it comes to Erik. He is special, pardon my pun, I don't mean to be funny. What Erik's last hospital visit revealed was that Erik had a urethral obstruction. This obstruction caused his bladder to become very large. This caused the kidney to turn hydronephrotic. That means that when the bladder has no exit, the urine can only go one way, and that is up into the kidney. It might destroy it if the urethra cannot be opened up. The strange thing is that Erik had nothing but clear urine in October when he was checked at Stanford Hospital. When he went to Dominican Hospital just a month later, the doctor had to work hard to open up the urethra. Erik's care-giver told me the doctor used a Foley catheter pushing up the urethra. Suddenly there was something like a wall. The doctor pushed through it and a massive amount of material came out that looked like cottage cheese mixed with blood.

The only thing that could possibly explain why that might have happened was that maybe Erik has two bladders. Is there another explanation?

Monday, December 25, 2006

Merry Christmas!

Town Musician

I sent all my cards with Christmas wishes. Again, as usual, they were sent out too late to arrive on time for Christmas. Maybe that's why I didn't get any cards for Christmas from anyone. They all did as I did. It's alright. Christmas cards are meant to be greetings felt in the heart. And why should they arrive before Christmas if the Good News of Christmas does not happen before Christmas. Live the spirit of Christmas! It's within you. It isn't a reflection of how you chose your greetings. I hope next Christmas will find me more focused.

I played my music already. I played from a little book I received from my recorder teacher when I was in 3rd grade. She would be so surprised to know that I play the notes with both my clarinet and the old recorder now. I have moved up. I did become a musician, and I enjoy it, in spite of her who gave up on me and said I was never going to be a musician. Thanks Helga Witte! I proved you wrong.

Saturday, December 23, 2006

Merry Christmas!

Town Musician

Christmas is supposed to be a peaceful quiet time. I have been making music to gain inner strength. It does it every time. I can shut out the word with my tunes. I need it. It gives me time to build up my strength for an unwieldy world. My naive world, the one I had expected when I was a child, is long gone. With music I can bring it back. No wonder the church of the middle ages forbade music in the churches. Music holds more power than any person can. It can shut out the world, and for a while at least bring perfect harmony.

I found my peace today at, among all places, a butcher shop. I went to Dittmers to buy some German items I couldn't find at other grocery stores. It was very crowded. There were so many people there--about 20--in front of me. I watched them and I thought that everyone looked and acted at peace. It was like home. I waited my turn and watched people buy their turkeys and their Christmas geese. I bought baking powder and yeast and hot-dogs. But people were anticipating a wonderful time.

Thursday, December 14, 2006

Thimerosal as a preservative

Town Musician

Ever since I have started researching the subject of mercury, I have been amazed about the denial that many scientists engage in when mercury is being discussed. Mercury has been a poison since prehistoric times. Granted, for the longest time mercury has been considered a medicine but so has arsenic. For some reason nobody doubts the toxicity of arsenic, but there seems to be this now-you-see-it,-now-you-don't quality about mercury toxicity. If the pharmaceutical companies were to add an arsenic component to vaccines, there would be an immediate outcry. Not only is mercury (Thimerosal) a poison, it is also a really bad choice as a vaccine preservative because it causes the immune system to weaken and, according to my sources, is a substance that doesn't necessarily kill the harmful organisms it is supposed eliminate.

Saturday, December 09, 2006

It's a small world

Town Musician

It is such a small world. My interest in the toxicity of mercury was peaked when I wanted to find out through the internet what I could find out about depression, anxiety, mood swings etc. I never thought that it would lead to contacts with people who were involved with environmental toxins in general. To start with, I asked at work if we could purchase the “Kieler Amalgamgutachten.” I found it disturbing and fascinating at the same time that this important study of the body of amalgam research up to the mid ‘90s could not be published because someone (Degussa, the company making amalgam in Germany at the time) threatened legal action if it was published. I had no idea how powerful dental associations and manufacturers connected to it are.

I searched the internet further to supply my then already well-established website for interesting material having to do with environmental poisons. Again a book peaked my interest. It was a futurist environmental thriller called “Feine Würze Dioxin,” by Erich Schöndorf. The subject was dioxin as a pharmaceutical by-product. Dioxin is a poison, and here someone thinks of this as a possibly useful product. Having read the book “Suffer the Children” about thalidomide, which also came into being because of by-products research, I found this premise quite plausible. Here I also want to point out that fluoride treatment through the water supply to people’s homes was a result of by-products issues. By-products issues only seem to come up when a toxic substance becomes too toxic to dispose of easily and therefore has to be dealt with carefully. Then and now it costs a lot of money to dispose of toxins. So it is a lot more profitable if you can make a superfund material into a saleable pharmaceutical. That happened with thalidomide; it happened with fluoride; and it is plausible that it might be done with dioxin. I read the book, and I thought the book was really interesting.

This book, a science fiction mystery story, turns out to be a detective story. The more I read it the more I wanted to translate it. The author’s address was in the book. I contacted him, and he approved of my translating it. This book would make a great movie. But that part is another matter. Meanwhile I had translated other things. I had come across a reference to Alfred Stock on the internet and also as references in other places. I found him fascinating enough to check out the first Alfred Stock article from 1926. I translated it and linked it to my website. This translation led to someone from Toxic Teeth to contact me. Mary Ann Newell asked me to translate a study by Dr. Joachim Mutter and Dr. Johannes Naumann about amalgam. After getting permission my translation was sent to Toxic Teeth. Meanwhile Professor Erich Schöndorf wrote me e-mails about the possibilities of publishing my translation. In the back-and-forth of our e-mails he mentioned Dr. Joachim Mutter’s name. I also found out that he had been the district attorney who had originally ordered the Kieler Amalgamgutachten that had been done at Kiel University. I had no idea that all these people knew one another. Freya Koss became interested in the “Kieler Amalgamgutachten,” and she asked me to translate that one as well. So I am going to be occupied with that for a while.

Meanwhile I got another batch of attachments from Dr. Joachim Mutter, and I might need to translate those as well. They show how heated the debate over the toxicity of amalgam is becoming. Again someone on the pro-amalgam-side is threatening legal action. The information stemming from those attachments might become valuable in the struggle to get mercury out of people’s teeth, here in the United States as well as the rest of the world.

Mercury is a prime menace to civilization. The toxin that brought down the Roman Empire was lead. Could it be that mercury is that kind of threat for us today? I am going to be quite occupied. And yes, it is a small world.

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Michael Lewis' book "The Blind Side"

Town Musician

I have read all of Michael Lewis books. They are all good. The football book "The Blind Side" is probably his most engaging, though. Michael Lewis uses two parallel stories. One thread describes how football salaries have changed with the change in the assessment of players who used to be thought of as merely peripheral, e.g. offensive linemen. The other and more important thread describes the truly heartwarming story of an inner city young black disadvantaged teenager who is taken in by a white wealthy family to become an offensive lineman at a southern university. You don't have to like football to love this book.

Saturday, December 02, 2006

How is one plus one not always two?

Town Musician

One plus one is not always equal to two. This contradiction to a commonly known fact can be true, and often is very likely in bio-chemistry. This happens when the effect of one substance on the organism is multiplied because it is combined with the effect of another substance. Instead of these two effects doubling, they instead create an effect that is sometimes enhanced up to one hundred times. This combination of effects is called synergism. As an example I am quoting the following statement from my web page (click on side-bar to the right: Dental AMALGAM and Mercury):

"The synergistic effect of mercury combined with various other substances is also an area of significant concern which has been under-researched to date. The toxic effects of mercury are further enhanced when mercury is used in combination with other metals such as zinc and lead.

In a study (24) which looked at a common amalgam (Dispersalloy), the researchers reported [that]... "Dispersalloy was severely cytotoxic initially when Zn release was greatest, but was less toxic between 48 and 72 hours as Zn release decreased." Zn, at the amount released from an amalgam, should not reach cytotoxic levels [by itself]. It does however, potentiate the toxicity of the mercury released by tying up protective mercury chelators due to the fact that Zn and Hg both have a high affinity for sulfhydryls. In experiments investigating this effect, it was found that the addition of non-toxic amounts of Zn2+ (5-10 micromolar) enhanced the toxicity of mercury about 5-fold. (Personal communication: Prof. Boyd Haley. Prof. and Chair, Dept. of Chemistry, Univ. of Kentucky).

The effects of mercury and lead combined have also been reported. One study showed that when a lethal dose (LD1 = the dose needed to kill 1% of all the test animals) of mercury was combined with 1/20 LD1 of lead, the combination of the two resulted in a LD100 in the test animals (44). This has not been investigated in human subjects but it is clearly reasonable to assume the possibility of similar effects in amalgam-bearing humans."

Here you are LD1 + 1/20 LD1 = LD100