The federal agency charged with protecting children against unfair experiments, in response to a petition by Consumers for Dental Choice, ruled that the University of Washington experimenters were implanting mercury fillings in children without giving informed consent.

For the University and the experiment leaders, dental school professors Timothy DeRouen and Michael Martin, to rake in millions of government money while not even telling the children or guardians about the health risks of mercury fillings is as big a scandal as the Tuskegee experiment of six decades ago. Some of these children face a lifetime of health problems due to the greed of the researchers, and may have children with birth defects. So we (1) wrote the president of the University of Washington, DeRouen, and Martin, asking that they send all the millions they made to the children at the Casa Pia orphanage; and (2) wrote the ADA to insist they remove Martin from its Council of Scientific Affairs, asking the ADA to decide whether mercury fillings or scientific integrity count more (we think we already know the answer to that one).

Then, we (3) wrote Prime Minister Socrates of Portugal asking that, if the cold-hearted experimenters refuse to help the children, the Portuguese government should sue them. We are on the threshold of an international incident, because the U.S. Office of Human Research Protections found that the American non-institutionalized children did get informed consent, while the institutionalized Latin children did not.

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September 18, 2007
Charles G. Brown, National Counsel
Consumers for Dental Choice
316 F Street, N.E., Suite 210, Washington DC 20002
Ph. 202.544-6333; Fax 202.544-6331