For related articles and more information, please visit OCA’s Health Issues page and our Appetite For a Change page.

    The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has 50 committees and panels that it depends on to obtain independent expert advice on scientific, technical and policy matters.

 However, the FDA is NOT legally required to follow its committee’s recommendations, and, unfortunately, the FDA has a long history of ignoring its panelists’ advice if it doesn’t uphold a pro-industry position — even to the point of disagreeing with their own FDA scientific experts.

 This is precisely the case with silver amalgam (mercury) fillings; the agency has repeatedly ignored its expert panels’ advice to get mercury out of fillings for kids and pregnant women.

 The ongoing saga has continued for far too long, with the FDA repeatedly defying the sound scientific and commonsense judgments of its own expert panel.

FDA Ignores its Own Experts Again

 In 2009, the FDA went against its expert panels’ advice and ruled there will be no warnings to patients, not even young women and parents of young children, that the mercury in the fillings is a dangerous reproductive toxin and a neurotoxin.

 They even gave the amalgam industry the green light to sell and use amalgam fillings (restorations) without disclosing to consumers that the fillings are mainly mercury, even though the agency is aware of the industry’s long-time deceptive practice of marketing amalgam as “silver fillings.”