DMPS vs DMSA for Mercury Detoxification
Editor:
I wrote about a year ago expressing some puzzlement
regarding the DMPS-Mercury issue. I had found the DMPS lobby to have
been evasive, and also a bit paranoid about EDTA.
Since that time, Dr. James Frackelton has had more
to say about the usefulness and safety of DMSA (which is FDA-approved.)
Recently, I had the opportunity to hear Dr. Hal Huggins in Vancouver,
and was surprised to learn that he is opposed to the use of DMPS. He
stated that it made too many patients ill, and that for the price of
one DMPS injection, you could have enough DMSA to last a year! Also,
he saw a limited place for EDTA in mercury detoxification.
Now we have a clinic on Vancouver Island embarking
upon a research project using DMPS, which is fine, except that they
are alleging that DMSA should be avoided, as it "deposits"
mercury in the brain! Poppycock, I say! Since we are all said to be
more or less mercury toxic, is it not self-evident that we could not
have had the decades of success with EDTA if it were causing neurologic
mischief, as the DMPS people claim? Likewise with DMSA. A colleague
has used it to great benefit in attention-deficit children, and even
autism.
If Drs. Frackelton and Huggins support DMSA, that's
good enough for me. On a clinical level, since DMSA passes the blood-brain
barrier, and DMPS does not, I challenge DMPS proponents to show any
usefulness whatever for it. What we are getting is empire-building and
mis-information.
Gordon E. Potter, MD