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MYTH # 1Gay men molest children at far higher rates than heterosexuals.THE ARGUMENTDepicting gay men as a threat to children may be the single most potent weapon for stoking public fears about homosexuality — and for winning elections and referenda, as Anita Bryant found out during her successful 1977 campaign to overturn a Dade County, Fla., ordinance barring discrimination against gay people. Discredited psychologist Paul Cameron, the most ubiquitous purveyor of anti-gay junk science, has been a major promoter of this myth. Despite having been debunked repeatedly and very publicly, Cameron's work is still widely relied upon by anti-gay organizations, although many no longer quote him by name. Others have cited a group called the American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds) to claim, as Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council did in November 2010, that "the research is overwhelming that homosexuality poses a [molestation] danger to children." A related myth is that same-sex parents will molest their children.THE FACTSAccording to the American Psychological Association, children are not more likely to be molested by LGBT parents or their LGBT friends or acquaintances. Gregory Herek, a professor at the University of California, Davis, who is one of the nation's leading researchers on prejudice against sexual minorities, reviewed a series of studies and found no evidence that gay men molest children at higher rates than heterosexual men.Anti-gay activists who make that claim allege that all men who molest male children should be seen as homosexual. But research by A. Nicholas Groth, a pioneer in the field of sexual abuse of children, shows that is not so. Groth found that there are two types of child molesters: fixated and regressive. The fixated child molester — the stereotypical pedophile — cannot be considered homosexual or heterosexual because "he often finds adults of either sex repulsive" and often molests children of both sexes. Regressive child molesters are generally attracted to other adults, but may "regress" to focusing on children when confronted with stressful situations. Groth found, as Herek notes, that the majority of regressed offenders were heterosexual in their adult relationships.The Child Molestation Research & Prevention Institute notes that 90% of child molesters target children in their network of family and friends, and the majority are men married to women. Most child molesters, therefore, are not gay people lingering outside schools waiting to snatch children from the playground, as much religious-right rhetoric suggests.Some anti-gay ideologues cite ACPeds’ opposition to same-sex parenting as if the organization were a legitimate professional body. In fact, the so-called college is a tiny breakaway faction of the similarly named, 60,000-member American Academy of Pediatrics that requires, as a condition of membership, that joiners "hold true to the group's core beliefs ... [including] that the traditional family unit, headed by an opposite-sex couple, poses far fewer risk factors in the adoption and raising of children." The group's 2010 publication Facts About Youth was described by the American Academy of Pediatrics as not acknowledging scientific and medical evidence with regard to sexual orientation, sexual identity and health, or effective health education. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, was one of several legitimate researchers who said ACPeds misrepresented the institutes’ findings. “It is disturbing to me to see special interest groups distort my scientific observations to make a point against homosexuality,” he wrote. “The information they present is misleading and incorrect.” Another critic of ACPeds is Dr. Gary Remafedi, a researcher at the University of Minnesota who wrote a letter to ACPeds rebuking the organization for misusing his research.In spite of all this, the anti-LGBT right continues to peddle this harmful and baseless myth, which is probably the leading defamatory charge leveled against gay people.MYTH # 2Same-sex parents harm children.THE ARGUMENTMost hard-line anti-gay organizations are heavily invested, from both a religious and a political standpoint, in promoting the traditional nuclear family as the sole framework for the healthy upbringing of children. They maintain a reflexive belief that same-sex parenting must be harmful to children — although the exact nature of that supposed harm varies widely.THE FACTSNo legitimate research has demonstrated that same-sex couples are any more or any less harmful to children than heterosexual couples.The American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry affirmed in 2013 that “[c]urrent research shows that children with gay and lesbian parents do not differ from children with heterosexual parents in their emotional development or in their relationships with peers and adults” and they are “not more likely than children of heterosexual parents to develop emotional or behavioral problems.”The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) in a 2002 policy statement declared: "A growing body of scientific literature demonstrates that children who grow up with one or two gay and/or lesbian parents fare as well in emotional, cognitive, social, and sexual functioning as do children whose parents are heterosexual." That policy statement was reaffirmed in 2009 and in 2013, when the AAP stated its support for civil marriage for same-gender couples and full adoption and foster care rights for all parents, regardless of sexual orientation.The American Psychological Association (APA) noted in 2004 that "same-sex couples are remarkably similar to heterosexual couples, and that parenting effectiveness and the adjustment, development and psychological well-being of children is unrelated to parental sexual orientation." In addition, the APA stated that “beliefs that lesbian and gay adults are not fit parents have no empirical foundation.” The next year, in 2005, the APA published a summary of research findings on lesbian and gay parents and reiterated that common negative stereotypes about LGBT parenting are not supported by the data.Similarly, the Child Welfare League of America's official position with regard to same-sex parents is that "lesbian, gay, and bisexual parents are as well-suited to raise children as their heterosexual counterparts."A 2010 review of research on same-sex parenting carried out by LiveScience, a science news website, found no differences between children raised by heterosexual parents and children raised by lesbian parents. In some cases, it found, children in same-sex households may actually be better adjusted than in heterosexual homes.A 2013 preliminary study in Australia found that the children of lesbian and gay parents are not only thriving, but may actually have better overall health and higher rates of family cohesion than heterosexual families. The study is the world’s largest attempt to compare children of same-sex parents to children of heterosexual parents. The full study was published in June 2014.The anti-LGBT right continues, however, to use this myth to deny rights to LGBT people, whether through distorting legitimate research or through “studies” conducted by anti-LGBT sympathizers, such as a 2012 paper popularly known as the Regnerus Study. University of Texas sociology professor Mark Regnerus’ paper purported to demonstrate that same-sex parenting harms children. The study received almost $1 million in funding from anti-LGBT think tanks, and even though Regnerus himself admitted that his study does not show what people say it does with regard to the “harms” of same-sex parenting, it continues to be peddled as “proof” that children are in danger in same-sex households. Since the study’s release, it has been completely discredited because of its faulty methodology and its suspect funding. In 2013, Darren Sherkat, a scholar appointed to review the study by the academic journal that published it, told the Southern Poverty Law Center that he “completely dismiss[es]” the study, saying Regnerus “has been disgraced” and that the study was “bad … substandard.” In spring 2014, the University of Texas’s College of Liberal Arts and Department of Sociology publicly distanced themselves from Regnerus, the day after he testified as an “expert witness” against Michigan’s same-sex marriage ban. The judge in that case, Bernard Friedman, found that Regnerus’ testimony was “entirely unbelievable and not worthy of serious consideration,” and ruled that Michigan’s ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional. Despite all this, the Regnerus Study is still used in the U.S. and abroad as a tool by anti-LGBT groups to develop anti-LGBT policy and laws.MYTH # 3People become homosexual because they were sexually abused as children or there was a deficiency in sex-role modeling by their parents.THE ARGUMENTMany anti-gay rights activists claim that homosexuality is a mental disorder caused by some psychological trauma or aberration in childhood. This argument is used to counter the common observation that no one, gay or straight, consciously chooses his or her sexual orientation. Joseph Nicolosi, a founder of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, said in 2009 that "if you traumatize a child in a particular way, you will create a homosexual condition." He also has repeatedly said, "Fathers, if you don't hug your sons, some other man will."A side effect of this argument is the demonization of parents of gay men and lesbians, who are led to wonder if they failed to protect a child against sexual abuse or failed as role models in some important way. In October 2010, Kansas State University family studies professor Walter Schumm released a related study in the British Journal of Biosocial Science, which used to be the Eugenics Review. Schumm argued that gay couples are more likely than heterosexuals to raise gay or lesbian children through modeling “gay behavior.” Schumm, who has also argued that lesbian relationships are unstable, has ties to discredited psychologist and anti-LGBT fabulist Paul Cameron, the author of numerous completely baseless “studies” about the alleged evils of homosexuality. Critics of Schumm’s study note that he appears to have merely aggregated anecdotal data, resulting in a biased sample.THE FACTSNo scientifically sound study has definitively linked sexual orientation or identity with parental role-modeling or childhood sexual abuse.The American Psychiatric Association noted in a 2000 fact sheet available on the Association of Gay and Lesbian Psychiatrists, that dealing with gay, lesbian and bisexual issues, that sexual abuse does not appear to be any more prevalent among children who grow up and identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual than in children who grow up and identify as heterosexual.Similarly, the National Organization on Male Sexual Victimization notes on its website that "experts in the human sexuality field do not believe that premature sexual experiences play a significant role in late adolescent or adult sexual orientation" and added that it's unlikely that anyone can make another person gay or heterosexual.Advocates for Youth, an organization that works in the U.S. and abroad in the field of adolescent reproductive and sexual health also has stated that sexual abuse does not “cause” heterosexual youth to become gay.In 2009, Dr. Warren Throckmorton, a psychologist at the Christian Grove City College, noted in an analysis that “the research on sexual abuse among GLBT populations is often misused to make inferences about causation [of homosexuality].”MYTH # 4LGBT people don't live nearly as long as heterosexuals.THE ARGUMENTAnti-LGBT organizations, seeking to promote heterosexuality as the healthier "choice," often offer up the purportedly shorter life spans and poorer physical and mental health of gays and lesbians as reasons why they shouldn't be allowed to adopt or foster children.THE FACTSThis falsehood can be traced directly to the discredited research of Paul Cameron and his Family Research Institute, specifically a 1994 paper he co-wrote entitled "The Lifespan of Homosexuals." Using obituaries collected from newspapers serving the gay community, he and his two co-authors concluded that gay men died, on average, at 43, compared to an average life expectancy at the time of around 73 for all U.S. men. On the basis of the same obituaries, Cameron also claimed that gay men are 18 times more likely to die in car accidents than heterosexuals, 22 times more likely to die of heart attacks than whites, and 11 times more likely than blacks to die of the same cause. He also concluded that lesbians are 487 times more likely to die of murder, suicide, or accidents than straight women.Remarkably, these claims have become staples of the anti-gay right and have frequently made their way into far more mainstream venues. For example, William Bennett, education secretary under President Reagan, used Cameron's statistics in a 1997 interview he gave to ABC News' "This Week."However, like virtually all of his "research," Cameron's methodology is egregiously flawed — most obviously because the sample he selected (the data from the obits) was not remotely statistically representative of the LGBT population as a whole. Even Nicholas Eberstadt, a demographer at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, has called Cameron's methods "just ridiculous."Anti-LGBT organizations have also tried to support this claim by distorting the work of legitimate scholars, like a 1997 study conducted by a Canadian team of researchers that dealt with gay and bisexual men living in Vancouver in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The authors of the study became aware that their work was being misrepresented by anti-LGBT groups, and issued a response taking the groups to task.MYTH # 5Gay men controlled the Nazi Party and helped to orchestrate the Holocaust.THE ARGUMENTThis claim comes directly from a 1995 book titled The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party, by Scott Lively and Kevin Abrams. Lively is the virulently anti-gay founder of Abiding Truth Ministries and Abrams is an organizer of a group called the International Committee for Holocaust Truth, which came together in 1994 and included Lively as a member.The primary argument Lively and Abrams make is that gay people were not victimized by the Holocaust. Rather, Hitler deliberately sought gay men for his inner circle because their "unusual brutality" would help him run the party and mastermind the Holocaust. In fact, "the Nazi party was entirely controlled by militaristic male homosexuals throughout its short history," the book claims. "While we cannot say that homosexuals caused the Holocaust, we must not ignore their central role in Nazism," Lively and Abrams add. "To the myth of the 'pink triangle' — the notion that all homosexuals in Nazi Germany were persecuted — we must respond with the reality of the 'pink swastika.'"These claims have been picked up by a number of anti-gay groups and individuals, including Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association, as proof that gay men and lesbians are violent and sick. The book has also attracted an audience among anti-gay church leaders in Eastern Europe and among Russian-speaking anti-gay activists in America.THE FACTSThe Pink Swastika has been roundly discredited by legitimate historians and other scholars. Christine Mueller, professor of history at Reed College, did a 1994 line-by-line refutation of an earlier Abrams article on the topic and of the broader claim that the Nazi Party was "entirely controlled" by gay men. Historian Jon David Wynecken at Grove City College also refuted the book, pointing out that Lively and Abrams did no primary research of their own, instead using out-of-context citations of some legitimate sources while ignoring information from those same sources that ran counter to their thesis.The myth that the Nazis condoned homosexuality sprang up in the 1930s, started by socialist opponents of the Nazis as a slander against Nazi leaders. Credible historians believe that only one of the half-dozen leaders in Hitler's inner circle, Ernst Röhm, was gay. (Röhm was murdered on Hitler's orders in 1934.) The Nazis considered homosexuality one aspect of the "degeneracy" they were trying to eradicate.When Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers Party came to power in 1933, it quickly strengthened Germany's existing penalties against homosexuality. Heinrich Himmler, Hitler's security chief, announced that homosexuality was to be "eliminated" in Germany, along with miscegenation among the races. Historians estimate that between 50,000 and 100,000 men were arrested for homosexuality (or suspicion of it) under the Nazi regime. These men were routinely sent to concentration camps and many thousands died there.Himmler expressed his views on homosexuality like this: "We must exterminate these people root and branch. ... We can't permit such danger to the country; the homosexual must be completely eliminated."MYTH # 6Hate crime laws will lead to the jailing of pastors who criticize homosexuality and the legalization of practices like bestiality and necrophilia.THE ARGUMENTAnti-gay activists, who have long opposed adding LGBT people to those protected by hate crime legislation, have repeatedly claimed that such laws would lead to the jailing of religious figures who preach against homosexuality — part of a bid to gain the backing of the broader religious community for their position. Janet Porter of Faith2Action, for example, was one of many who asserted that the federal Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act — signed into law by President Obama in October 2009 — would "jail pastors" because it "criminalizes speech against the homosexual agenda."In a related assertion, anti-gay activists claimed the law would lead to the legalization of psychosexual disorders (paraphilias) like bestiality and pedophilia. Bob Unruh, a conservative Christian journalist who left The Associated Press in 2006 for the right-wing, conspiracist news site WorldNetDaily, said shortly before the federal law was passed that it would legalize "all 547 forms of sexual deviancy or 'paraphilias' listed by the American Psychiatric Association." This claim was repeated by many anti-gay organizations, including the Illinois Family Institute.THE FACTSThe claim that hate crime laws could result in the imprisonment of those who "oppose the homosexual lifestyle" is false. The First Amendment provides robust protections of free speech, and case law makes it clear that even a preacher who publicly suggested that gays and lesbians should be killed would be protected.Neither do hate crime laws — which provide for enhanced penalties when persons are victimized because of their "sexual orientation" (among other factors) — "protect pedophiles," as Janet Porter and many others have claimed. According to the American Psychological Association, sexual orientation refers to heterosexuality, homosexuality and bisexuality — not paraphilias such as pedophilia. Paraphilias, as defined (pdf; may require a different browser) by the American Psychiatric Association, are characterized by sexual urges or behaviors directed at non-consenting persons or those unable to consent like children, or that involve another person’s psychological distress, injury, or death.Moreover, even if pedophiles, for example, were protected under a hate crime law — and such a law has not been suggested or contemplated anywhere — that would not legalize or "protect" pedophilia. Pedophilia is illegal sexual activity, and a law that more severely punished people who attacked pedophiles would not change that.MYTH # 7Allowing gay people to serve openly will damage the armed forces.THE ARGUMENTAnti-gay groups have been adamantly opposed to allowing gay men and lesbians to serve openly in the armed forces, not only because of their purported fear that combat readiness will be undermined, but because the military has long been considered the purest meritocracy in America (the armed forces were successfully racially integrated long before American civil society, for example). If gays serve honorably and effectively in this meritocracy, that suggests that there is no rational basis for discriminating against them in any way.THE FACTSGays and lesbians have long served in the U.S. armed forces, though under the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DADT) policy that governed the military between 1993 and 2011, they could not do so openly. At the same time, gays and lesbians have served openly for years in the armed forces of 25 countries (as of 2010), including Britain, Israel, South Africa, Canada and Australia, according to a report released by the Palm Center, a policy think tank at the University of California at Santa Barbara. The Palm Center report concluded that lifting bans against openly gay service personnel in these countries "ha[s] had no negative impact on morale, recruitment, retention, readiness or overall combat effectiveness." Successful transitions to new policies were attributed to clear signals of leadership support and a focus on a uniform code of behavior without regard to sexual orientation.A 2008 Military Times poll of active-duty military personnel, often cited by anti-gay activists, found that 10% of respondents said they would consider leaving the military if the DADT policy were repealed. That would have meant that some 228,000 people might have left the military the policy’s 2011 repeal. But a 2009 review of that poll by the Palm Center suggested a wide disparity between what soldiers said they would do and their actual actions. It noted, for example, that far more than 10% of West Point officers in the 1970s said they would leave the service if women were admitted to the academy. "But when the integration became a reality," the report said, "there was no mass exodus; the opinions turned out to be just opinions." Similarly, a 1985 survey of 6,500 male Canadian service members and a 1996 survey of 13,500 British service members each revealed that nearly two-thirds expressed strong reservations about serving with gays. Yet when those countries lifted bans on gays serving openly, virtually no one left the service for that reason. "None of the dire predictions of doom came true," the Palm Center report said.Despite the fact that gay men and lesbians have been serving openly in the military since September 2011, anti-LGBT groups continue to claim that openly gay personnel are causing problems in the military, including claims of sexual abuse by gay and lesbian soldiers of straight soldiers. The Palm Center refutes this claim, and in an analysis, found that repealing DADT has had “no overall negative impact on military readiness or its component dimensions,” including sexual assault. According to then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta in 2012, the repeal of DADT was being implemented effectively and was having no impact on readiness, unit cohesion or morale. Panetta also issued an LGBT Pride message in 2012.MYTH # 8Gay people are more prone to be mentally ill and to abuse drugs and alcohol.THE ARGUMENTAnti-LGBT groups want not only to depict sexual orientation as something that can be changed but also to show that heterosexuality is the most desirable "choice," even if religious arguments are set aside. The most frequently used secular argument made by anti-LGBT groups in that regard is that homosexuality is inherently unhealthy, both mentally and physically. As a result, most anti-LGBT rights groups reject the 1973 decision by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) to remove homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses. Some of these groups, including the particularly hard-line Traditional Values Coalition, claim that "homosexual activists" managed to infiltrate the APA in order to sway its decision.THE FACTSAll major professional mental health organizations are on record as stating that homosexuality is not a mental disorder.The American Psychological Association states that being gay is just as healthy as being straight, and noted that the 1950s-era work of Dr. Evelyn Hooker started to dismantle this myth. In 1975, the association issued a statement that said, in part, “homosexuality per se implies no impairment in judgment, reliability or general social and vocational capabilities.” The association has clearly stated in the past that “homosexuality is neither mental illness nor mental depravity. … Study after study documents the mental health of gay men and lesbians. Studies of judgment, stability, reliability, and social and vocational adaptiveness all show that gay men and lesbians function every bit as well as heterosexuals.”The American Psychiatric Association states that (PDF; may not open in all browsers) homosexuality is not a mental disorder and that all major professional health organizations are on record as confirming that. The organization removed homosexuality from its official diagnostic manual in 1973 after extensive review of the scientific literature and consultation with experts, who concluded that homosexuality is not a mental illness.Though it is true that LGBT people tend to suffer higher rates of anxiety, depression, and depression-related illnesses and behaviors like alcohol and drug abuse than the general population, that is due to the historical social stigmatization of homosexuality and violence directed at LGBT people, not because of homosexuality itself. Studies done during the past several years have determined that it is the stress of being a member of a minority group in an often-hostile society — and not LGBT identity itself — that accounts for the higher levels of mental illness and drug use.Richard J. Wolitski, an expert on minority status and public health issues at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, put it like this in 2008: "Economic disadvantage, stigma, and discrimination ... increase stress and diminish the ability of individuals [in minority groups] to cope with stress, which in turn contribute to poor physical and mental health."Even as early as 1994, external stressors were recognized as a potential cause of emotional distress of LGBT people. A report presented by the Council on Scientific Affairs to the AMA House of Delegates Interim Meeting with regard to reparative (“ex-gay”) therapy noted that most of the emotional disturbance gay men and lesbians experience around their sexual identity is not based on physiological causes, but rather on “a sense of alienation in an unaccepting environment.”In 2014, a study, conducted by several researchers at major universities and the Rand Corporation, found that LGBT people living in highly anti-LGBT communities and circumstances face serious health concerns and even premature death because of social stigmatization and exclusion. One of the researchers, Dr. Mark Hatzenbuehler, a sociomedical sciences professor at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, said that the data gathered in the study suggests that “sexual minorities living in communities with high levels of anti-gay prejudice have increased risk of mortality, compared to low-prejudice communities.”Homosexuality is not a mental illness or emotional problem and being LGBT does not cause someone to be mentally ill, contrary to what anti-LGBT organizations say. Rather, social stigmatization and prejudice appear to contribute to health disparities in the LGBT population, which include emotional and psychological distress and harmful coping mechanisms.MYTH # 9No one is born gay.THE ARGUMENTAnti-gay activists keenly oppose the granting of "special" civil rights protections to gay people similar to those afforded black Americans and other minorities. But if people are born gay — in the same way that people have no choice as to whether they are black or white — discrimination against gay men and lesbians would be vastly more difficult to justify. Thus, anti-gay forces insist that sexual orientation is a behavior that can be changed, not an immutable characteristic.THE FACTSModern science cannot state conclusively what causes sexual orientation, but a great many studies suggest that it is the result of both biological and environmental forces, not a personal "choice." A 2008 Swedish study of twins (the world's largest twin study) published in The Archives of Sexual Behavior concluded that "[h]omosexual behaviour is largely shaped by genetics and random environmental factors." Dr. Qazi Rahman, study co-author and a leading scientist on human sexual orientation, said: "This study puts cold water on any concerns that we are looking for a single 'gay gene' or a single environmental variable which could be used to 'select out' homosexuality — the factors which influence sexual orientation are complex. And we are not simply talking about homosexuality here — heterosexual behaviour is also influenced by a mixture of genetic and environmental factors." In other words, sexual orientation in general — whether homosexual, bisexual or heterosexual — is a mixture of genetic and environmental factors.The American Psychological Association (APA) states that sexual orientation “ranges along a continuum,” and acknowledges that despite much research into the possible genetic, hormonal, social and cultural influences on sexual orientation, scientists have yet to pinpoint the precise causes of sexual orientation. Regardless, the APA concludes that "most people experience little or no sense of choice about their sexual orientation." In 1994, the APA noted that “homosexuality is not a matter of individual choice” and that research “suggests that the homosexual orientation is in place very early in the life cycle, possibly even before birth.”The American Academy of Pediatrics stated in 1993 (updated in 2004) that “homosexuality has existed in most societies for as long as recorded descriptions of sexual beliefs and practices have been available” and that even at that time, “most scholars in the field state that one’s sexual orientation is not a choice … individuals do not choose to be homosexual or heterosexual.”There are questions about what specifically causes sexual orientation in general, but most current science acknowledges that it is a complex mixture of biological, environmental, and possibly hormonal factors but that no one chooses an orientation.MYTH # 10Gay people can choose to leave homosexuality.THE ARGUMENTIf people are not born gay, as anti-gay activists claim, then it should be possible for individuals to abandon homosexuality. This view is buttressed among religiously motivated anti-gay activists by the idea that homosexual practice is a sin and humans have the free will needed to reject sinful urges.A number of "ex-gay" religious ministries have sprung up in recent years with the aim of teaching gay people to become heterosexuals, and these have become prime purveyors of the claim that gays and lesbians, with the aid of mental therapy and Christian teachings, can "come out of homosexuality." The now defunct Exodus International, the largest of these ministries, once stated, "You don't have to be gay!" Meanwhile, in a more secular vein, the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality describes itself as "a professional, scientific organization that offers hope to those who struggle with unwanted homosexuality."THE FACTS"Reparative" or sexual reorientation therapy — the pseudo-scientific foundation of the ex-gay movement — has been rejected by all the established and reputable American medical, psychological, psychiatric and professional counseling organizations. In 2009, for instance, the American Psychological Association adopted a resolution, accompanied by a 138-page report, that repudiated ex-gay therapy. The report concluded that compelling evidence suggested that cases of individuals going from gay to straight were "rare" and that "many individuals continued to experience same-sex sexual attractions" after reparative therapy. The APA resolution added that "there is insufficient evidence to support the use of psychological interventions to change sexual orientation" and asked "mental health professionals to avoid misrepresenting the efficacy of sexual orientation change efforts by promoting or promising change in sexual orientation." The resolution also affirmed that same-sex sexual and romantic feelings are normal.A very large number of professional medical, scientific and counseling organizations in the U.S. and abroad have issued statements regarding the harm that reparative therapy can cause, particularly if it’s based on the assumption that homosexuality is unacceptable. As early as 1993, the American Academy of Pediatrics stated that “[t]herapy directed at specifically changing sexual orientation is contraindicated, since it can provoke guilt and anxiety while having little or no potential for achieving change in orientation.”The American Medical Association officially opposes reparative therapy that is “based on the assumption that homosexuality per se is a mental disorder or based on an a priori assumption that the person should change his/her homosexual orientation.”The Pan-American Health Organization, the world’s oldest international public health agency, issued a statement in 2012 that said, in part: “Services that purport to ‘cure’ people with non-heterosexual sexual orientation lack medical justification and represent a serious threat to the health and well-being of affected people.” The statement continues, “In none of its individual manifestations does homosexuality constitute a disorder or an illness, and therefore it requires no cure.”Some of the most striking, if anecdotal, evidence of the ineffectiveness of sexual reorientation therapy has been the numerous failures of some of its most ardent advocates. For example, the founder of Exodus International, Michael Bussee, left the organization in 1979 with a fellow male ex-gay counselor because the two had fallen in love. Other examples include George Rekers, a former board member of NARTH and formerly a leading scholar of the anti-LGBT Christian right who was revealed to have been involved in a same-sex tryst in 2010. John Paulk, former poster child of the massive ex-gay campaign “Love Won Out” in the late 1990s, is now living as a happy gay man. And Robert Spitzer, a preeminent psychiatrist whose 2001 research that seemed to indicate that some gay people had changed their orientation, repudiated his own study in 2012. The Spitzer study had been widely used by anti-LGBT organizations as “proof” that sexual orientation can change.In 2013, Exodus International, formerly one of the largest ex-gay ministries in the world, shut down after its director, Alan Chambers, issued an apology to the LGBT community. Chambers, who is married to a woman, has acknowledged that his same-sex attraction has not changed. At a 2012 conference, he said: “The majority of people that I have met, and I would say the majority meaning 99.9% of them, have not experienced a change in their orientation or have gotten to a place where they could say they could never be tempted or are not tempted in some way or experience some level of same-sex attraction.”1. “We need to protect marriage.”The word “protect” implies that gay people are a threat to the institution of marriage. To imply that including same-sex couples within the definition of marriage will somehow be detrimental or even destructive for the institution is to suggest gay people must be inherently poisonous. It also implies a nefarious gay mafia that is out to wreck marriage for straight people. Naturally if such a mafia existed I would be bound by a code of honour to deny its existence. However, it doesn’t exist.2. “We must preserve traditional marriage.”Given that marriage has always changed to suit the culture of the time and place, I would refrain from ever calling it “traditional”. If marriage was truly traditional, interracial couples would not be allowed to wed, one could marry a child, ceremonies would be arranged by parents to share familial wealth and the Church of England would still be under the authority of the Pope.3. “Marriage is a sacred institution.”The word “sacred” suggests marriage is a solely religious institution. The Office for National Statistics shows how civil, non-religious marriage made up 68 per cent of all marriages in the UK during 2010. Let us not forget matrimony existed long before Jehovah was even a word you weren’t allowed to say.4. “Marriage has always been a bond between one man and one woman.”This declaration ignores the legally married gay couples in Canada, Spain, Portugal, Argentina, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Belgium, Netherlands, and South Africa. It conveniently forgets the 48 countries where polygamy is still practised. It also omits from history the married gay couples of ancient China and Rome, Mormon polygamy, and the ancient Egyptians who could marry their sisters. The assertion is obviously false.5. “Gay marriage will confuse gender roles.”This hinges on the idea that gender roles are or should be fixed, as dictated by scripture, most often cited for the sake of healthy child development. The love and care homosexual couples routinely provide children are, it would seem, irrelevant. Perhaps it would help to reiterate that gay people are not confused about gender, they are just gay. It is the churches who are deeply confused about gender and sexuality. I would ask them to stop focusing on my genitals, and start paying attention to my humanity.6. “Gay marriage will confuse the terms ‘husband’ and ‘wife’, or ‘mother and ‘father’.”Another form of the previous argument. It is not hard but I’ll say it slowly just in case … married men will refer to themselves … as “husbands”, and married women will refer to themselves … as “wives”. Male parents will be “fathers” and female parents will both be “mothers”. Not so confusing really.7. “Gay people cannot have children and so should not be allowed to marry.”The Archbishop of York John Sentamu used a barely disguised version of this argument in a piece for the Guardian when he referred to “the complementary nature of men and women”. He is insinuating, of course, that homosexual relationships are not complementary by nature because they cannot produce offspring, and therefore they are unnatural and undeserving of the word “marriage”.May I refer him to the elderly or infertile straight couples who cannot produce children? If a complementary relationship hinges on procreative sex, are these relationships unnatural? Should they be allowed to marry?8. “But studies have shown heterosexual parents are better for children.”No, they have not. Dozens of studies have shown gay people to be entirely capable of raising children. While it is true that many reputable studies have shown two-parent families tend to be most beneficial, the gender of the parents has never been shown to matter.The studies cited by actively homophobic organisations like the Coalition for Marriage were funded by anti-gay organisations, or have basic methodology flaws – for example, they would compare married straight couples with un-wed gay couples, or they would take a person who may have had a single curious experience with the same sex and define them as exclusively homosexual. Sometimes, the even more disingenuous will reference studies [PDF] which do not even acknowledge gay parents. Same-sex parents are simply presumed by biased researchers to be equivalent to single parents and step-parents, and therefore use the data interchangeably, which as anyone with an ounce of scientific literacy knows is not the way such studies work.Arguments based on “traditional family” will always be insulting, not just to the healthy, well-adjusted children of gay couples, but to the children raised by single parents, step-parents, grandparents, godparents, foster parents, and siblings.9. “No one has the right to redefine marriage.”Tell that to Henry VIII. When marriage is a civil, legal institution of the state, the citizenship has a right to redefine marriage in accordance with established equality laws.10. “The minority should not have the right to dictate to the majority.”Asking to be included within marriage laws is certainly not equivalent to imposing gay marriage on the majority. No single straight person’s marriage will be affected by letting gay people marry.Another form of the above argument is “Why should we bother changing the law just to cater to 4% of the population?” By this logic, what reason is there to provide any minority equal civil rights?11. “Public opinion polls show most people are against gay marriage.”A petition by the Coalition for Marriage claimed to have 600,000 signatures in opposition to gay marriage in the UK. It should come as no surprise that the directors of the organisation are religious and manipulation of the results was easy. A single person could submit their signature online multiple times providing they used different email addresses (which were not verified). Programs that allow for anonymity of IP addresses also enabled anyone around the world to add their signature.The majority of UK polls demonstrate a majority in favour of gay marriage. These include a 2004 Gallup poll, a 2008 ICM Research poll, a 2009 Populus poll, a 2010 Angus Reid poll, a 2010 Scottish Social Attitudes survey, a 2011 Angus Reid Public Opinion survey, and a 2012 YouGov survey.Even if most people were against gay marriage, which polls consistently show is not the case, majority will is no justification for the exclusion of a minority.12. “Why is it so important for gay people to have marriage?”For the same reason it is important to straight people. Our relationships are just as loving and valid as heterosexual relationships, but our current marriage laws suggest it is not. We are equally human and we should be treated by the law as such.13. “Why do gay people have to get society’s approval?”To turn the argument on its head, one simply has to ask why society feels the need to segregate our rights from those of heterosexuals. It has nothing to do with approval, and has everything to do with equality.14. “There are two sides to the argument. Why can’t we compromise?”Should women have compromised their right to vote? One does not compromise equal rights otherwise they are not equal rights.15. “Gay people in the UK already have civil partnerships which provide all the same rights as marriage.”Civil partnerships were born out of politicians pandering to homophobia. A step in the right direction, perhaps, but they are a separate form of recognition that reaffirmed society’s wish to keep homosexuals at arm’s length should we somehow “diminish” true marriage.Type B: The Arguments That Don’t Even Bother to Hide Their HomophobiaWhile we must look closely to spot the homophobia inherent in some arguments against gay marriage, with others the prejudice is barely disguised at all.16. “I am concerned about the impact gay marriage will have on society/schools.”There is no concern here, only prejudice. We can conclude this because there is absolutely no evidence to suggest gay marriage will harm society. Have the 11 countries where gay marriage is legal crumbled yet? Ultimately the argument turns out to be hyperbolic nonsense designed to instil confusion, fear, and mistrust of gay people.17. “Gay marriage is immoral.”If there is something immoral about legally acknowledging the love between two consenting adults, it would help the argument to state precisely what that is. “God says so” is not an argument. And this article, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, is the real “grotesque subversion of a universally accepted human right”.18. “Gay people should not be allowed to marry because they are more likely to be promiscuous.”This claim is based on the degrading preconception that gay people do not feel true love and just have sex with as many people as possible. It is also beside the point - straight couples are not precluded from marriage on the basis they may be unfaithful, so why should gay people?19. “I love my best friend, my brother and my dog. That does not mean we should have the right to marry.”Thank you for reducing the love I have for my long-term partner to friendship, incest or bestiality. May also take the form: “The state should not be blessing every sexual union.”Thank you, again, for reducing my long-term, loving relationship to just sex.Type C: The Really Silly Homophobic Arguments20. “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.”Clearly not a Biology graduate.21. “If everybody was gay, mankind would cease to exist.”Ignoring the fact not everyone is gay, and also ignoring the fact gay people can and do have children through donors and surrogates, I actually quite enjoyed the apocalyptic images this argument conjured.22. “Gay rights are fashionable right now.”The Suffragettes famously marched together because they needed an excuse to compare clothing. Civil rights activists looked fabulous with hoses and guns turned on them. Nooses around gay Iranian necks are totally “in” right now. We are all mere lambs of our Queen Gaga.People actually use this argument.23. “The only people who want gay marriage are the liberal elites.”If this was really true, how come hundreds of everyday gay people protest outside anti-gay marriage rallies? How come thousands of people voice their support for gay marriage in polls? I do not imagine there are many people who believe they deserve fewer rights or who desire to be second-class citizens.24. “Gay people do not even want marriage.”Yes, Ann Widdecombe, we do. We do not appreciate you mischaracterising what millions of us do and do not want, and squaring reality to fit your Catholic bigotry.25. “Gay people can already get married – to people of the opposite gender.”This is Michele Bachmann’s demented logic. Yes, gay people can already get married … to people of the opposite gender. No, they are not allowed to marry the people they actually love. This is not just bigotry, it’s also stupidity.26. “There will be drastic consequences for society if we accept gay marriage.”Person A: “Have you been to Canada lately? They have free health care, they play hockey, and they’re very peaceful and polite.”Person B: “That sounds nice.”Person A: “They have gay marriage too.”Person B: “Sounds like Sodom and Gomorrah.”27. “Gay marriage will cause the disestablishment of the church.”Or to put it another way: “If you don’t stop all this silly talk, we will be forced to go away and leave you in peace.” Scary!28. “Gay marriage will lead to polygamy/bestiality/paedophilia/etc.”The truth is that the legalisation of gay marriage will lead to the legalisation of gay marriage. Dire warnings of slippery slopes are scaremongering. In the countries that have so far legalised same-sex marriage, courts have always rejected calls for the legalisation of polygamy.29. “Gay marriage caused the end of the Roman Empire/September 11th/etc.”The Roman Empire disintegrated as barbarians from the north overwhelmed them, forcing the last Roman emperor, Romulus Augustus, to abdicate to the Germanic warlord Odoacer. This had nothing to do with homosexuality.The attacks on the World Trade Center were orchestrated by Al-Qaeda, an extremist Muslim group that detests America. The gay mafia was not involved.30. “You are too emotionally involved to make a rational argument.”Of course I’m angry. Wouldn’t you be if you had to listen to arguments like these? I’m passionate about achieving equality and combating prejudice. But, as everyone should know, passion and reason are complementary.31. “We are in an economic crisis, so we should not be wasting time on gay marriage.”Is it too much to wish for politicians who can multi-task? And for leaders who don’t consider equality a luxury add on?

These are the 15 Companies that best combine innovative technology with an effective business model and hence they are the most technologically advanced complained of this 21st century human world:Some are large companies that seem to be growing ever larger, like Amazon and Apple. Others, like IBM, or General Electric are old-guard giants betting on technology renewal. And the list is full of ambitious startups like SpaceX, which is changing the economics of space travel with reusable rockets.1.Nvidia:- Headquarters Santa Clara, California ◆ Industry Intelligent machines ◆ Status Public ◆ Valuation $90.9 billionThough Nvidia still makes most of its money from selling graphics chips for video games, it has established itself as the leading provider of processing power for AI software, and its newer, AI-related businesses are growing quickly. During its most recent financial quarter, revenues from its data-center and automotive businesses increased by 186 percent and 24 percent, respectively, over the previous year. The company says all the major Internet and cloud-service providers use its chips to accelerate their processes, and a number of large carmakers, including Toyota, are using its autonomous-driving technology.$3 billion: spending on R&D to create its new data-center chip.Nvidia CEO: Software Is Eating the World, but AI Is Going to Eat SoftwareThe Race to Power AI’s Silicon BrainsDrones and Robots Are Taking Over Industrial InspectionBattle to Provide Chips for the AI Boom Heats Up2.SpaceX:- ◆Headquarters Hawthorne, California ◆ Industry Transportation ◆ Status Private◆ Valuation $12 billionIn 2017, SpaceX proved it’s possible to fly a rocket into space carrying a payload, bring it back, refurbish it, and launch it again with a new payload. Reusable rockets make space travel far cheaper and faster: they are critical to SpaceX’s long-term goal of establishing an interplanetary transport system. The startup also compressed the time needed to refit its recycled rockets (from one year to a few months) and began preliminary tests of its Falcon Heavy booster, which is expected to be the world’s most powerful rocket when it is completed later this year.10 percent: price discount being considered for customers who agree to fly their payloads on reused rockets3.Amazon:- Headquarters Seattle, WashingtonIndustry Connectivity ◆ Status Public ◆ Valuation $479.3 billionAmazon is using a range of AI technologies, including computer vision, machine learning, and natural-language processing, to reinvent mobile computing and shopping. The company’s voice-activated assistant Alexa now controls everything from TVs to cars and is poised to be the next important computing platform. Amazon is also streamlining the brick-and-mortar shopping experience through its Seattle-based Amazon Go convenience store. Customers simply enter the store, scan an app on their smartphones, and walk out with the items they wish to purchase. Amazon uses AI, cameras, and sensors to identify the products they have selected and bills them automatically—no lines or checkouts necessary.12,000: number of programs that software developers have published for Alexa with Empathy4.23andMe:- Headquarters Mountain View, California◆Industry Biomedicine◆Status Private◆Valuation $1.1 billionA pioneer of direct-to-consumer genetic testing since its founding in 2006, 23andMe ran into trouble in 2013 when the FDA barred it from distributing health information. But this year the regulator changed course and reopened a major business line for the company, permitting it to market genetic reports on risks for late-onset Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and eight other conditions. After extracting DNA from the cells in saliva samples sent in by customers, the company uses a DNA-genotyping chip made by Illumina (No. 22) to capture features related to health and ancestry—information customers are then able to access online. 23andMe now has more than two million customers worldwide, and its products have been used in a number of research projects, including studies of female fertility, depression, Parkinson’s disease, and even nail biting.1 million plus: number of customers who have consented to have their genetic information used for scientific research.5.Alphabet:- Headquarters Mountain View, California ◆Industry Connectivity◆Status Public◆Valuation $673.9 billionAlphabet’s subsidiaries are technology leaders in AI, autonomous vehicles, and AR and VR, among other areas. Its DeepMind division keeps devising new ways for AI systems to mimic human intelligence and learn more quickly. Its self-driving-car project, Waymo, continues to improve performance and has aggressively defended its intellectual property by suing rival Uber after a top engineer switched teams. Google, Alphabet’s best-known and largest subsidiary, is collaborating with hardware makers to create standalone VR headsets for its Daydream VR platform. The new models will have built-in displays and processors rather than relying on users’ smartphones, and will use sensors to better track peoples’ movements in virtual worlds.40 percent: amount of energy the company says it saves applying machine-learning algorithms from its DeepMind subsidiary to cooling its data center.6.iFlytek:- Headquarters Hefei, China◆Industry Intelligent machines◆Status Public◆Valuation $6.8 billioniFlytek already dominates China’s voice recognition market and is now expanding into voice-activated command systems for cars, homes, robots, and schools. In the past year, it launched systems that enable people to control their cars, TVs, and home appliances via voice; invested in a startup that makes home robots; and established a joint venture to develop educational products that incorporate its instant translation features. It also established a multimillion-dollar fund to invest in AI-related startups around the world. It says that more than 160,000 developers use its software and more than 400 million people use its products.70 percent: iFlytek’s share of China’s market in voice-based technologies.7.Kite Pharma:- Headquarters Santa Monica, California◆Industry Biomedicine◆Status Public◆Valuation $5.7 billionThis immunotherapy company is taking the body’s T cells, which naturally fight infections, and engineering them to fight cancer. It is farthest along with its therapy for aggressive non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, with more than a third of one study’s participants showing no sign of disease six months after treatment. There were two deaths associated with the therapy based on its known side effects—approximately 2 percent of study participants—but it seems to be nearing FDA approval.39 percent: proportion of study participants very sick with lymphoma who showed no sign of the disease six months after a single treatment with Kite’s therapy.8. Tencent:- Headquarters Shenzhen, China◆Industry Connectivity◆Status Public◆Valuation $350 billionIt’s been a blowout year for Tencent, which owns China’s biggest social network, WeChat, and is also the world’s largest video-gaming company. Though WeChat already boasts more than 900 million monthly active users, Tencent keeps expanding the mobile app so that it now offers messaging, online gaming, shopping, music, videos, and peer-to-peer payments. The breadth of features attracts new users and keeps existing ones active inside WeChat, which enables Tencent to sell more ads and services. In April, the Internet giant passed Wells Fargo to become one of the world’s 10 most valuable companies by market capitalization, thanks to growth in its gaming, online advertising, and payments businesses.50 percent: proportion of WeChat’s 770 million daily users who are on the service at least 90 minutes a day.8.Regeneron:- Headquarters Tarrytown, New York◆Industry Biomedicine◆Status Public◆Valuation $55.5 billionA well-established biotech with a track record in treating eye and other diseases, Regeneron emphasizes the use of genetic information to focus its drug development efforts. In March it announced that, along with the U.K. Biobank and pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline, it would be sequencing genetic data from 500,000 volunteers to help support research into drug development and the connections between DNA and disease. It’s also put a focus on creating “off-the-shelf” engineered T cells to target tumors without requiring a patient’s own immune cells to be used, an approach that could make this field of treatment much easier to scale. Company revenue for calendar year 2016 was $4.9 billion, net income nearly $900 million.500,000: number of U.K. volunteers whose genetic data it is helping sequence10.Spark Therapeutics:- Headquarters Philadelphia, Pennsylvania◆Industry Biomedicine◆Status Public◆Valuation $1.9 billionIn addition to its treatment for a progressive form of blindness, the company has also been testing a way to combat hemophilia B, a blood clotting disorder, by intravenous treatment with viruses carrying a corrected version of the gene that codes for a blood-clotting protein called factor IX. This is one to watch because the disease, which affects one in 5,000 men, is expensive to treat conventionally.1 in 30,000: estimated number of individuals affected by the disease, Leber hereditary optic neuropathy11.Face ++ :- Headquarters Beijing, China◆Industry Intelligent machines◆Status Private◆Valuation $1 billionFacial recognition services are prevalent in China, and Face++’s software powers many of the country’s most popular applications. Alipay, the popular online payment platform, uses the technology to let users log in and make payments using their face as ID; ride-sharing provider Didi Chuxing uses it to verify the identity of its freelance drivers; and smartphone app maker Meitu uses it to offer highly detailed photo-retouching features. The five-year-old startup is believed to be the first facial recognition “unicorn,” having raised at least $145 million in recent years, including at least $100 million in December 2016.106: maximum number of points on a person’s face that its technology tracks12.First Solar:- Headquarters Tempe, Arizona◆Industry Clean energy◆Status Public◆Valuation $4.3 billionLanded some of the biggest solar-plant deals in the world last year, including a 140-megawatt solar farm in North Queensland, Australia, the largest in that country. The company, which develops, constructs, and operates photovoltaic power plants connected to the electric grid, also continues to invest heavily in its cadmium telluride cells, a promising alternative to silicon solar cells that are making big advances. This year is off to a good start too, with the company reporting better-than-expected results in the first quarter of 2017 and raising expectations for its current quarter as well.$2.9 billion: estimated 2017 revenue13.Intel:- Headquarters Santa Clara, California◆Industry Intelligent machines◆Status Public◆Valuation $160 billionIntel is benefiting from a series of AI-centric investments and acquisitions it made to offset the decline of its main market, chips for personal computers. In the past year, it bought the deep-learning startup Nervana, the computer-vision chipmaker Movidius, and Mobileye, a supplier of assisted-driving systems. The Movidius purchase enabled Intel to sell chips to drone giant DJI, while the Mobileye acquisition brought it autonomous-driving partnerships with BMW and Delphi Automotive. In March, Intel launched an AI products group to further accelerate its AI efforts.46 percent: portion of revenues derived from areas beyond PC chips14.Quanergy Systems:- Headquarters Sunnyvale, California◆Industry Intelligent machines◆Status Private◆Valuation $1.6 billionThere are many startups trying to create compact, low-cost, high-quality lidar systems for autonomous vehicles, but Quanergy was the first to develop one using solid-state technology, which increases the reliability of the laser-scanning radar. The startup’s lidar is also relatively cheap to make because it uses some of the same materials and manufacturing processes as computer chips. The sensors, which are small enough to be embedded in car headlights, can be used in advanced driver-assistance systems and will be integrated into autonomous vehicles by 2021.$250: price of its S3 Lidar sensors for autonomous vehicles15.Apple:- Headquarters Cupertino, California◆Industry Intelligent machines◆Status Public◆Valuation $761.4 billionDerided of late for a lack of innovative new products and tepid customer response to Apple Pay and the Apple Watch, Apple has launched a Siri-enabled speaker called HomePod to compete with Amazon’s Alexa-equipped Echo speaker. It’s also begun to tout its AI chops, including acknowledging its work on autonomous-driving systems. For some time Apple has been quietly hiring some impressive robotics and AI talent for its project, and its history of smart design and smooth integration of hardware and software may prove valuable assets.$257 billion: cash on its balance sheet, more than the entire market value of General Electric.Hope you enjoy.

MILLIONS of people have been severely disabled (mentally and or physically) by mercury from dental amalgams, and this continues now. A huge pack of LIES has been used to cover this up. The subject gets censored (removed) from various websites. You can see the full research into this in free Chapter 3 at Experts Catastrophe - the catastrophe of official medical charlatanism where you can also see the list of all the references cited below here.However, as Quora prefers long answers to short ones, I'll see how much I can copy in here for you. But I'll first mention that mercury has numerous different effects on brain and body, depending on (a) timing, (b) dose, (c) form of mercury, (d) genetic disposition, (e) interacting factors. My own "peer-reviewed" published evidence also indicates that (in moderation) it causes higher IQ. Furthermore, mercury poisoning expert AH Cutler independently came to the same conclusion as myself, that the current epidemic of "snowflakes" trying to shut down anyone who disagrees with them has also been caused by mercury poisoning. Incandescent anger at divergent viewpoints is one of the most characteristic symptoms of mercury poisoning. I should know because I was there myself in a former life. There is quite a lot more evidence than this answer here will fit in.Oh, and it is all very carefully formatted in the actual book chapters pdfs, whereas here it is a bit of hit and hope.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Before reading this chapter I recommend that you read the first two chapters of this book. Otherwise you may come to it with considerable misconceptions which could make for difficult and unproductive reading here.The main content of this chapter is a scientific paper. I wrote it with the intention of it being accepted in a scientific journal, and so you might find it rather turgid reading and with too many of those citations such as (Authorname, 2012) intruding into my florid prose. On the other hand one journal editor condemned it for (supposedly) appearing to be written like a newspaper article, so maybe there’s hope for non-academic readers nevertheless.You may be wondering whether you can have the competence to make any useful judgement of the soundness or credibility of this article. Wouldn’t the experts perhaps point out all manner of hidden things wrong with it? But I am providing you with a special resource here. In the next two chapters, you can see the world’s top experts telling me (off the record) the reasons why this article is such rubbish that you shouldn’t even be informed of its existence anyway. I suggest that you study those critiques and my rejoinders to them, and (as is always necessary eventually) then decide for yourself who if anyone has the more credibility. I can’t print the re-rejoinders from these experts because none have replied back. Perhaps you could write to these journals yourself to ask them why you shouldn’t be persuaded by what I said in my own replies.Scientific papers normally end with a list of the references cited. In this book I will transfer this paper’s reference list into the list at the end of the book. But this article is unusual in that it contains an appendix which itself contains three further lists of references. I will leave those in place just as they were present in the original documents contained in that appendix. Other than that, what follows after this paragraph is the most updated version of the manuscript I have sent to now eighteen journals. It is usual for scientific papers to begin with a summary called an “abstract”. This gives an overview for those who don’t already have the full text, but may be hard as a non-specialist to follow until you have read that full text, and you shouldn’t let yourself get bogged down by this one here. Also this chapter contains some graphs of disability epidemiology. If you are not already a wizard with such graphs, you may find it useful to jump forward to the section of Chapter 6 which discusses some misuses and abuses of similar sorts of graphs. Lastly, the “p<“ values stated herein indicate the probability of obtaining that result due to random chance.(NOTE: AT NO POINT HAVE I EVER SAID THAT ALL AUTISM IS CAUSED BY MERCURY OR AMALGAMS – See Chapter 7!)Autism, adult disability, and ‘workshy’: Major epidemics being caused by non-gamma-2 dental amalgamsRobin P ClarkeAbstract: It is unknown to most people that the dental amalgams which have been used as standard in recent decades, namely non-gamma-2 dental amalgams, have been substantially unlike those used before the 1970s, in that they constantly emit 20 to 50 times more mercury vapor than the older types. This is the first-ever study of health consequences of non-gamma-2. Following the changeover to non-gamma-2 amalgams, there promptly began a tenfoldish increase of autism, a tenfoldish change of ratio between late onset and early onset, a change from mainly genetic to mainly environmental, and a change from lifelong incurable to sometimes clearly recoverable. Exactly simultaneously there occurred a fourfoldish increase of claims for adult disability in the UK, with disabilities all or mostly of the nature that would be expected from chronic mercury poisoning (including mental disabilities and neurological disabilities). And similarly in the US. These timings cannot be dismissed as coincidence because there are no credible alternative explanations for the increases. Data strongly suggests that non-gamma-2 amalgams are currently by far the main cause of chronic disability in the UK, US, and other such countries, with about 10% of the UK working-age population disabled thereby.An experiment on millions of dis-informed subjectsDental amalgams in patients’ teeth constantly emit mercury vapor, and that vapor is easily measureable. This has been known for decades as indicated in at least 18 published studies (Berglund, 1993; Berglund et al., 1988, Boyer, 1988; Brune et al., 1983; Clarkson et al., 1988; Ferracane et al., 1995; Mackert, 1987; Mahler et al., 1994; Moberg, 1985a, 1985b; Olsson et al., 1989; Olsson and Bergman, 1987; Patterson et al., 1985; Psarras et al., 1994; Svare et al., 1981; Vimy and Lorscheider, 1985a, 1985b, 1990).And yet in stark contradiction of all this clearly established basic science, the UK’s Chief Dental Officer (2009) has publicly asserted, as some supposed fact, that dental amalgams do not constantly emit any mercury vapor (or in his second thoughts on being challenged, at least “not measureably”).Such mercury vapor has been recognised for centuries as one of the most toxic of substances, causing various mental, neurological and physical disabilities. For more than a hundred years prior to the 1970s, strong condemnations were regularly issued against the use of amalgam in dentistry. These warnings were consistently ignored by health authorities, and dismissed with claims that there was no real evidence of harmfulness.Much further evidence of harmfulness of dental amalgam has come to light in recent decades (Mutter, 2011; Hanson, 2004; Homme et al., 2014), not least in thousands of cases of improvement following amalgam removal which cannot be dismissed as merely anecdotal or placebo. Some relatively large-scale trials have been asserted to show amalgam safety, but they have been substantially flawed and in at least one case in reality showed harmfulness rather than safety (as explained by Mutter, 2011 and Homme et al., 2014).In the 1970s a new type of dental amalgam was introduced as the new standard, partly on the basis that it was very much more durable, with far less tendency to corroding and crumbling. This new type was called non-gamma-2.These non-gamma-2 dental amalgams constantly emit 20 to 50 times more of the toxic mercury vapor than the older types (Berglund, 1993; Boyer, 1988; Brune et al., 1983; Ferracane et al., 1995; Mahler et al., 1994; Moberg, 1985a, 1985b; Psarras et al., 1994). The amalgam constantly emitting this neurotoxic mercury vapor is located in a person’s mouth, less than two inches from their brain, and in the pathway to the lungs (where 80% is absorbed at each inhalation). Any notion that the levels of mercury vapor caused by amalgams are very low has to be put in the context of the general outdoor levels being many times lower still at around 0.002 mcg/m3.No safety testing was undertaken before or after it was introduced. Patients and the public in general have still not been informed of the change, let alone of the increased levels of mercury involved. No informed consent has been sought, and no warnings have been given of any possible harmfulness. Indeed, throughout the US it was actually made illegal for dentists to issue such warnings, and Hal Huggins and other dentists were struck off the register of practitioners for doing so.In the UK, a number of untruths were adopted by the NHS and DH such as to prevent people being diagnosed with mercury toxicity and to thereby further reduce any concern about risk. The following untruths have been identified by the author, but it is unlikely that they have been the only ones.1. Untrue assertion that “Chronic mercury poisoning is highly unlikely to present in a psychiatric setting”.2. Use of proven useless urine tests for supposed (dis-) diagnosis of chronic mercury poisoning.3. Use of proven useless blood tests for supposed (dis-) diagnosis of chronic mercury poisoning.4. Chief Dental Officer’s untrue assertion that “no mercury vapor” emits from amalgams, or alternatively “not measureably”.5. Chief Dental Officer’s untrue denial that amalgams are the main source of mercury in the body.6. NHS Chief Executive’s re-insistence on the untruth that dentists have capability for mercury diagnosis whereas doctors do not.The existence of these untruths is authenticated via my Freedom of Information requests as documented partly in an Appendix hereto and more fully via dental mercury falsehoodsDates of introduction and usageNon-gamma-2 amalgams are very much more durable than the previous types. Consequently, declining rates of amalgam install-ation would conceal an increase of prevalence of the amalgams in patients’ mouths. And it is here expected that the key variable would be that rising prevalence rather than the declining rate of installations and replacements.A number of US patents for non-gamma-2 were granted in the mid-1970s. The famous US dentist Hal Huggins states that the changeover to “high copper”, i.e. non-gamma-2, occurred in 1976. In 1986 the ISO standard was changed retrospectively to incorporate them. The non-gamma-2 amalgams took over in the period 1975-79 in Denmark (Hansen et al., 1993). In Germany the use of the earlier types was banned in 1992, making the non-gamma-2 the only option. And according to the manufacturer’s product sheet, Dispersalloy is the most widely used amalgam with over 25 years of proven performance, i.e., since before 1979, but perhaps after their 1974 patent no. 3841860.I have been unable to obtain any numerical data on usage or total prevalence of non-gamma-2 in people’s mouths. The DH have told me they have no such records. And NHS dental records have not recorded the types of amalgam used. It is unlikely that any better information is available in other countries. But we can very reasonably assume that the overall prevalence of non-gamma-2 will have gradually, progressively increased in the decades following its introduction.My epidemiological investigationsHaving become aware of the changeover to non-gamma-2 amalgams, I decided to look to see if there might be epidemiological evidence of any consequences. It appears that no-one has ever done this before.In respect of the following accounts it is important to understand that I have not cherry-picked selected data to prove any point, but instead have used all the best data readily available to me.To avoid undue length here, the reader is referred to consult prior reviews of substantial important other data pointing to similar conclusions as those here, including Hanson (2004), Mutter (2011), Geier et al. (2010), Homme et al. (2014), and others not specifically cited..Is mercury involved in causation of autism?Before presenting the epidemiological findings it will be useful to first show the context of existing evidence from clinical studies on this question.A number of reviews have suggested there is persuasive evidence that mercury is importantly involved in causing of autism (Geier et al., 2010; Bernard et al., 2001; DeSoto and Hitlan, 2010; Kern et al., 2012). And yet the evidence can be shown to be far more decisive than any of these suggest, and indeed beyond all reasonable doubt.In any combinatory review of studies it is necessary firstly to rule out those which lack a sound rationale. A number of studies have used blood mercury or urine mercury as criterion measures, and yet it has been known for decades that these lack merit as indicators of chronic mercury toxicity. Indeed, the most prominent such study, Hertz-Picciotto et al. (2010), stated in its second-last sentence that: “This report did not address the role of prenatal or early-life Hg exposure in the etiology of autism” [i.e., the study could not provide any evidence against causation by mercury].Another danger in meta-reviewing of studies is the merging together of data which should be kept separate. In respect of mercury in autistics’ hair, the most enlightening study is that of Majewska et al. (2010). They found that in younger children autism was associated with markedly decreased hair mercury (p<0.01), whereas in older children autism was associated with markedly increased hair mercury (p<0.01). If they had just lumped all their results together they would have got an entirely unwarranted “no difference” non-result instead. Viewed in the light of Majewska et al, all or most of the other hair mercury studies fall into a coherent pattern. There are several which have smudged together the different ages and therefrom invalidly declared non-results. Meanwhile others strongly reinforce the notion that there are real effects.Holmes et al. (2003) obtained an eightfold difference of mercury in hair, with significance level of 1 in 250,000 (p<0.000004). Some commenters dismiss that study on a basis that it was done by opponents of mercury, and “therefore” their results may have been biased or fraudulent. But one would have expected any bias or fraud to result in a finding that hair mercury was increased in autistics, as that would have been in accordance with the standard rationale for diagnosing toxin exposure from increased hair measurements. They found instead 8﷓fold reduced levels, which strongly suggests that they were instead acting competently and honestly. Their rational-ising notion of paradoxical reductions of measurements in mercury toxic subjects has since been supported by much other evidence that mercury sometimes impairs its own excretion.A study in India (Lakhshmi Priya and Geetha, 2010) found 8-fold increased hair mercury (p<0.001). Another in Kuwait (Fido and Al-Saad, 2005) found 15-fold increased hair mercury (p<0.001).Bradstreet et al. (2003) found that a challenge test with the chelating agent DMSA caused a release of mercury 3.15 times greater in autistic cases than in controls (p<0.0002). That is a 1 in 5000 probability that that excess mercury was just a fluke.The probability of just these results listed above being all due to mere chance is 1/5000 x 1/250000 x 1/100 x 1/100 x 1/1000 x 1/1000, that is one in 12,500,000,000,000,000,000, vastly beyond the standard of proof ever required in any criminal prosecution.And far more than one negative result is required to call into question one significantly positive result. There are far more ways of making a “negative” car that does not move than of making a “positive” one that does. I and thousands of others have lived in the UK for many years and never seen the Queen in all that time, and yet that does not constitute significant grounds for dismissing the testimony of those who claim she has existed. If there were in reality no mercury-autism connection there should be a huge pile of “no-difference-found” results among which these high-significance results would be a small minority. But there is no such pile of null results to speak against the mercury-autism connection.One could seek to interpret all those results with a notion that there could be an unknown factor which both causes autism and also harmlessly causes mercury to vary in hair and other tissues. But that notion is brought into question by the extensive commonalities between autism and mercury toxification (Kern et al., 2012). And it is completely demolished by the observations of the Autism Research Institute which has for decades been surveying the effectiveness of many potential treatments for autism. Of more than 80 treatments tested, the ARI has found that one of the most effective has been removal of mercury by careful chelation. And Blaucok-Busch et al. (2012) obtained highly-significant behavioral improvements even with the rather poor Hg chelator DMSA (p<0.001; p<0.001; p<0.001).Meanwhile, three studies have been promoted as supposedly disproving any mercury-autism thesis. The study by Ip et al. (2004) was shown to be riddled with arithmetical errors, and in reality indicated that there was indeed a mercury connection (DeSoto and Hitlan, 2010). Likewise Soden et al. (2007) actually proved the opposite (DeSoto and Hitlan, 2010). And Hertz-Picciotto et al. (2010) stated in their own second-last sentence that their study did not address causation of autism by prenatal or early-life mercury exposure. Such falsely proclaimed studies are all that stands in supposed defiance of that astronomically large number calculated above. There is even more evidence that merits mention here but it would be superfluous. We can resolutely conclude that mercury is now a major cause of autism. [Updates: Autism association with prenatal SSRI use (Harrington et al., 2014) = amalgam causes both depression of mother and autism of baby. Widespread reports of seizures in 1/3 of autistics = perinatal mercury causes both autism and seizures (Szasz et al., 2002; Klinghardt, 1998).]Increased autism?In academic papers and elsewhere, certain myths about autism are constantly portrayed as self-evident truths, so they must be addressed here. Firstly, the human race does not divide into those “with” autism and those “without” it, or those “on the spectrum” and those “not on the spectrum”. Rather, there is a continuum of variation in the extent to which individuals are more or less autistic (in varying ways). Secondly, there is no scientific basis for a distinction between autism and Asperger’s. It was merely a historical accident that Kanner and Asperger made simultaneous rediscoveries of the syndrome described by JL Down in 1887. Thirdly, there is no scientific basis for the routine references to autism as a “disorder”. Autism can be severely disabling, is often terribly distressing, and may often be a consequence of a disorder (such as maternal infection), but rather than a disorder it is properly considered to be just atypicality (as is genius). [This is now more fully discussed in Chapter 2.]Some researchers with decades of direct experience, such as Bernard Rimland and Lisa Blakemore-Brown, have been of the view that there has been a substantial increase of autistic behaviors, and not just increase of diagnoses.[Update for this book: Significant further discussion of the increase “controversy” is contained in Chapter 2 in the section “The autism increase controversy” (page 68), just before the appendix to that chapter, and also majorly in Chapter 12 and pages 188-189.]The NHS has published a report claiming to show that there has not been any increase, by supposedly showing the prevalence of autism among older adults to be the same as in children (Brugha, 2011). The report detailed the elaborate measures taken to ensure reliability of the autism assessments. And yet it gave no details at all of any measures taken to ensure the validity, that is the (infinitely more important) comparability of the diagnostic procedures as applied to adults relative to applied to children. The reason there were no such details is because there was no way of establishing such validity. And in absence thereof, such a study proves nothing about changing prevalence of autism. I myself have direct knowledge of two older persons given baseless diagnoses of autism by this same NHS that proclaims as expertise the untruths listed on a preceding page here.The Autism Research Institute has a uniquely extensive historical database of cases. Figure 1 [here 3.1] is my re-plot of a graph published by the Autism Research Institute of its own records. Figure 2 shows my extraction from Figure 1 of the time-series of case ratios between late and early onset. Before 1980, onset at birth was twice as frequent as onset in the second year (i.e. regressive autism), whereas after 1990 the later onset rose to become five times more frequent than the onset at birth. The switch-over began at the end of the 1970s and was well under way by 1990. It closely related with the apparent increase of autism illustrated in Figure 3 and elsewhere. Figure 3 shows the data from the California DDS 2003 report (2003), with the earlier 1999 report (1999) (1998 data) re-calculated to the same basis.[Note added to book chapter version: Figure 3 also shows what mathematicians call an exponential increase curve; basically it gets increasingly steeper exactly in proportion to the higher it gets.](Please see free Chapter 3 at Experts Catastrophe - the catastrophe of official medical charlatanism for the graphs, until such time as I can sort out converting them to a form that will load to here. These four graphs are at pages 86 and 87. Also note the free tutorial about use and misuse of such graphs in free Chapter 6.)Fig. 3.1. “U.S. Cases: Autistic children who behaved normally before 18 months vs. those with no normal period.” From Rimland (2000) (replotted)Fig. 3.2. Data from Figure 1 here used to show the changing ratio of cases in respect of age-of-onset. A further datum is from Mrozek-Budzyn et al. (2009) p.109.Fig. 3.3. Autism enrolment in California.Fig. 3.4. Concurrence of California data of Figure 3.3 with total autism implied in Figure 3.2 if onset at birth is assumed to have constant incidence of one unit.In Figure 4 I have added together the two series of Figure 2 such as to give a nominal “total autism” curve based on an assumption that onset at birth has had constant prevalence during those years, and that early onset cases plus late onset cases equals total autism. Figure 4 shows that the increase curves of Figure 3 peculiarly coincided in time with the ratio-change curve of Figure 2. This enables substantial confidence that the conceptually independent Figures 2 and 3 are tracking exactly the same causal phenomenon.The late-onset, regressive autism is much more difficult to overlook than the at-birth autism, as parents are baffled by the regression of their children. Any under-awareness would not have been concentrated on those late-onset cases. And yet it is those which have increased about tenfold, not the more overlookable early-onset. So this data argues against interpretation in terms of mere changing of awareness or diagnostic thresholds. And it cannot be dismissed as due to demise of the diagnosis of “childhood schizophrenia”, because ARI’s survey questionnaire asked about age of onset rather than presumed about it, and indeed the ARI was neutrally called the “Institute for Child Behavior Research” until 1991.These curves strongly suggest that the autism increase was caused by something that started having an effect on children around the end of the 1970s and also caused a tenfold change of ratio of late-onset cases relative to early onset.An overview of autism trends in the US and UK found essent-ially the same trends of increase in both areas and in respect of both autism and “autism spectrum disorders” (Blaxill, 2004). Information about other capitalist countries has been less systematic, but generally similar trends appear to prevail. In respect of Sweden, Gillberg’s three prevalence studies in Gothenburg (Stehr-Green et al., 2003) could have been plotted into Figure 3, but they would have collided impressively with the California data. The data of Denmark is rich in potential for confusion but the careful analysis by Goldman and Yazbak (2004) shows an increase from at least about 1987 onwards. Likewise, the general observation in the other countries is that there has been an increase in recent decades. And the age-of-onset data in Figure 2 follows the same pattern too. (The notion of Bernard (2003) that autism decreased in Denmark after removal of mercury from vaccines is misfounded for various reasons partly explained by Hviid (2004).)So there is here a simple thing to be explained, seemingly beginning around the end of the 1970s.In 1993 there was published “A theory of general impairment of gene-expression manifesting as autism” (Clarke, 1993) (the antiinnatia theory). It remains unchallenged in reasoning and evidence, and unrivalled as the only comprehensive fully satisfact-ory explanation of the supposed mystery of autism. Martha Herbert has recently been arguing that autism is not a brain/behavior condition but rather “whole body”, and also not essentially genetic or developmental and fixed. But the antiinnatia theory already embodied all those notions decades ago.The theory also specified circumstances in which autism would change from a mainly genetic condition to a mainly environmental one. Autism has now indeed markedly changed to a mainly environmental causation (Hallmayer et al., 2011).The 1993 paper made no mention of mercury or an increase of autism (which was only vaguely becoming apparent at the time of writing it). But it did explicitly explain why molecules which randomly, dose-dependently bind to DNA and thereby reduce gene-expression would thereby cause autism. Mercury is now known to do exactly that binding and reducing at levels far below those producing other toxic effects (Ariza et al., 1994; Goyer, 1991; Rodgers et al., 2001; Walter and Luck, 1977).A preceding section here has shown the decisive recent evid-ence of major involvement of mercury in many autistic cases. And thimerosal in vaccines cannot have been a main source of that mercury, for reasons explained in [Chapter 6]. So the question arises of:where else is the source of the mercury that is now so strongly associated with most autism.An update review of the antiinnatia theory was written in 2004-2006, and showed confirmation of various peculiar predictions [Update: including Clarke (2015)], and explained the amalgam-autism causation more fully. But almost all medical researchers have a false presumption about theories, whereby “skepticism” (in reality a prejudice against new ideas) is supposedly a characteristic of intellectual superiority (Eysenck, 1995). And “peer review” systems block from effective publication any ideas that are more than routinely original (Eysenck and Eysenck, 1992).Because readers are deprived of that update review I will outline here just a few of its important points. (1) Many mothers keep their infants close by at all times, and many people keep their homes very unventilated, even installing draught-proofing. The new prediction that autism would be associated with lack of ventilation (of the mercury vapor breathed out by parents or carers then inhaled by infants) has already found significant accidental confirmation (Waldman et al., 2008). (2) The antiinnatia theory points to causation not so much like an overdose “hammer-blow” but rather more like a sustained suppression of genetic data, and thus the every-day inhalation of mercury would be much more impactful than occasional large injections. (3) The tenfold change to predominantly later onset is explained by gradual accumulation when infants regularly inhale the vapor. (4) Any persons who dismiss the antiinnatia theory must logically be supporting one of a handful of utterly absurd alternatives, and this author requests that such “skeptics” kindly state which ones they find so credible: (i) “anti-innatia factors don’t tend to produce biological advantageousness”; (ii) “they don’t exist anyway despite their experimental demon-stration” (genuine flat-earthers will prefer that one); (iii) “they would not tend to become excessive”; (iv) “excess would not manifest as autism”.Some studies have found positive associations between maternal dental amalgams and autism (Holmes et al., 2003; Geier et al., 2009). There have also been some seemingly conflicting findings, such as Adams et al. (2008) compared to Holmes et al. (2003). But rather than concluding from these that the whole mercury or amalgam theories are unsound, or that there has been falsification or error, we may better understand them as reflecting a fact that autism is far from being simply “a novel form of mercury poisoning”, and instead other factors impact in ways not yet known. Even the causation of autism by amalgam vapor alone would be complicated by variables of ventilation, parental habits, galvanic contacts in the mouth, genetics and epigenetics, intake of protective selenium, and other intakes and exposures. That complexity could explain why small cross-sectional studies have given inconsistent results. And meanwhile the time-series data shown in the charts here reflects varying levels of non-gamma-2 applied to whole populations, such that all those confounding variables are evened out, which explains why they show a clear association with the growing prevalence of the non-gamma-2 in adults’ mouths.Increased adult disability?In 2010 I heard on BBC Radio a claim by a government minister that “There certainly hasn’t been a threefold increase of disability”. This suggested to me that perhaps there had indeed been an increase of adult disabilities, threefold or even greater.On investigating this possibility, the most extensive data I could obtain was a chart on page 9 of pathways-presentation.pdf, (DWP, no date a) and online data timeseries (DWP, no date b) from the DWP’s website.(Please see these graphs at page 91 of free Chapter 3 at www.pseudoexpertise.com)Figure 3.5. Autism enrolments (DDS) in California compared with UK adult invalidity benefits claims granted (excluding short-term lower-rate cases and excluding claims denied for policy reasons of “caseload growth now controlled”)Figure 3.6. Autism enrolments under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)I then took the Figure 4 chart from my (long-obstructed) autism theory update review draft, and removed my data-series derived from age-of-onset ratio-change, leaving only the two data-series of autism enrolment in California. I then added in the data of granted invalidity benefits from the DWP’s chart. I used only zero-baselines, so as to not to misuse the statistics to create artificial alignments. All I did was set the righthand scale such that the first datum of the invalidity benefits data was level with the autism data at that same year, 1979.This showed a close relationship of timing between the two, as shown in Figure 5 here.At this point it will be useful to show you a second chart of the autism increase, this time a different administrative database (IDEA rather than DDS) and covering the whole US, namely Figure 6. This is a more complex graph, with each data-series representing a different age at recording of the cases.With the increasing of age, fewer children from any particular birth-year cohort remain undiagnosed. So in respect of each year on Figure 6, the highest datum is the most accurate estimate to date of the real underlying level. And the falling off at the top of the latest years is due to diagnoses not yet being made.The first important thing that this chart of IDEA data shows is that the increase has been a remarkably uniform exponential sort of curve, with just a moderate decrease of slope after 1992. The other curves, from the California DDS data, can be understood as showing what would be a similarly uniform exponential, but distorted by noticeable “noise” due to smaller samples or mislaid records.Another important thing to understand about all these curves is that we are not here counting clear distinct things like apples or oranges. The number of people granted invalidity benefits in a particular year is a precisely-known integer, but the underlying number of people who were more or less “disabled” is necessarily a debatable, fuzzy one. Likewise with the autism numbers, and this goes some way to explaining why these two autism databases (DDS and IDEA) show significant discrepancies, most obviously in the starting levels before the increase. So we must understand that none of these curves document validly exact measurements of the underlying pathologies in their vertical scales. And therefore we should not be looking for particularly close alignments in the vertical scales; and if we do find such precision it should be considered largely a fluke. Also there is a lack of numerical data on usage or total prevalence of non-gamma-2 in people’s mouths.But these charts nevertheless do give an accurate document-ation on the horizontal scale, of the timing of the increases and of the form of the increases (i.e. not one big jump over a couple of years). And the four series (DDS, IDEA, onset ratio, and invalidity claims) show closely similar timing, of an increase that was gently starting off just before 1980, and then accelerating rapidly through the 1980s and well into the 1990s.Meanwhile, there is also a weight of other facts attesting to the reality of an increase of invalidity.The symptoms of chronic mercury vapor poisoning have been known for centuries, and include most especially all manner of mental and neurological disturbances, but also a variety of other symptoms. The wide variability of the presentation is easily under-stood in terms of the effects of mercury as a general anti-anti-oxidant, and as an antagonist to zinc thereby disrupting hundreds of enzymes, and also binding to the body’s own proteins thereby causing the immune system to identify them as alien and thereby producing auto-immune reactions.Page 14 of pathways-presentation.pdf gives an analysis of diagnoses of the claimants. It shows that 83% of cases are accounted for by those categories especially readily attributable to amalgam illness:Mental disorder 35%Nervous system 10%Musculo-skeletal* 22%Others** 16%(* Which could be mostly fibromyalgia, a modern “mystery” illness commonly sharing features of typical amalgam illness and often cured by amalgam removal.)(** An all-too-likely official label for cases of the amalgam illness which officially does not exist.)[Book update: In David Brownstein’s book Overcoming thyroid disorders, he quotes Dr Derry saying: “Chronic fatigue and fibro-myalgia were non-existent before 1980. So where did these two new diseases come from?” Errm.... no idea, please tell me, folks.]Further evidence supports the reality of the increase. I web-searched for the minister’s words “been a three-fold increase in disability” and found instead that in Finland 1987-1994 there was a threefold increase of disability pensions granted in respect of affective disorders (mainly depression) (Salminen et al., 1997), which is one of the most common effects of amalgam illness.And the disability claimants are now being regularly character-ised by ministers and propagandists as “workshy”, “bogus”, or merely making a “lifestyle choice” of fraudulent leisure.In 2010, the government minister Mark Harper declared on BBC Any Questions that “There are definitely some people in this country—and everyone in every community knows who they are—who are perfectly able to work, and don’t.” and then reiterated with “Everybody knows them, able-bodied people with no barriers to work who choose not to.”Another government minister, George Osborne, asserted that there were a sizeable number for whom claiming disability was a “lifestyle choice”.Meanwhile we are also being told that immigrants are subst-antially more hardworking than the natives of the UK, who appear by contrast to be “workshy”. And indeed employers confirm such a difference.In the real world of disability, the effects of adult mercury vapor poisoning can be far from obvious to “everyone in every community”. As stated in the book Amalgam Illness by Andrew Hall Cutler, at page 78, “Extremely poisoned patients do not look as sick as they are …. they make adequate adrenaline during the stressful time and perform. Then they collapse for a long time while nobody is around.” And at page 13, “One very important note: the patient looks a lot healthier than he is…..It is important to keep in mind that the patient may look well during appointments and yet be unable to conduct day-to-day activities, as well as be experiencing great discomfort on an ongoing basis.”And note also the following 1926 account by the famous chemist Alfred Stock of his own mercury vapor poisoning. Note how easily it could be “known” to be “workshy” were it not that the author was a notable professor.“Mental weariness and exhaustion, lack of inclination and ability to perform any, particularly mental, work, and increased need for sleep. …. My memory, which had previously been excellent, left more and more to be desired and became worse and worse until, two years ago, I suffered from nearly complete memory loss….. I forgot the content of the book or theater play I had just read or seen as well as my own work, which had been published. ….. Obstacles, which formerly I would have overlooked smilingly (and am overlooking again today), seemed insurmountable. Scientific work caused great effort. I forced myself to go to the laboratory without being able to get anything useful accomplished in spite of all efforts. Thought came laboriously and pedantically. I had to deny myself working on solutions to questions beyond the nearest tasks at hand. The lecture that used to be a pleasure became a torture. The preparations for a lecture, the writing of a dissertation, or merely a simple letter caused unending effort in styling the material and wrestling with the language.” (translated by Birgit Calhoun)(Stock, 1926)You can see from all the above that the characteristics ascribed to the allegedly bogus claimants are characteristics of mercury poisoning. With this understanding we can even account for the peculiar observations that workers from Eastern Europe and from more distant countries are found to be more “hardworking” than the native British, who by contrast are accused of being “workshy”. In fact a whole peculiar myth about normal human nature has been deployed here. Any normal healthy person, yourself for instance, would positively want to go out and do things rather than just lie in bed or slump in front of the tv all day every day. The normal healthy person would experience the latter prospect as more like a form of imprisonment than as an agreeable “lifestyle choice”.[[ Update for this book: Here are the words of Frank Field MP speaking on BBC Any Questions (Field, 2012):“London’s got the second highest youth unemployment, and yet it is the mecca for immigrants to come in and work. Now why is it that our schools produce people who cannot work or don’t work, as opposed to other people who at the very same time have work as part of their dna and the best thing in the world they want to do is to actually work? (loud applause).” [He then answers in terms of lazy racist white people, presumably with inferior dna, before continuing....]“It doesn’t take much money to get the kids to school on time, washed, clothed, breakfasted, and to school on time, and it is worrying that something is happening here...” [Indeed, and my own inability to get to the grammar school on time had nothing to do with my family’s shortage of money either.]And here are words about chronic fatigue syndrome from the book Plague (Heckenlively & Mikovits, 2014):“If this had been going on in the fifties and sixties, even if we had discarded it as psychiatric, it would have been written about, and [yet] it’s not in the literature.” ..... “How could we have possibly missed this disease for all these years?”. ....“....by the mid-1980s, distressed doctors and desperate patients had turned the disease into the top category of inquiry at both the CDC and public health departments ....”“Aided by a passive lay press, government scientists have sought to dismiss the disease by labeling sufferers with all manner of deficiencies and malevolent motives. That list has included malingering and cheating welfare systems, .... or people who [had] read about the disease and “wanted to have it”.“By 2009.... patients were denied not merely medical care, payouts on disability claims, and the emotional support that might have been forthcoming from family and friends had they suffered from a “real” disease,..... If they were children, they were denied educations ....” [like don’t I know myself, and see Chapter 8 here] ]]And furthermore, in reality almost all people are desperate to avoid becoming categorised as disabled, going to near-psychotic lengths of denial in the opposite direction. Few people would be pleased to be in any social context, with no better answer to a common question than: “I’ve been chronically disabled for the past five years (mentally rather than physically of course).” Virtually no-one in any society treats mentally disabled people as even near to being social or intellectual equals of themselves (in terms of marriage or educational opportunities for instance) (notwithstanding their pretentions to otherwise).An even greater catastrophe?Notably in line with the UK data, recipients of disability benefits in the US (SSI/SSDI) also increased more than twofold between 1987 and 2007.Here are some further facts. Figure 5 indicates a levelling off at 2.5 million claimants from 1995 onwards. But this must be put in the context of the words of the DWP document those figures came from. It was an internal discussion document about the “Personal Capability Assessment”, and its page 11 was headed “Caseload growth now controlled”. Translating those words from Officialese, they mean that there has been political resistance to the growth of disability claims, and that many thousands of persons genuinely disabled by DH recklessness have been denied the disability benefits they needed for survival, and that if the graph had reflected the real increase of disability it would not have levelled off, but instead would probably have surpassed more like 4 million by 2000 (which is about 10% of the UK’s working-age population). [Update August 2015: “Statistics [reluctantly] released by the DWP on Thursday revealed that 2,380 people died between December 2011 and February 2014 within 14 days of being taken off Employment and Support Allowance because a Work Capability Assessment had con-cluded they were able to work.” (Butler, 2015).][Update November 2015: 590 additional suicides linked to WCA reassessments (Barr et al., 2015; Benefits and Work, 2015).]And yet more. Four of the most characteristic symptoms of chronic mercury vapor poisoning are fatigue, depression, sleep disturbances, and poor memory. And surveys in recent years have found that now a gigantic proportion of the NON-claimant pop-ulation have these very symptoms, as follows.Depression:A survey of 2000 women and girls in England and Wales found 63% had been affected by mental health problems, having “a devastating impact on their lives”, and “48% experiencing mental health problems had stayed in bed or not left the house for a long period as a result” (Platform 51, 2011). Meanwhile, Colin Walker of Mind said his organisation’s research showed men and women experienced mental health problems such as depression and anxiety in roughly equal numbers (Hill, 2011).Insomnia:A report from the Mental Health Foundation (2011) states: “Only 38% of survey respondents (2522 people) were classified as ‘good sleepers’, whilst 36% were classified as possibly having chronic insomnia (2414 people). …. Other estimates of insomnia have put the total figure at around 30% of adults, …. although rates depend upon the criteria used to define it. Of the people reporting insomnia in the survey, over 30% have had insomnia for 2–5 years, and over 25% for over 11 years (figure 4).”The figure 4 in question then shows a distinctly bimodal distribution, in which the larger, longer-term, mode can be reasonably attributed to the effects of the dental amalgam toxicity.Fatigue:In a survey by Pharmaton (2010) in the UK, 24% said they are mentally or physically exhausted every day, 45% say they miss socialising due to tiredness, and 60% of the young are too tired to socialise, compared to 40% in 2002. And that is in line with the widespread experience that immigrants from less-developed countr-ies are substantially more “hardworking” than those who have grown up in the UK, who are conversely “workshy” as discussed on a preceding page here.Memory:Almost everyone nowadays wishes they had “better” memory, by which they mean more remembering rather than less. And yet contrary to the common assumption, memory is not something which natural selection would always be pressuring for more of (such as health or beauty). On the contrary, some persons (e.g. Solomon Shereschevsky) have had more memory than was actually useful for them. And history attests to the powerful memorising abilities of our ancestors.(This chapter continues on the next page.)Update 1All the preceding evidence here was suggesting to me an obvious further question, namely whether the original introduction of amalgams in the 19th century had caused an earlier increase of mental disabilities to the baselines shown here. Subsequent to my writing all the preceding, I learnt of the detailed historical review by Torrey & Miller (2002) of what was then called “insanity”, and the time-series graphs therein (at pages 94, 152, 188, 271, and frontispiece). In Figure 7 here I have re-plotted their data along with dates relating to the introduction of amalgam. Their book makes no mention of amalgam, or dentistry, nor of mercury as a possible cause of that increased morbidity. And yet their graphs show that rates of mental disability steadily increased from the original introduction of amalgams till a century later, by fourteenfold in Ireland and Canada, elevenfold in the US, and fivefold in the UK. These increases occurred in the context of vociferous contemporary condemnations of the use of amalgam due to its causing of mercury toxicity disabilities. The ASDS disbanded and the ADA replaced it because too many dentists preferred making quick profits from poisoning their patients with fillings deceitfully referred to as “silver”.Two curious observations on Figure 7. Firstly, the starting level being much higher in England/Wales, which could be because England was the first industrialised country, and with the main fuel both in houses and factories being mercury-emitting coal, besides which mercury was used for other purposes (such as hat-making). And indeed there is much reference in Torrey & Miller to insanity having been considered “the English disease”.Secondly, the ending level being much higher in Ireland, which could be because Ireland gets high rainfall from the Gulf Stream and consequently people are much more indoors and hence breathing in the amalgam mercury (as per my citation of Waldman et al earlier here). These two reality-harmonious observations suggest that these statistics reflect real increases rather than what some might construe as just some speculated mysterious spontaneous increase of awareness of what was then called insanity.And the Preface of their book states: “It has now been almost thirty years since one of us—E. Fuller Torrey—submitted a paper for publication suggesting that epidemic insanity was a recent phenomenon. .... The paper was summarily rejected by all journals .... and it was never published.... “.And then even my own copy of their extraordinary book had come from being dismissed from a library in Illinois.(Please see page 99 of free Chapter 3 at Experts Catastrophe - the catastrophe of official medical charlatanism for this next graph:)Figure 3.7. Insane persons in relation to the history of amalgams[Update 2 (added to this book chapter, August 2015)[missed out here, see book chapter for full].Conclusions and PredictionsIt is important to bear in mind here the further supporting data reviewed by Mutter (2011), Hanson (2004), Geier et al (2010), Homme et al (2014), and others.There are roughly two alternative viewpoints which may be reached from the data presented here. On the one hand there is a notion which entails that:(1) The heavy involvement of mercury in modern autism has nothing to do with the largest source of mercury input but instead is due to some other mysterious source or process.(2) And these graphs and other observations are mere coincid-ences in time.(3a) And either some mysterious unknown substance caused all these disabilities just so as to resemble the mercury symptoms that Mutter, Hanson, Geier, etc., have long been predicting anyway on entirely different evidence, and just happened to coincide at the right time to neatly confuse the author.(3b) Or there has been either a huge moral degeneration into “workshy” or else millions of people have enthusiastically embraced a “lifestyle choice” of living like a prisoner combined with the social leper dis-status of being mentally disabled, and furthermore these shirkers by some fluke just happened to be getting diagnosed with mercury symptoms even though they knew nothing about mercury toxicity, and by further impressive fluke so closely coincided with the increases of autism diagnoses and non-gamma-2 prevalence. And these “workshy” millions are somehow descendants of the people who hand-built the huge medieval cathedrals in a cold wet small island and then went on to create the largest empire (of hardworking foreigners) in history.(4) And a many-fold increase of mercury burden has not had any harmful effects on the millions thus burdened.(5) And the change of autism from life-long genetic to environmental and recoverable is just another of these mysteries.(6) And those gross untruths from the NHS just happened by fluke to all relate to preventing people getting diagnosed with mercury poisoning (two evidence-defying pseudo-tests, the “birds are highly unlikely to have wings” nonsense, the “see a dentist instead” - “see a doctor instead” nonsense, the review of my non-dental problems complaint exclusively by a dental panel with no toxicological or neurological expertise, the NHS’s own pseudo-study to pretend away the autism increase, and the Chief Dental Officer’s evidence-defying insistence that no mercury vapor comes off anyway).(7) And merely by yet another fluke Torrey’s graphs confirmed my suspicion that there would have been a previous increase of mental disabilities following the original introduction of amalgam 150 years earlier.(8) And merely by yet another fluke there is that observation that most mental disorders start in the 12-25 age-range.Alternatively there is a notion that non-gamma-2 amalgam has been the main cause of a tenfoldish increase of autism and a fourfoldish increase of adult disability including so-called “workshy”. It is the view of this author that this latter interpretation of the data strains credibility very much less than the former. It is hardly a surprising discovery given what Mutter, Hanson, and others have previously predicted on entirely different evidence already.And likewise the data of an increase in the 19th century cannot be lightly dismissed as “merely” coincidence. Some such increase was to be suspected by inference from the later non-gamma-2 data; it is scientifically explainable in terms of known mercury toxicity; and indeed it was very much pre-warned of already by ASDS members 170 years ago. And the ADA then adopted the propaganda language of “silver amalgams” by way of the ongoing cover-up. And I obtained that data from a very detailed review book which did not even mention dental or amalgam, so can hardly be dismissed as some sort of cherry-picking.Editors of putatively scientific medical journals have a duty to ensure that the public is not being kept unaware of evidence of possible serious harm from standard medical practices. It is a serious breach of ethics for such evidence as contained here to be refused publication other than for rigorously justified reasons. If there really are any serious faults in the case presented here, they should be openly published in the scientific literature rather than used as mere excuses to prevent the evidence being raised in the first place.It is here predicted that these increases will tend to correlate together in comparisons between different nations, due to the common causality. It is predicted that these epidemics will only be reversed by reduction of prevalence of non-gamma-2 in victims’ mouths. And meanwhile the risk of autistic disability can be reduced by ensuring adequate ventilation (in practice with a through draught at breathing-level).Appendix: Four Freedom of Information requestsPlease see the actual free book Chapter 3 for continuation - at Experts Catastrophe - the catastrophe of official medical charlatanismAND this is NOT the end of all the evidence by any means. Dental mercury poisoning is the greatest medical catastrophe in history and is the reason why I and you have been and still are constantly LIED to about it. It is almost impossible to get anything published about the subject. Nothing has EVER been published about the catastrophic health effects of non-gamma-2 unless you count this chapter here as being published.Cheers for reading so far and I would be interested to read your thoughts about it.