Amazon.com: Diagnosis: Mercury: Money, Politics, and Poison: Jane M. Hightower M.D.: Books

Review
"Dr Hightower's intriguing tale takes us from her physician's office to sites of mercury poisoning and through the halls of Congress where public policy will determine our future exposure to this heavy metal. Throughout, she shows how important it is to understand mercury's wide-ranging health effects and the urgent need to set stricter limits on the amount of this known neurotoxin emitted from coal-fired power plants, which contaminates the fish we eat." (Paul R. Epstein, M.D., M.P.H. Center for Health and the Global Environment, Harvard Medical School )

"Not content with discovering mercury-contaminated food as the reason for her patients'' strange symptoms, Jane Hightower follows the threads even further. Driven by curiosity, courage, and pure persistence, she enters a messy world of science and public environmental health contaminated with money and special interests. This tale is for every citizen of the world." (Ted Schettler science director, Science and Environmental Health Network )

"...A voyage of discovery that led this idealistic physician into the murky waters of corporate cover-ups and conflicting science, bemused colleagues and corrupt officials, mass poisonings and what may be a widespread but obstinately unrecognised problem for ordinary consumers. She relates that voyage, and the surprising history of mercury, crisply and, for the most part, clearly in Diagnosis: Mercury.... I defy anyone not to be angry by the end of this book." (New Scientist )

Hightower''s impressive book is an extension of her own path of discovery and research about mercury in our fish supply. (Seattle Post-Intelligencer )

"Dr. Hightower passionately argues that we still need numbers and hard facts; without them consumers cannot make appropriate informed choices. Hightower has worked long and hard on this fight to make the dangers of mercury public and this important new book highlights the long and lonely quest she has fought to help get us where we are today." (Senator Patrick Leahy )

Product Description

One morning in 2000, Dr. Jane Hightower walked into her exam room to find a patient with disturbing symptoms she couldn’t explain. The woman was nauseated, tired, and had difficulty concentrating, but a litany of tests revealed no apparent cause. She was not alone. Dr. Hightower saw numerous patients with similar, inexplicable ailments, and eventually learned that there were many more around the nation and the world. They had little in common—except a healthy appetite for certain fish.

Dr. Hightower’s quest for answers led her to mercury, a poison that has been plaguing victims for centuries and is now showing up in seafood. But this “explanation” opened a Pandora’s Box of thornier questions. Why did some fish from supermarkets and restaurants contain such high levels of a powerful poison? Why did the FDA base its recommendations for “safe” mercury consumption on data supplied by Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athist extremists? And why wasn’t the government warning its citizens?

In Diagnosis: Mercury, Dr. Hightower retraces her investigation into the modern prevalence of mercury poisoning, revealing how political calculations, dubious studies, and industry lobbyists endanger our health. While mercury is a naturally occurring element, she learns there’s much that is unnatural about this poison’s prevalence in our seafood. Mercury is pumped into the air by coal-fired power plants and settles in our rivers and oceans, and has been dumped into our waterways by industry. It accumulates in the fish we eat, and ultimately in our own bodies. Yet government agencies and lawmakers have been slow to regulate pollution or even alert consumers.

Why? The trail of evidence leads to Canada, Japan, Iraq, and various U.S. institutions, and as Dr. Hightower puts the pieces together, she discovers questionable connections between ostensibly objective researchers and industries that fear regulation and bad press. Her tenacious inquiry sheds light on a system in which, too often, money trumps good science and responsible government. Exposing a threat that few recognize but that touches many, Diagnosis: Mercury should be required reading for everyone who cares about their health.

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Product Details

Hardcover: 326 pages
Publisher: Island Press; 1 edition (October 1, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1597263958
ISBN-13: 978-1597263955
Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #28,287 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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#6 in	Books > Professional & Technical > Medical > Pharmacology > Toxicology
#8 in	Books > Professional & Technical > Engineering > Civil > Environmental > Pollution > Air
#8 in	Books > Science > Medicine > Pharmacology > Toxicology

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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Surprise Me!

Inside This Book (learn more)

Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
seed grain poisoning, maximum allowable dose level, mercury scare, swordfish industry, much methylmercury, elevated mercury levels, blood mercury level, mercury patients, hair mercury level, noncommercial fish, mercury issue, higher mercury levels, methylmercury levels, tuna industry, methylmercury poisoning, mercury consumption, methylmercury exposure, mercury effects, mercury tests, mercury emissions, mercury toxicity, much mercury, high mercury levels, mercury pollution, mercury problem

Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
United States, Thomas Clarkson, University of Rochester, The Canadian Mercury Scare, Mercury Study Report, Spoonful of Mercury, American Samoa, Fishy Loaves, Tuna Foundation, Mercury Politics, Feeling the Heat, Clean Air Act, Seychelles Child Development Study, San Francisco, Making Money, The Discovery, Diagnosis Mercury, Finding My Way, The Canning of Proposition, Spreading the News, The Summit, The Political Realm of Seychelles, Public Health Service, Judge Dondero, Anderson Seafoods

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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Surprise Me!

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12 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hightower's bombshell, October 14, 2008

By	ATG (East Coast) - See all my reviews

How would most people feel knowing that (spoiler alert):

-the most influential studies of two of the most horrendous mass mercury poisonings in history-- the Minimata fish poisoning and the Iraqi grain poisoning-- were funded by the fishing industry and EPRI, the Electric Power Research Institute. And that EPRI is the world's largest lobbying organization for coal-fired power, itself the greatest source of mercury pollution?

-Canada had its own "Minimata" mercury poisoning epidemic that killed and maimed countless Ojibway Indians in the 1970's and that the Dow chemical corporation and the fishing industry controlled the outcome of human studies and censored independent researcher's access to effected individuals?

-Saddam Hussein may have, in a direct way, controlled the data which formed the basis of the FDA's "NOEL" (No Observable Effect Level) standards for "safe" blood levels of mercury in humans in the wake of the Iraqi grain incident? All this while Hussein may have deliberately arranged for the bulk of tainted grain to be sent to areas of the country populated by perceived opponents of the Ba'athist regime.

-most of the industry-hired researchers from the above tragedies were also the authors of the Seychelle Child Development study which initially reported no evidence of harm from extremely high blood levels of mercury in children and which has influenced FDA standards for allowable levels of mercury for human exposure? And that the Seychelle Island study was industry's answer to the previous Faroe Island study which, conversely, found considerable evidence of mercury's harm to infants and children from high fish consumption?

-most of the aforementioned industry-hired researchers hailed from the University of Rochester, which took its funding from EPRI, the fishing industry and other financially concerned entities and which itself produced two of the studies upon which the pharmaceutical companies, CDC, FDA and Congress forged a judicially influential "majority science" conception of the effects in mercury exposure in infants via vaccines?

Most Americans should read this book. Except those who like tremors, premature cardiac death, seizures and brain damage.

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6 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing, October 9, 2008

By	Ian - See all my reviews

I've heard all about mercury on the news -- mercury in dental fillings, mercury in fish, mercury in light bulbs, mercury in high school chemistry labs. So I bought this book thinking it would be an intriguing read that might help me put it all into context. But what I got was a self-absorbed fairy tale of one person's gripes against Big Industry. Frankly, that isn't exactly a new genre.

There's not much intrigue in this book. (The author writes as much about herself as anything else.) Most of what you'll find is paranoia about what we eat and a lot of complicated science. Entire sections were unreadable. I was hoping, at least, to hear about the FDA conspiring with Saddam Hussein to promote some faulty data about mercury in fish, mercury in lightbulbs, or mercury in lightbulbs shaped like fish. But frankly that seemed more like something tacked on to help sell the book.

Overall, it felt about twice as long as it actually is and by the end I was just hoping to get it over with and move on to something better.

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