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Comment by wtallis | Hacker News Reader

> The only tool an average person has to determine an idea as truth or fiction is whether it lines up with the current professed norms; so for a technical forum like HN ideas that disagree with the standard research position can only be ignored due to lack of evidence.

The manner in which someone presents their ideas is a decent secondary indicator. Common red flags include being evasive about what disease they're referring to, being unable to demonstrate where the mainstream theory fails, being unable to point to any good experimental evidence that even hints that the crackpot theory may be an equal or better explanation, not being able to anticipate and have a good answer for the most obvious questions raised by the crackpot theory.

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Thank you for the feedback regarding how I come across. Next time I will try to include more specific detail in the OP that hopefully does not upset people. I've found that a vague introduction protects me from down-votes, but perhaps there is a way to talk about some details without that happening.

The illness is chronic mercury toxicity and the treatment is chelation therapy. I know a man who reversed his dementia with chelation therapy. He's an older guy that would get lost in his own neighborhood.

Steven Fowkes, a chemist, has done a lot of work in presenting the some of the latest research regarding Alzheimer's and how it relates to mercury toxicity. A good start is his Quora answer here: https://www.quora.com/Why-havent-we-made-progress-in-a-cure-...

Some other good scientific literature is the work of Boyd Hayley with the chelator emeramide. He's in the process of getting it approved through the FDA for treatment of acute mercury toxicity. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3346673/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29444690?dopt=Abstract

You're really not helping your case by citing two people who come across as even more shifty. Piling on more low-quality evidence like this just raises more questions and doubts, and gives the impression that you either cannot identify credible evidence or that none exists.

Agreed. The first source cites his own talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBTr9iQQuq4, in which he starts out with the disclaimer:

> It [his cure for Alzheimer's] isn't a proven reality so if you're looking for double-blind clinical studies of this you're gonna be disappointed. But if you're willing to suspend your disbelief and try something as simple as giving your family member without Alzheimer's disease something like coconut oil and B-complex vitamins and see if it works, you may be very pleased.

Suspending disbelief should not be a requirement to make a persuasive argument about a scientific subject. This guy just smacks of snake oil salesman through and through.

There's a lot more to it than that. Did you watch the series of videos? The underlying mechanism of how mercury can induce β‐amyloid production and tau phosphorylation has been discovered.

Perhaps this paper would be better than the videos. I posted the videos because they are easier to understand. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1046/j.1471-4159...

No, I did not watch all the videos. It seems like they/you are proposing a hypothesis that mercury poisoning is responsible for a significant percentage of Alzheimer's cases? And reading between the lines on your other posts, you seem to believe that mercury poisoning is a factor in your own illness due to your perception of chelation therapy being effective for you?

Correct. Although, instead of saying a "significant percentage" I would just say "some", because there is no way of knowing if mercury is the sole cause at this point.

I think mercury is a major factor in many illnesses, and the root cause of mine. I did have some serious memory issues for a while, and my ability to focus was so bad that I could not watch a TV show. There are tens of thousands discussing the same kinds of symptoms and how they disappear with chelation.

I think the source of mercury exposure, duration of exposure, intensity of exposure, where the toxicity eventually settles in the body, and genetic factors all play a role in the symptoms that an individual suffers from. That is why one toxin can cause such a wide range of illnesses. The "radium girls" who were poisoned working with radium in factories is a good example of this.

I posted the videos because they are easier to understand. The underlying mechanism of how mercury can induce β‐amyloid production and tau phosphorylation has been discovered. Here's a paper that discusses the same ideas: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1046/j.1471-4159...

And I'm not sure why you describe Boyd Hayley's work as low quality. The man has published a huge amount of work, much of which was funded by the NIH.

Ultimately I think the highest quality evidence is the actual curing of sick people. I know my claims of being cured and of others being cured are hard to believe. If you saw first-hand the transformation we went through then you would know we are on the right track.

> And I'm not sure why you describe Boyd Hayley's work as low quality.

I'm not saying his work is necessarily low quality. I'm saying that attaching his name to work makes it less credible from the outset, because his reputation is so thoroughly tarnished be things like his anti-vax positions. Likewise for Fowkes and poor credentials and track record. If you want to convince someone whom you've already given reason to be quite skeptical, you need to be able to provide citations from experts whose Google search results are free from such obvious self-inflicted problems.

Great point. Thank you!

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