Richard,
There is one factor in research that is not given full consideration, and that is the skill of the operator. I have seen some very useless Vega test reports, but I know from direct experience that it is a wonderful instrument that helps my patients consistently and without fail. I draw your attention to one of Tracy’s complaints (again!) which was that she had to be given 17 vials of sedation over the three hours. That was something new to me to see a patient who needed that much, and as she mentioned, she was not even fully asleep. Phillip Weeks, the very skillful health practitioner who did the much abridged Vega test for material compatibility for Tracy phoned me to say that she is ok with that sedative but she will have to be given a lot of it. She was kept consciously sedated all along but she surely needed a lot of it as the Vega machine determined. I can tell you of many experiences that will show you why I have faith in Vega testing. My confidence in it started from zero and went up all the way. Let me tell you, it has saved my own life.
Once again, the Vega is as good or as bad as the person pressing the buttons. I personally cannot get my brain to understand how it works, but, I do not use it myself. We are very fortunate that we have a highly skilled team to serve our patients.
As to judging the body burden of mercury, testing for mercury in the breath is just one piece in the puzzle, and it looks at excretion ability. We additionally look for the Vega test reading and, most importantly, for the patient’s led rating of his or her subjective percentage improvement.
As to mercury in the brain that you say stays indefinitely, I big to differ. When you observe like we do how depression is usually but not always one of the first symptoms that go, you must wonder, if depression is to do with the brain and mercury stays in the brain, then why is it one of the first symptoms that go? That, together with the improvement in brain fog, concentration, short-term memory, which all improves, would argue against the assertion that mercury does not leave the brain.
Yes, I am familiar with Andy Cutler and his book. With the greatest of respect, he did not remove amalgam for anyone and he has not had the direct one to one experience that we had. Much of the information contained in his book is yesterday’s knowledge to us. I believe that we have moved along some distance ahead in the care of our patients.
As to compatibility test, we do not use blood tests for that as they are not sensitive enough, we use Vega testing and it serves us very well indeed.
As to what you say that “the challenge test is detrimental to the patient, I think you must have meant by that the administering by the patient of DMSA and the testing of mercury in the urine, and that is not what I meant by the challenge test as we apply it.
What I meant by “the challenge test” is what we use to find out if there was any mercury left under the permanent white fillings of the patient who had his amalgam removed but experienced no improvement.
In our challenge test we get the patient to rinse for three minutes with our wonderful herbal detox, and that brings the mercury reading in the mouth from say 30 to zero. We wait another ten minutes and we test again, and when we find that the reading has shot upwards we know that the detox has dragged mercury from under the white fillings. We never do anything that can be remotely detrimental to our patients.
I do agree with you however that administering DMSA is detrimental to the patient’s health, and not for the reasons that you mentioned along with other people. The real reason as we discovered from our own research is that DMSA itself contains a huge amount of mercury, the mercury that shows in the urine is not one that was mobilized out of the tissues but an expression of the huge mercury load placed on the patient by taking that DMSA. I strongly advise against taking DMSA, contrary to Andy Cutler of course.
As to my claim that our herbal detox is the best in the world, I would like you to repeat the experiment that I did to find that out and it is easy to do. When you remove amalgam, read the cavity, and then apply any of the known detox formulas that you know of, and you will easily come to the same conclusion as our selves. Try it and see for yourself, the results are quite reproducible.
Best wishes.
Hesham El-Essawy
www.el-essawy.comHesham@el-essawy.com 
