Cent4dent Blog

You folks smoked out Hamburg … So now Sharfstein must answer

Congratulations to a great grassroots movement. Your phoning and your
e-mails smoked out FDA Commissioner Hamburg. We now know Margaret
Hamburg’s secret about recusal from the mercury amalgam rule: She
never formally recused herself at all! No recusal date — despite
holding, and trading, stock options in the nation’s #1 seller of
mercury fillings, Henry Schein Inc.

Here is what FDA’s press office=2 0told ace reporter Jim Dickinson of
FDA Webview:

From: Jim Dickinson September 02, 2009 9:06 PM
To: ‘Charlie Brown’
Subject: RE: Hamburg’s secret – phoning by Eastern time zone is
Thursday

Press Office told me today there is no recusal date because she didn’t
file a document about it. It is not required. She simply did not
participate, which is the same thing as a recusal, I was told.
Basically, they’re saying recusals don’t have to be in writi
ng or filed
formally with anyone.
0A

Jim Dickinson, Editor
FDA Webview20& FDA Review (www.fdaweb.com)

My late mother used to say, “Oh what a tale we weave when first we try
to deceive.” Remember when we said Margaret Hamburg profited after
she took office, and she denied it? Then she admitted to cashing Henry
Schein stock options in July. Now her claim made in July of recusing
herself is unmasked in September. She has no proof she ever recused
herself, only a self-serving claim she did not participate. Her latest
defense goes something like this: I didn’t participate, or if I did I
didn’t participate substantially, or if I participated s ubstantially I
didn’t participate personally, and if I did participate I stopped, and
even though I didn’t recuse myself you should have read my mind and
figured it out!

We are apprising the Inspector General and appropriate Members of
Congress of this latest round of chicanery at FDA.

Drip by drip, the evidence mounts against Margaret Hamburg and her
maneuvering to protect her benefactor Henry Schein Inc., and turn her
back on America’s children and unborn babies.

So now the questions shift to Deputy Commissioner Sharfstein – he needs =0
D
to open up. How did child advocate Josh Sharfstein come to be in
charge of a rule that puts our children and unborn babies at such a
grave risk of permanent neurologic
al harm? And keeps American parents in the dark about the existence of
the mercury?
0A

Please call or write Deputy Commissioner Sharfstein at 301.796-5040, or
JMSharf1@fda.hhs.gov Ask this:

1) With Dr. Hamburg never formally recusing herself, how could Dr.
Sharfstein know he was in charge of the rule-making?

2) On what date did Dr. Sharfstein take charge of the amalgam
rule-making?