Dentist Took Out the Garbage and saw the People Heal
This is a summary of Robert Gammal’s book The Garbage Collector: Root Canals, Disease and what the dental profession refuses to acknowledge.
Gammal calls a root canal what it is: a dead, gangrenous, infected tooth sealed in the jaw, a few centimeters from the brain, leaking poison for the rest of the patient’s life.
• He documents diseases that resolved after he pulled the dead tooth: multiple sclerosis, cancers, brain tumors, arthritis, asthma, diabetes, eczema, trigeminal neuralgia, heart disease, and more.
• The science is a century old. Weston Price proved it in the 1920s. Rosenow at the Mayo Clinic confirmed it. The German oncologist Josef Issels built an 80 percent cancer cure rate on it.
• The dental boards bury it. A dentist who says a root canal harmed a patient can lose his license. Gammal said it anyway, in print, under his name.
• Robert Gammal and his book saved my wife. Judy had AL amyloidosis, a disease the mainstream calls fatal, and a mouth full of abscessed teeth. We pulled them. She was asymptomatic in 48 hours and has tested negative for seven years.
• Buy his book. It is more convincing than this article, and you need to be convinced if you have anything left in your mouth from a damn dentist. Write him a review on Amazon HERE. You don’t have to completely read it first. He earned the attention and never got it.
The man who placed dental appliances and then pulled them back out
Robert Gammal graduated from Sydney University in 1974 and worked as a dentist for 40 years. For the first 13 years, he did everything the schools and boards trained him to do. He drilled thousands of root canals. He advised pregnant women to take fluoride tablets. He poured mercury amalgam into as many people as he could, in good conscience, believing he was helping.
His words about that period are not those of a man protecting his reputation. He calls himself a “sick-making machine” and writes that he has no idea how many people he poisoned and killed. He poisoned his friends. He poisoned his family. He poisoned himself with mercury and a couple of root canals.
Then he met teachers who showed him what his hands had been doing. A German physician in Adelaide, Horst Poehlman, taught him to think about the body in ways no one in Australia had. He flew to Colorado to study with Hal Huggins, the research dentist who would later lose his license for the same truths Gammal now tells. He met the giants of the field: Fritz Lorscheider, Boyd Haley, Murray Vimy, Jerry Bouquot.
For the next 27 years, he removed amalgam, pulled dead teeth, banned fluoride from his practice, and watched the most dramatic healings of his career. He stopped calling himself a healer. He started calling himself the garbage collector. “I take the rubbish out, and you heal yourself” was the deal he made with every patient.
This is the heart of why the book matters. An outsider throwing rocks at dentistry is easy to dismiss. A man describing what he did for 13 years, naming the harm, and then spending the rest of his life undoing it is not easy to dismiss. None of his colleagues wrote anything like it. Not this truthful, not this comprehensive, not this important. Gammal is a courageous man, and that word is not decoration. He knew what the dental boards do to dentists who talk, and he talked.
Why a root canal can never be made safe
A root canal is a procedure performed on a dead tooth left in the jaw. The dentist removes the nerve and blood supply, fills the chamber, and caps it with a crown. The tooth looks fine on the X-ray. Underneath, the problem cannot be fixed because each premise of the procedure is impossible to achieve.
A human tooth contains about three miles of microscopic tubules running through the dentin. No instrument, chemical, or laser reaches them all. Bacteria colonize those tubules, and once the blood supply is gone, the immune system cannot follow them in. The bugs live there, sealed off from the body’s defenses, and continue producing toxins. A 2014 study Gammal cites found that the root canal procedure reduced endotoxin levels in every tooth tested but eliminated them in none. There is a world of difference between lowering a poison and removing it. The dentist lowers it and declares victory.
Every surgeon knows the rule. Dead tissue in a wound inevitably becomes infected and seeds bacteria elsewhere, so you cut it out. The surgeon calls this debridement. The root canal is the one place in all of medicine where dead tissue is intentionally sealed in. The hole at the tip of the root is never sealed precisely, so it drains into the jaw for the rest of the patient’s life. Dentistry calls this a cure. A surgeon would call it malpractice.
Then there are the materials. Gammal devotes an appendix to the safety data sheets for what dentists pack into these teeth. Formocresol is formalin and cresol, both poisons. The root sealers are cytotoxic, and some are carcinogenic. Gutta percha, the rubber that fills the canal, is not inert. He had a patient with a known latex allergy whose dentist filled her tooth with gutta percha anyway, even though it is in the same family as latex, after she told him about the allergy. She got sicker for two and a half years. She removed only the gutta percha as an experiment, recovered within a month, and then had the tooth removed. All her sensitivities vanished.
At least 17 percent of root canals are overfilled, with sealer cement forced through the root tip and accessory canals into the surrounding bone and sinus. Extrapolated across the millions of root canals performed, that is hundreds of thousands of teeth with liquefaction of the bone. These materials kill the bone, inflame the nerves, and inflame the sinus when they end up there. Inflammation of the nerve translates into trigeminal neuralgia, the worst facial pain medicine knows.
How a dead tooth makes you sick
Gammal explains the mechanisms in plain language. The first is direct toxic insertion. The materials and bacterial poisons leave the tooth and travel through the body.
The most dangerous of these poisons are the endotoxins, produced by anaerobic bacteria living in the dead tooth. The worst endotoxins are the thioethers, chemicals structurally and functionally related to the mustard gas used in the First World War. They are among the most potent carcinogens known. They paralyze cellular respiration. They target the mitochondria, the energy factories of the cell, which means the organs with the most mitochondria take the hardest hit: the liver, the nervous system, the endocrine glands, the heart. The German oncologist Josef Issels called the dead tooth’s output the most lethal of all foci.
Endotoxins escape from teeth more easily than the bacteria that produce them. They interfere with blood clotting, which is why Gammal kept meeting patients labeled “bleeders” who stopped bleeding once the dead tooth came out. They damage nerve tissue in the developing and adult brain. They kill nerve cells outright. They are linked to coronary heart disease, stroke, and hardening of the arteries.
They cause allergic sensitivities, asthma, and the depression and personality changes that send people to psychiatrists. They cause cancer. The list Price compiled in the 1920s matches modern research almost exactly: diabetes, hay fever, asthma, skin conditions, arthritis, nervous breakdown, stroke, kidney disease, heart disease, and cancer.
The second mechanism is allergy. The body recognizes the dead tooth’s proteins as foreign and mounts a reaction. The third is focal infection, the old idea that a hidden infection in one part of the body seeds disease in another. Price proved it. Rosenow at the Mayo Clinic proved it again. Modern dentistry buried it.
Gammal adds a fourth mechanism that medicine refuses to consider: neural interference and electrical current. Multiple metals in the mouth generate currents a thousand times stronger than those in the nervous system. A dead tooth or a piece of buried amalgam acts as a constant irritant along the acupuncture meridian it lies on, broadcasting interference to the organ at the far end of that meridian. He saw this resolve repeatedly in front of him, when a drop of local anesthetic in the right spot switched the distant pain off like a light.
The diseases that resolved
This is the part of the book that reads like fiction but is not. Gammal makes no apology for what he was lucky enough to witness. Here is what improved, and in many cases vanished, after he took the rubbish out.
Multiple sclerosis. Jane was 43, a sporty mother of three, and was sent home to die after an MRI showed two large lesions in her brain. She educated herself, found Gammal’s writing, and drove from Victoria to New South Wales. He removed one dead, root-canaled premolar and a small metal bridge. Three months later, she returned with a fresh MRI taken the week before. The lesions were gone. Every symptom of MS had vanished. Her neurologist had no interest in what she had done. Gammal is careful with his language: he did not cure the MS; he removed the cause, and her body cured itself. He includes a second MS case, a woman in her mid-fifties with two root-canaled teeth and bone so hardened by condensing osteitis that it felt like drilling rock. Almost all her symptoms cleared within six months, and a year later her doctor declared her free of MS.
Cancer and tumors. Jeff was 39, with a pituitary tumor and surgery scheduled. He had a root canal, a mouth full of amalgam, and a metal crown. His symptoms began within a year of the root canal. Gammal removed the tooth and as much of the hardened bone as he could. Within two months, most symptoms abated, and a follow-up MRI six months later showed the tumor had disappeared. The brain surgery was canceled. Jack was a 59-year-old naturopath with kidney cancer, considering chemotherapy, who came in instead. His lower left first molar had a root canal, a metal crown, and a massive infection. The tooth split as it came out, with both roots and an attached abscess, packed with corroded silver points. The kidney tumor resolved within two months. A 62-year-old woman who had beaten breast cancer and had no energy left had a couple of teeth and their abscesses removed and said she felt like a different person within weeks.
Brain tumor and the eye. A 40-year-old man came in frail and pale, thinking his amalgam was the problem. The X-ray showed a chunk of amalgam buried in the socket where a tooth had been pulled 20 years earlier, with the surrounding bone blackened. After the surgery, his energy rose by 50 percent. What he had not mentioned was that he had been blind in his right eye for 18 years, and a surgeon had once recommended removing the eye and fitting a glass one. Two months after the amalgam came out, he could see the wrinkles around Gammal’s eyes. Three months later, he was reading the newspaper with that eye. Ten years later, his vision held. Gammal had experienced the same effect himself, with his sight improving on the walk back to his car after a molar extraction.
Arthritis. A 67-year-old woman whose rheumatologist had just prescribed pills had a large abscess on a 10-year-old root canal. Two weeks after she pulled the tooth, she returned to the rheumatologist, moving her fingers and shoulder freely. The doctor said, “See, I told you the medicine would work.” The patient handed back the unopened bottle and told her that the only treatment had been removing one dead tooth. Within three months, she was swimming again. A 90-year-old woman with crippling arthritis in her hands, feet, and spine, who needed both hands to lift a teacup, called Gammal two weeks after one root canal came out to say the pain in her hands was gone.
The heart. A doctor in her mid-forties with a terror of dentists nursed a swollen gum for five years and ended up in the hospital with a heart attack. She had no other cardiac risk. The X-ray showed a massive abscess spanning three teeth. After the tooth came out and the abscess was cleaned, every cardiac symptom and every abnormal ECG returned to normal and never came back. A second patient, hospitalized with a heart attack the night after a root-canalled tooth was pulled, was told by a cardiologist friend that there was nothing wrong with his heart and plenty wrong with his teeth. As Gammal removed the metal one filling at a time, the man’s ECG improved with each appointment. When the last root-canalled tooth came out, his ECG went perfect and stayed that way.
Asthma and diabetes. A 23-year-old woman carried puffers in every pocket and slept with a nebulizer. After one root-canalled molar came out, her breathing eased, and within months she forgot her puffers and never had another attack. She now competes in triathlons. A 21-year-old fitness buff developed severe diabetes within six months of a root canal whose root sat inside his sinus. One month after the extraction, he stopped insulin, and his doctor declared him free of diabetes.
Eczema and the itch from hell. Ann was the first patient Gammal ever convinced to remove the sound, root-canalled teeth. She was 55 and had spent 15 years waking every night, walking around naked and scratching herself raw, never sleeping through the night. Four root canals had produced 15 years of living hell. Two days after the last tooth came out, the itching stopped. Three months later, she was sleeping and dreaming, and her scars had healed. Sixteen years later, nothing returned. A Canadian woman who found his website sent photos of an eczema nightmare that erupted on her chest a month after a root canal. The advice was simple: pull the tooth, clean the socket, and you will know. The eczema cleared in under two weeks.
Trigeminal neuralgia. After treating ten patients with this brutal facial pain, Gammal reports that all ten became pain-free after he removed the dead teeth or, in two cases, cleaned out the cavitations. He contrasts this with the pain clinic in Sydney, where expert dentists prescribe antidepressants, then a psychiatrist, then brain surgery that numbs half the face and often fails to stop the pain. He has never met anyone besides a dentist who would choose brain surgery over pulling a dead tooth.
The mind. A teenage girl who damaged two front teeth on her bicycle handlebars had them “saved” with root canals and slid into a depression her mother knew was more than teenage moodiness. They pulled the dead teeth. That night, she went home and tore up the suicide note she had hidden in her room two months earlier. A 16-year-old boy headed for ADHD medication had a dead front tooth full of pus and a hidden abscess. A week after it came out, his mother said she drove home with a different boy. Three years later, he is off all medication and was picked for a school cricket team. Gammal has seen at least five other patients decide not to take their lives after dead teeth were removed. He reminds the reader, more than once, that suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem and that the chemicals pouring from a dead tooth can manufacture that despair.
Everything else. The list is long, and the variety is the point. A restaurant owner’s chronic fungal nail infections cleared within a month. A 53-year-old man’s chronic headaches and sinus issues cleared so quickly that he was breathing through a long-blocked nostril by the next day.
A man’s painful knee resolved the instant a diagnostic anesthetic hit the old socket, the front teeth sitting on the bladder meridian that governs the knees. A young woman’s acute mastitis, breast lumps, cystitis, and crippling period pain all resolved after one tooth on the stomach meridian came out. A neck that spasmed so hard the head cracked audibly went quiet within days. A “bleeder” who nearly needed a transfusion mid-extraction stopped bleeding once the toxins were cleaned out and was back renovating her house with hammers and saws.
Bell’s palsy improved by 95 percent after a hidden cavitation was cleaned. A pituitary tumor, a blind eye, anal itch, a big toe, lower back pain, endometriosis, a “thick-headed” executive whose candida and food intolerance disappeared, a sole father wasting away who regained his weight and his life, and a triathlete reduced to chronic fatigue who returned to training in a month. A galvanic current from two metal pins in a woman’s molars was so strong it blocked the local anesthetic; the instant the second pin came out, the anesthetic worked and her years of madness, head noise, and arm weakness lifted.
Cancer, the unmentionable taboo
Gammal saves the hardest chapter for cancer because cancer is the one connection dentistry is not allowed to make. Root-canalled teeth are not permitted to cause cancer. They are not even permitted to be dead.
He builds the case around the German oncologist Josef Issels, whose clinic was among the most respected in Germany and who cured many patients other doctors had given up on. Before Issels began any treatment, he cleared the mouth: every amalgam, every dead or root-canaled tooth, every cavitation. He knew that leaving them in would sabotage everything that followed.
He found that the head foci do more than seed secondary disease; they directly stimulate tumor growth, and many tumors respond to treatment only after the foci are removed. Issels devoted an entire chapter of his book to dental foci. He called the dead tooth a toxin-producing factory and the dental foci the most lethal of all.
The numbers Gammal cites are not small. Professor Daunderer found that MS patients who removed only their amalgam had a 16 percent cure rate, whereas those who also had their root canals extracted and their infected bone cleaned reached 86 percent. Issels and others rated their cancer treatments as average until the dental work was done first, after which success climbed toward 80 percent.
Set that against the now-notorious 2004 analysis by Morgan, Ward, and Barton, which estimated that chemotherapy contributes about 2.3 percent to five-year survival in Australia and 2.1 percent in the United States. A 2 percent improvement is too small to measure and ought to be treated as a bad joke.
Then Gammal explains the X-ray trick that hides it all. When the body is strong, it walls off a dead tooth’s poison into a fibrous capsule, the abscess you see on the film. As the immune system weakens, the capsule breaks down, the toxins spread, and the abscess on the X-ray becomes less defined. When the immune system is wrecked, the abscess vanishes from the film entirely, and the toxins flood the body.
Price found in 1920, and Rosenow confirmed in 1940, that cancer patients with root canals were mostly X-ray negative. Modern dentistry teaches the exact opposite. The endodontist looks at a clear film and announces the infection is gone. He looks at the dense white bone of condensing osteitis a year later and calls it success. He is congratulating himself while the patient heads toward cancer. The disappearance of the abscess, the profession’s chief marker of a job well done, is the sign that the immune system has failed.
In one small dental practice, Gammal saw tumors disappear after he pulled root-canalled teeth, most within three or four months. Not once did an oncologist show the slightest interest when the patient tried to tell them.
Not one said, “That’s great, I need to look into that.” Medicine has a word for a disease that vanishes for no known reason: spontaneous remission. Accepting a reason, the dead tooth, would mean accepting that the same tooth caused the cancer. That falls into the no-man’s-land where no one condemns the trade organizations, which work to maintain disease because health is not profitable. He notes the law’s strange cruelty: in Australia, Canada, America, Britain, and New Zealand, only an oncologist may legally claim to cure cancer, and oncologists can have a child removed from a family that refuses chemotherapy.
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