Root Canals? Dangerous?

I subscribe to Dr. Mercola’s email lists.  Most of the time what I get from him is of limited use, and I do get a little tired of his hyped headlines and articles which end with  some form of “but I can sell you a product that will make this all better.” And it goes without saying that Quackwatch doesn’t like him very much. (On the other hand, Quackwatch also dislikes chiropractic, herbalism, aromatherapy, and pretty much every other “alternative” type of health treatment one can think of.) (And Dr. Mercola’s response to the accusations of quackery are fairly even-handed and intelligent.)

On the other hand, hype aside, through his site I’ve become aware of a number of fairly intelligent-sounding warnings about issues with conventional medical practices I hadn’t been aware of. One of them came to my attention the other day.

Anyone else ever heard of the “Root Canal Coverup”?

The basic overview as I understand it: Root canal is the procedure where the dead nerve of a dead tooth is scraped out and then the canal filled with Solid Hard Stuff to keep the dead tissue from infecting the body. A Dr. Weston Price, almost a century ago, advanced this theory whereby there are little “tubules” in the dentin which the root canal procedure does not address, which cannot be sterilized in any lasting way, and which then can become the source of all kinds of chronic or catastrophic illness from MS to kidney disease to heart attack to lupus to who-knows-what-all-else. Price is said to have removed teeth from diseased people, implanted the tooth into rabbits, and the rabbits rapidly developed not only sickness but the same sickness that the person who had had the tooth were afflicted with, while the person who had the tooth extracted saw immediate improvement in their condition.

Quackwatch doesn’t think much of Dr. Price either.

Like most alternative medicine movements out there, surfing the web is a fast way to find a whole mess of conflicting views, some intelligent-sounding, and some poorly-written enough to make one want to just forget the whole thing. This is no exception. Below are some of the more readable articles I’ve come across with info about this whole idea:

• Root Canal Dangers (from the Weston Price Foundation)
• What you need to know about root canals
• Root Canal Cover-up Exposed
• Root Canals: Please read this before having an extraction (This one is interesting, about a dentist who claims to have found a way to sterilize the tubules as well as the central canal…)

This isn’t me trying to push or be a proponent of crazy medical ideas; I just prefer to hear different sides of things, keep my mind open to other versions of the truth than the popular mainstream ones. Just because it's mainstream don't make it right.  Look at BPA, GMO's, and climate change, for example.

So I’m just curious—have any of you run into this set of theories before? What’re your thoughts?