Mercury in Fish

 International Medical Veritas Association

Mercury in all of its forms is toxic to the fetus and children and
efforts should be made to reduce exposure to the extent possible to
 pregnant women and children as well as the general population[i].

                                                                        American Academy of Pediatrics           

     In recent years, several agencies of the United States government have been working toward reducing mercury exposure. Guidelines have been established by the EPA at 0.1 micrograms of mercury per kilogram per day; by the FDA at 0.4 mcg/kg and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) at 0.3 mcg/kg/day in an effort to minimize preventable exposures to mercury from food and other environmental sources. For a fifty kilogram person this translates into a 5 to 20 microgram a day range of mercury. Translated another way that’s 15,000 to 60,000 trillion atoms of mercury a day of this neurological poison. The primary purpose of the guidelines is to prevent exposure of women of childbearing age to amounts of mercury that might be toxic to the rapidly developing brain of the fetus, which is much more susceptible to toxicity than is the adult brain. Adults can sustain much higher levels of mercury exposure without undo harm, children less with in utero exposure being the most critical. Older people also need to be concerned for in the elderly the body’s glutathione levels (natural elimination mechanisms) are in decline.

     We are led to believe that these agencies are trying their best to be sensitive to the effects of chronic low level toxicities especially on pregnant women and the newborn that are most vulnerable. There is much conflict in the medical and scientific world about what constitutes a low level of toxicity and what effects might be expected. The few major studies being used are in conflict and thus officially no one really knows the exact danger. Thus it is not clear how much fish is safe to eat or how many dental amalgams in an expectant mother will lead to enough toxicity to damage the developing fetus.

   What is clear is that mercury concentration levels are rising, clearly it has been demonstrated that through eating fish, leakage of dental amalgam, and injection of mercury bearing vaccines during pregnancy or at birth, mothers and children are being exposed to higher levels of mercury than ever before. Unfortunately government guidelines do not allow for individual differences or hypersensitivity to the effects of this or any poison. They also do not differentiate for different modes of entry into the body, i.e., through injection, digestion or absorption through the lungs. There are many molecular forms of mercury each with its own toxicity level, some vastly more toxic than others. When it comes to mercury the molecular form is crucial as is the mode of ingestion as is a person’s individual nutritional profile which determines their ability to excrete the mercury or cancel out its poisonous effects. Selenium levels, for instance, are crucial, as are glutathione levels. Both are potent antidotes for mercury and their scarcity in the body only increases mercury’s toxicity. 

Complicating mercury toxicity are other chemicals
 like lead and aluminum that increase mercury toxicity
and other chemicals like selenium that reduce it.

     Though scientists do not know the actual toxicity of mercury in fish, federal and state agencies have decided, quite appropriately, to be cautious especially in regards to pregnant women, even though the Seychelles study[ii] shows that blood levels of 100 to 200 micrograms of mercury per liter in pregnant women were not associated with detectable abnormalities in the children exposed in utero. A good reason for caution is other extensive studies of mercury impacts on fetal development have shown mercury to have deleterious effects. The Faroe Island study[iii] measured mercury in umbilical cord blood whereas the Seychelles study used hair samples.[iv] It is not widely known that hair analysis is not an accurate measure of mercury toxicity because people’s abilities to excrete mercury vary widely. In fact it has been strongly suggested that autistic children have little ability to eliminate mercury from their bodies because of low glutathione levels and thus hair samples would be much less accurate than cord blood measurements.

    Hence it may be that had the Seychelles study measured mercury in cord blood, they would have been able to find effects at lower levels. Also many people suspect The University of Rochester, who sponsored the Seychelles researchers, of major conflicts of interest because they are supported by industries including the Electric Power Research Institute (a consortium of power companies that is lobbying to stop regulation of mercury emissions from coal-burning power plants) which has a major interest in declaring mercury to cause no harm at lower exposure levels.[v] Thus it is really not clear how much fish is safe to eat but it is clear that elevated mercury levels are in evidence in the body after both fish consumption and the placement of dental amalgam in the mouth.

    The FDA advises vulnerable groups to eat “only” two fish meals (up to 12 ounces) per week of fish with “lower levels” of mercury so as to avoid the accumulative effect of the toxic substance. That recommendation has mothers eating about 40 mcg per week of methyl mercury which would be roughly the equivalent of two thimerosal bearing flu vaccines per week. There are no shortages of doctors who would say that such a vaccine schedule, especially for a young pregnant woman would be suicide so it seems that the mercury from fish is considerably less toxic than from vaccines.

    The big question mark and variable is perhaps not just the toxicity, molecular form or mode of ingestion but the sheer quantity of mercury the body has to handle. That is why doctors in the future have to become mercury experts. They need to count how many fillings are in a patients mouth as well how much fish is being eaten and to factor in other variables like increasing air and water mercury pollution and other variables like lead concentrations (makes the mercury much more toxic) and even arsenic poisoning. Arsenic is a key not only for its own toxicity but because it sequesters selenium supplies from the body. 

Selenium is the primary antidote to
mercury poisoning, our first line of defense.

     Commercial interests like the US Tuna Foundation would have us err on the side of risking pregnant women and the next generation of children saying, “In reality, no government study has ever found unsafe levels of mercury in women or children who eat canned tuna.”[vi] They are half correct in that what the government is showing is mercury in the blood and in placentas. Mercury levels normally measured are from many sources and no one has been able to separate out what amount is specifically contributed by tuna. A study of a Peruvian fish-eating population, also released by the University of Rochester researchers in 1995, showing no adverse effects in infants, was funded by the National Fisheries Institute and the Tuna Research Foundation.[vii] What is very clear is that the University of Rochester wants us to eat fish. They are comfortable assuming that taking samples of hair, “which lock in a record of mercury exposure of the child during gestation,” is valid.[viii]

    More recent research by Dr. Boyd Haley the University of Kentucky throws down this assumption. Data on the level of mercury in the birth hair of autistic versus normal children shows that a subset of the population, the autistics, is not effective at excreting mercury.[ix] In normal children the level of mercury in birth hair goes up with increasing amalgams in the birth mother. In contrast, in autistic children there is very little excretion of mercury in their birth hair no matter how many amalgams the birth mother has.[x]  “If you take into account the higher exposures of the autistic children, you quickly see that these reduced hair levels suggest that less mercury was being excreted by these babies,” said Mark Blaxill, a director of Safe Minds.

    What society and pregnant women need to be worried about is not just mercury in fish but total body burden of mercury that includes dental amalgam and mercury vaccines. It is difficult to believe that the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) believes that “mercury in all of its forms is toxic to the fetus and children and efforts should be made to reduce exposure to the extent possible to pregnant women and children as well as the general population.” They lose a huge amount of credibility when they allow thimerosal back into the childhood immunization schedule and when they make foolish statements like, “Newer enclosed methods for preparing mercury amalgams have decreased the likelihood of mercury spillage and exposure during dental amalgam preparation.

    Although Sweden has banned amalgam for use as a dental restorative and other northern European countries are considering doing so, to date, the conclusion in the United States is that the risks are very low and that the available substitutes are not superior.”[xi] With the Tuna Foundation endorsing high levels of fish consumption, the AAP endorsing dental amalgam and a reintroduction of thimerosal in flu vaccines for infants, we have a serious problem that continually puts the current generation of children at risk.  

     The situation is truly difficult. ‘Almost’ everyone agrees that mercury is a potent neurotoxin but each major organization or government has justified rationalizations for making exceptions and special exemptions for mercury’s entrance into the human system through one form or another. Actual mercury toxicity is the total of converging inflows of different forms of mercury coming into the human body in different ways. Is anyone looking at how these different forms reinforce each other to create neurological destruction in the young?

    Unfortunately no and this is leading scientists and health officials to erroneous and incomplete conclusions. Mercury is flowing in through peoples’ lungs. It’s increasing in the air we breathe and all people with dental amalgam are breathing it in 24 hours a day in large doses. It’s in the saliva and is swallowed. It’s being eaten in the form of fish and other food sources. And it’s being injected. It is even increasing in the water we drink. Though the forms of mercury are different each form and source is adding to total body burden and total accumulated toxicity.

    It is important to know that mercury appears in a variety of forms and that a whole range of toxicity exists depending on the molecular identity of each form. Pharmacist Richard Harkness recently published an essay titled: Flu vaccine mercury poses little health risk.[xii] He says “One way to gain perspective is to compare the amount of mercury in the flu shot with the amount found naturally in tuna fish.” He lets us know that there are, on average, 0.12 micrograms (mcg) of mercury per gram in tuna[xiii] so a typical 6-ounce (170 grams) can of light tuna would thus contain approximately 20.4 mcg of mercury. That's very close to the 25 mcg of mercury contained in the adult dose of the flu shot.

    Harkness then goes on to say that “the form of mercury in flu vaccine (ethyl mercury) is deemed less likely to cause harm than that present in seafood (methyl mercury),” and thus concludes that, “The bottom line: For most people, the risks and miseries of getting the flu far outweigh any risks that might be associated with mercury in the flu vaccine.”[xiv] Certainly in saying this he has not heard Dr. Mark Geier and David Geier, who are on the cutting edge of research in the role of mercury in vaccines.  They found that children who received the DPT course of vaccines that contained mercury had a 2700% higher incidence of rate of autism than children who did not get mercury. In reality the distinction between ethyl and methyl mercury, for those knowledgeable about mercury toxicity, comes down to the difference between one deadly snake venom and another. A serious problem with the above comparison is the assumption it makes that the mercury in fish is in fact methyl mercury.

     Dr. Boyd Haley, speaking to the State Assembly in Kentucky said, “Thimerosal is a compound that breaks down in the body to release ethyl-mercury, a very neurotoxic compound quite similar to methyl-mercury found in fish. However, ingestion of fish exposes any methyl-mercury to the intestines where about 65% of the heavy metal protective protein, metallothionine (MT), exists in the body. This MT has the ability to bind mercury and organic mercury rendering them much less toxic and leads to their removal in the feces before they enter the blood stream. In contrast, vaccinations containing mercury by-pass the major protection provided by the intestinal MT as the ethyl-mercury directly enters the blood stream from the site of injection. It has been documented that the amount of mercury these infants are exposed to at single visits to the doctors office are 30-70 times the minimum safe level as determined by the EPA.”

    Very few people are aware of a Canadian researcher who, using a technique called x-ray absorption spectroscopy, found that a great deal of the mercury stored in fish tissues is in a different form than methyl mercury. Rather than bound to hydrogen and carbon atoms, it has formed tight bonds with sulphur atoms, which, in principle, should make it far harder for the mercury to be taken up by the human body. Dr. Graham George found that fish do not contain methyl mercury chloride, but methyl mercury cysteine. This means that it would be potentially less toxic than methyl mercury.

    Dr Graham George, who carried out the study while based at Stanford University in the US, said: "People have used methyl mercury to model the toxic properties of mercury in fish because they don't know what's on the mercury in fish tissue.” Now that we know this, we can better investigate its toxic properties." This discovery could explain why the toxicity of mercury in fish is lower that that of mercury in vaccines or dental amalgams. It also reinforces the idea that we are making a mistake putting mercury in fish in the first place of public concern. In reality there is no race or competition between sources of mercury exposure. We have to be concerned about our total exposure and total body burden of mercury and the other chemicals that make it more toxic.

     There are several mechanisms at work in determining the toxic problem from each mercury source and their combined intake. The mystery of mercury toxicity is tied very closely to our ability to eliminate mercury through the feces, urine and skin and mechanisms in both fish and people that render the mercury into a stable non-toxic form.  To give us some perspective on this we can look at mercury exposure and elimination rates in captive bottlenose dolphins. Results showed that feces account for elimination of 34-48% of dietary mercury; while only 0.9-1.2% of alimentary mercury is eliminated through exhaled air. The remaining 51.2-65.3% of ingested mercury, ranging approximately between 266 and 339 micrograms per day, is retained within the organism. The complexation of mercury with selenium, forming insoluble tiemannite granules was seen to be an important mechanism, complementary to excretion, by which dolphins are able to cope with elevated alimentary exposure to mercury.[xv]

     Selenium is certainly one defensive measure operative in humans as it seems cysteine is another and both combine as essential precursors in glutathione production. Ocean fish have obviously developed their own defensive mechanism through the ages due to existent natural sources of mercury. It is not known whether fresh water fish would share this in common with their salt water brethren but it does seem that dolphins and whales are having their defensive mechanisms stretched to the limit like humans are through the profoundly increasing mercury levels in certain areas. 

    What is not known is how much the protective mercury mechanisms in fish do to protect humans from the toxicity of mercury when they eat fish contaminated with mercury. The form of methyl mercury cysteine offers possible reason why an adult eating a juicy shark steak could ingest several hundred micrograms of organic mercury and not create the same problem as injected mercury or mercury absorbed through the lungs because of badly leaking dental amalgam. It does seem that eating mercury in the form of fish might be less toxic than other forms but even at a highly reduced toxicity it seems to be flooding the blood with mercury because of the sheer volume eaten from a regular diet of mercury contaminated fish.

     In an ideal world where we can eat all the fish we would like we would have to think of this methyl mercury cysteine form as being completely inert. An inert chemical substance is one that is not reactive. But nothing will erase the fact that dietary mercury increases mercury concentration in the blood. In one study EPA scientist Dr. Katherine Mahaffey found mercury blood concentration levels were seven times higher among women who reported eating nine or more fish and/or shellfish in the past 30 days.[xvi]

     Some scientists are calling mercury "the new lead." As with lead, the more scientists study mercury, the more they find subtle damage to the brain at lower and lower levels of exposure. Dr. Boyd Haley declines to state a specific toxic level for each form of mercury because patients differ so widely in their ability to detoxify and excrete mercury and lead is only one of many confounding factors that dramatically increases the toxicity of mercury. It is really impossible to create standards for exposure since people’s sensitivities and situation vary so greatly.

    Smoking cigarettes, which injects over 4000 chemicals into the blood, antibiotics, aluminum and formaldehyde found in vaccines, even one’s sex is a great factor in mercury toxicity. Many more boys succumb to autism than girls because of the hormone testosterone. The presence of selenium or its absence is a key issue as is diet in general. A diet high in cysteine and selenium could easily explain why a selected population would show no immediate harmful effects from mercury even in a lowered toxic form that methyl mercury cysteine might represent. We even find alcohol consumption (ethanol) reducing mercury toxicity so those who drink while they eat fish would be more protected than those who abstain.[xvii]

    Dr. Jay Murray, a toxicologist that specializes in maternal and fetal health and a member of the Tuna Nutrition Council, says "We now have proof that mercury levels in the vast majority of women and young children in the U.S. are not of concern.” On the other side we have the Sierra Club showing one in six fish bought at big name grocery stores in Atlanta was contaminated with high levels of mercury, which poses an extreme risk to newborns and pregnant women. Zach Corrigan, an attorney with the U.S. Public Interest Research Group says, "We as a country need to clamp down on mercury emissions and sources."[xviii] The same research group reported in August that fish in Georgia had an average mercury concentration of 0.27 parts per million, twice the amount considered safe for women of childbearing age who eat fish twice a week. The national average is now 0.22 parts per million.

     Dr. Fletcher in Jamaica was able to identify a placenta mercury concentration ranging from 0.5 to 0.7 mcg/g of total mercury in a population of women eating fish species not generally known for their high levels of mercury toxicity. Though certain officials at the World Health Organization have stated that there are no safe levels of mercury health officials still only warn pregnant mothers to lower levels of fish consumption stopping short of recommending complete abstinence. There are two sides in the great mercury wars and each faction chooses which facts they want to highlight. The government is responsible for giving fair warning with the best information that scientists are able to give them but when it comes to fish each of us decides what we will put in our mouths and it is hard to give up on our favorite fish.

     In 2003 the California Attorney General's office felt that not enough was being done to inform the public of the dangers so it filed suit to force supermarkets, restaurants and tuna companies to warn customers that tuna (fresh, frozen and canned), swordfish and shark sold in their markets contain mercury.[xix] The suit was based on the state's Proposition 65 which requires consumer warnings for substances on a toxics list. In January 2005, 16 major restaurant chains sued by the state agreed to settle and put up warnings. The US Tuna Foundation challenged the lawsuit saying "canned tuna products are safe…." In February warning signs were beginning to be posted.

     The average level of mercury found in both species of bass and squawfish from the Willamette River in New York to date is 0.63 parts per million (ppm) so we are seeing wild geographic variations. When it comes to tuna the latest numbers posted on the FDA’s site are from 1990—1993 showing a mean value of .12 ppm with a maximum ranging all the way up to .85 ppm meaning that some cans of tuna fish will have up to 40 times the mercury content than others. “When a consumer reaches for a can of tuna in the grocery store, they don’t know if they are buying a can that is low in mercury or high in mercury. They are playing Russian roulette, and there’s better than a 50-50 chance they’ll get a high can,” said Michael Bender of the Mercury Policy Project. Bender went on to add, “A woman who eats an average 6 oz. can of albacore in a day would exceed the EPA’s ‘safe’ level for mercury exposure by over ten-fold; a woman eating a can in the top five percent would consume more than 30-times more mercury than EPA considers safe.”

    According to the New York Times when “the FDA issued a revised mercury advisory in 2001, it urged women of childbearing age to shun four high-mercury species: swordfish, shark, king mackerel and tilefish from the Gulf of Mexico. It didn't mention tuna. Yet cumulatively, according to data provided by the EPA, the four species it urged avoiding account for less than 10% of Americans' mercury ingestion from fish, while canned tuna accounts for about 34% of it. Some EPA scientists griped that FDA officials were coddling food companies and this would explain the omission of tuna.” "They really consider the fish industry to be their clients, rather than the U.S. public," charged Deborah Rice, a former EPA toxicologist.[xx]

     FDA scientists have put fish in three categories: high in mercury, medium and low. The level for the low-mercury group was that of canned light tuna, explained FDA official Clark Carrington, who according to the New York Times and official transcripts of a meeting between the EPA and the FDA said, "In order to keep the market share at a reasonable level, we felt like we had to keep light tuna in the low-mercury group." At the meeting this point was reiterated by the FDA's Dr. Acheson who told the meeting the fish categories "were arbitrarily chosen to put light tuna in the low category." Of this Dr. Rice said, "Here's the FDA making what are supposed to be scientific decisions on the basis of market share. What else is there to say?"

   In February of 2005 Jyrki Virtanen with the Research Institute of Public Health at the University of Kuopio in Finland announced that middle-aged men should avoid eating fish high in mercury because it could put them at greater risk for heart attacks and other heart ailments. This is the latest in a series of studies[xxi] that have found that middle-aged men with higher levels of mercury in their bodies had significantly higher rates of heart attacks[xxii] and heart disease[xxiii] than men with lower levels. Virtanen is the lead author of a study published this month in Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology, a journal of the American Heart Association.

    The study found a 50 percent to 70 percent greater risk of heart attacks, heart disease and cardiovascular disease in men ages 42 to 60 that had elevated levels of mercury in their bodies.  The study, which is following the health of 2,682 Finnish men, found that a third of study participants who tested highest for mercury also reported eating an average of twice as much fish as the rest of the men in the study. "In terms of the type of evidence we often use to evaluate health risks from toxics, this is a pretty good basis for concluding a likelihood of a relationship between mercury and cardiovascular disease," said Alan Stern, a toxicologist who was a member of a landmark National Academy of Sciences committee that evaluated the health risks of mercury in 2000. Mercury has also been determined to have the best predictive value for intimal wall thickness and was associated with progression of carotid atherosclerosis.[xxiv]

Guallar et al. report that a toenail mercury level as low as 0.11 to 0.66 µg
per gram (estimated hair level, 0.34 to 2.03 µg per gram) was directly
associated with a doubling of the risk of myocardial infarction.

    The most troubling aspect of Virtanen’s study is that deleterious effects occur at mercury-exposure levels equal to or lower than for any other toxicological outcome, including the subtle neurological symptoms in the Faeroe Islands study. Using hair samples as a measurement basis, Grandjean’s (Faeroe Island study) most recent examination of 14-year-olds, he has found a doubling of certain neurotoxic effects at five parts per million in hair samples. In the Finnish study, the men with the doubled risk of heart attack had hair samples with only two parts per million of mercury. They were eating little more than an ounce of fish a day. Stern speculates that 10 percent of American men may already eat enough fish to raise their risk of heart attack.

   Dr. Laurie Green of the Pacific Women’s Obstetrics and Gynecology Medical Group now asks her patients to record not only what fish they eat but how much. “I’ve been astounded at how many patients have high mercury levels and underestimate their fish intake,” she writes. Dr. Green was amazed to discover “how much better they feel once they cut out the contaminated food.” Of course the same thing is reported by many patients who have their mercury fillings removed and parents who have spared their children from all mercury bearing vaccines report children of fine health. Dr. Jane Hightower is another physician who noticed, in her San Francisco practice, that many of her patients with hair loss, fainting spells and stomach upset and other vague symptoms had high blood mercury levels from eating fish.

   What conclusion can we draw from all the above? It will be years before we completely sort out the different pathways mercury takes in building toxic body burdens. It is ‘somewhat’ dangerous to eat fish very high in mercury content, especially if one already has low selenium levels because of poor diet and high mercury burdens present from vaccines and dental amalgam. Certainly we do not want to be eating shark, dolphin or whale livers. It is relatively easy to take the mercury out of vaccines because there are other safe alternatives to thimerosal, but this is not being done in most of the world. Mercury dental fillings can now easily be avoided because there are excellent alternatives but this is not embraced by the American Dental Association and the dental branch of the FDA.

    Fish is another story. It is a main dietary source of protein and one that many people feel, in moderation, is excellent for ones health. For many peoples around the world it is not a luxury but a dietary staple and there is little or no affordable alternative. It ‘might’ be safe to conclude (in a world where there is no rising tide of mercury, where vaccines and other medical products are mercury free, where dentists abandon placing toxic mercury waste dumps in peoples’ mouths, where its not increasing in the water and other food supplies) that mercury in ocean fish would pose little threat to the general population. But not matter what it seem prudent that all pregnant and breast feeding women should be well advised to stay away from fish for there is no doubt that it will raise blood mercury levels and that their placentas will concentrate that mercury by a factor of 1.7. No matter what it would be intelligent to make sure one’s selenium intake is more than adequate for protection from absorbed mercury’s harmful effects if one were to continue to eat fish.   

     The following case story on mercury poisoning from eating tuna fish appeared on the front page of the The Wall Street Journal on August 1, 2005 and was written by Peter Waldman.

One by one, Matthew Davis's fifth-grade teachers went around the table describing the 10-year-old boy. He wasn't focused in class and often missed assignments, they said. He labored at basic addition. He could barely write a simple sentence.

"Our jaws dropped," says his mother, Joan Elan Davis, describing a teachers' meeting she had requested in late 2003, when her son abruptly lost interest in homework. Matthew had always excelled in school. In the fourth grade, he had written and illustrated a series of stories about a superhero named Dog Man.

Ms. Davis noticed something else: Her son's fingers were starting to curl, as if he were gripping a melon. And he could no longer catch a football.

A neurologist ordered tests. They showed Matthew's blood was laced with mercury in amounts nearly double what the Environmental Protection Agency says is the safe level for exposure to the metal. Matthew had mercury poisoning, his doctors said.

The Davises had pinpointed the suspected source: tuna fish. For a year or so, starting in late 2002, Matthew had gobbled three to six ounces a day of white albacore tuna. Based on Food and Drug Administration data for canned albacore, he was consuming a daily dose of mercury at least 12 times what the EPA considered a safe level for a 60-pound child. The Davises' doctors' prescription was simple: Matthew should stop eating canned tuna.

It struck Matthew that something was wrong one day at recess, he says, when his buddy Zach could suddenly catch and throw a football much better than he could. He remembers his father, a little while later, getting frustrated when his son couldn't hit a baseball. "I kept telling Dad I was rusty," Matthew says.

After the meeting with his teachers, the Davises spent thousands of dollars on tutors, but still Matthew struggled. A specialist gave him a diagnosis of "mixed learning disability," which just made his parents mad because they had watched him do so well in school before.

Then Matthew's father happened to read an article in the San Francisco Chronicle describing adults with similar problems as a possible result of eating too much swordfish, tuna steaks and other high-end fish in restaurants. Ms. Davis remembers bolting to the pantry and throwing away eight pouches and 20 cans of StarKist albacore tuna.

Matthew Davis's symptoms -- declines in concentration, coordination and learning ability -- were classic signs of mercury toxicity, says one of his doctors, Jane Hightower, who has published studies of such toxicity in her patients. Today, nearly two years after Matthew quit eating albacore tuna, his blood-mercury level is zero and his condition is dramatically improved. Although his doctors don't know if he had any permanent damage, signs so far are that he didn't. Sports and homework come much easier again. Matthew played the lead in a local performance of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory." He is writing stories again.