Introduction
Boyd E. Haley (born September 22, 1940, Greensburg, Indiana) is a retired professor of chemistry at the University of Kentucky, known for his involvement with the anti-vaccination movement.
Education and career
Haley received his bachelor's degree from Franklin College in Franklin, Indiana in 1963. He then served as a U.S. Army medic for a few years, before obtaining his M.S. from the University of Idaho in 1967 and his Ph.D. in chemistry-biochemistry from Washington State University in 1971, after which he served as a postdoctoral scholar at Yale University for three years. Haley has described the research he conducted at WSU thusly: "The guy I worked for at Washington State was a muscle biochemist. We worked together to make chemical modifications on ATP to try to identify how and exactly where ATP binds to cause muscle movement." From 1974 to 1985, he was a professor at the University of Wyoming, before being appointed first a professor of medicinal chemistry at the University of Kentucky, and later, the chairman of the Chemistry department there in 1997.
Research and views
Haley has been a prominent figure in the anti-vaccination movement.
One of Haley's best-known papers was one which said that levels of glutamine synthetase were considerably higher in the cerebrospinal fluid of patients with Alzheimer's disease than those without.
Haley surmises that mercury released from dental amalgams could be a potential cause of autism and Alzheimer's disease. His findings have not been reproduced and the United States Public Health Service and the American Dental Association reject these claims.
Haley has also speculated that gold salts may be useful in the treatment of autism.
OSR#1 and FDA Regulations
Haley is the founder of CTI Science, a Lexington, Kentucky-based biotechnology firm. CTI marketed a product, OSR#1, for human consumption; it was described as an "antioxidant" dietary supplement that is known to be a powerful chelator from a family of chelators originally developed to remove heavy metals from soil and acid mine drainage.
In June 2008, an FDA toxicologist questioned "on what basis the product could be expected to be safe and could be considered a dietary ingredient", but CTI Science and Haley had not responded as of January 2010. The testing was described by Ellen Silbergeld of the Bloomberg School of Public Health as incomplete and indicative of toxicity. On June 17, 2010, the FDA sent a warning letter noting five potential violations, expressing concern over the testing, and requiring a response in 15 days. Although Haley wrote an op-ed for the Lexington Herald-Leader, the FDA did not receive a formal response and OSR#1 was withdrawn from the market.