• Week in Review Conferences. But also a diagnosis of the root causes. However, despite the evidence, vaccine hesitancy stemming from both the documentary and the study have persisted.
• Location: 714 Tiverton. Los Angeles, CA 90095. Mailing Address: 10833 Le Conte Avenue. CHS - Box 951668. Los Angeles, CA. Campus Mailing Code: 166815.

Here's a quick look at the best TV and movies on offer this week including James Cameron and Robert Rodriguez's blockbuster manga adaptation and Steve Buscemi returns to TV in a surreal comedy.

The recent documentary on Netflix, Root Cause, is causing quite a stir. Many are questioning the safety and validity of root canals and their possible connection to the 'c' word—yes, cancer. Periodontist Dr. Scott Froum and Endodontist Dr. Omar Ikram debunk accusations made in the documentary on three levels so that you can begin to have intelligent conversations with your dental patients.

The Root Cause documentary has caused controversy and been removed from Netflix.Source:Supplied

A controversial Netflix documentary that’s caused a serious stir in the medical community has been quietly removed from the streaming service.

Root Cause, which claims root canals can be linked the cancer, has disappeared from its website where it had been since January 1.

Root Cause Movie Cast

The film’s claims sparked many to question the safety and appropriateness of root canals and whether they could cause cancer, with the medical community forced to address the issues to put the public at ease.

The America Association of Endodontists created an ‘Internet Movie Talking Points’ document that said the doctors and experts quoted were “extremists and outliers” in the broader medical community.

“Many have questionable reputation and/or license revocations,” it said.

“The theory questioning the safety of root canal treatment is nearly 100 years old and has long and continuously been debunked.

“The broader medical and scientific community support root canal treatments as a safe and effective way to eliminate pain and save a patient’s natural teeth.”

The Root Cause documentary has caused controversy and been removed from Netflix.Source:Supplied

Dr Mitchell Josephs labelled it a “horrific, misleading ‘film’ and said he was “angrier than a Chihuahua with an anal gland problem, dragging his but across the carpet”.

“This is completely erroneous and just scares humanity for no reason other than to get attention; the equivalent of yelling fire in a crowded movie theatre,” he wrote in the Herald Tribute.

The movie makes claims such as “the vast majority of chronic degenerative diseases begin with problems in the mouth” and “98 per cent of women who have breast cancer had a root canal tooth on the same side as their breast cancer”.

But the association said there was no valid, scientific evidence linking root canal

treatment to disease elsewhere in the body and the claims were completely false and misleading.

An editorial review Amazon, one of the few sites still carrying the doco, describes the film as one man’s extraordinary 10-year true story journey to find the root cause of his panic attacks, anxiety, chronic fatigue, nausea, dizziness, agitation and insomnia.

“It is an incredibly personal journey of a round-the-world search for answers that is one moment tear jerking, and laugh out loud funny the next,” it says.

“Root Cause is set to change the way the world looks at holistic health.”

Medical experts have praised Netflix’s decision to remove film, directed by Australian Frazer Bailey, despite the website itself not making a statement on its reasons.

Dental associations had written to Netflix, Apple, Amazon and Vimeo in January asking them to remove the film from their platforms, saying it could harm the public’s view of safe treatments.

“When you undergo a root canal or other endodontic treatment, the inflamed or infected pulp is removed and the inside of the tooth is carefully cleaned and disinfected, then filled and sealed,” the endodontist association clarified to the public.

“Root canal treatments eliminate bacteria and infection while allowing patients to keep their natural teeth.”

Media experts suspect Netflix pulled the film to protects its own reputation for making documentaries.

Root Cause Documentary Scam Photos

By Linda Barnard

Rating: C

It’s a question that makes me bristle: “Are you still working?” Grey hair and a lengthy career must signal that it’s time for me to punch out permanently.

I have no plans to quit work. Neither did hotel housekeeper Rebecca Danigelis in the documentary Duty Free, directed by her youngest son, New York freelance TV journalist Sian-Pierre Regis.

After decades making sure everything was just so for hotel guests, Danigelis had risen to executive housekeeper at a Boston hotel. Fired at age 75, she was devastated. There was a lot more than pride on the line for this elegant-looking, energetic woman who had always worked and wanted to continue.

With just $600 in the bank, Danigelis could lose the one-bedroom apartment above the hotel that came with her job. Her small salary barely paid her bills. How would she manage the expenses she has always covered for her oldest son, who has schizophrenia and lives in a group home?

Regis, a 30-something filmmaker who had been documenting his mother’s struggles on his iPhone, came up with an idea to give her hope and a sense of purpose. He suggested she make list of all the things she wanted to do but put off as a sole-support mother raising her family. Then they would do them together.

How can I possibly afford that, she asks?

Mom, meet the Internet.

A crowdfunding campaign raises $60,000. Regis is her adventure partner and the occasionally breathlessly upbeat narrator as his mother uncharacteristically focuses squarely on her own happiness.

Things start out on the light side: she gets an Instagram account and milks a cow. There’s skydiving in Hawaii.

Duty Free stops being a YOLO video and enters more purposeful storytelling through other items on the list. They reveal parts of Danigelis’ life that were unknown or barely explained to her son. He admits that, like many young adults, he’d never asked his mother about her life.

Married not long after moving to Detroit from Britain, Danigelis had a daughter, Joanne. Soon divorced, Danigelis discovered lumps in her breast and sent young Joanne to England to be raised by her sister. The girl never lived with her mother again.

Reuniting with Joanne for the first time in 10 years is on Danigelis’ list. There are happy hugs and tears when they arrive in the UK, but Joanne also speaks candidly about the hurt she still carries, childhood fears she wasn’t wanted and was sent away as punishment.

Root Cause Documentary Scam Complaints

Danigelis thinks she needs to get over it. She’s one for getting on with things when life takes an unhappy turn, but she struggles with applying the same philosophy to landing a new job. Who wants to hire a woman who graduated in 1964, she wonders? Determined to look “vibrant,” she dons a scarlet scarf and carefully does her hair and makeup for an interview.

She has more success with social media love. With 50,000 Instagram followers and Regis working his contacts, Danigelis becomes a temporary celebrity and inspiration.

Duty Free spends little time exploring the ageism that’s at the heart of Danigelis’ employment difficulties. There’s a quick mention at the end of the doc that 25 million Americans don’t have enough money to pay for retirement, but no exploration of the how and why.

It would have made for a more satisfying film had Regis gotten beyond the road-trip selfies.

Root Cause Documentary Scams

Duty Free. Directed by Sian-Pierre Regis. With Sian-Pierre Regis and Rebecca Danigelis. Available for streaming through the Vancouver International Film Festival (viff.org) starting May 7.