A day after the FDA released an exhaustive, peer-reviewed, draft report analyzing the state of seafood science over the past 5 years that demonstrates just how much the benefits of eating seafood outweigh any concerns about trace amounts of mercury, you might wonder why I am blogging about Jeremy Piven. There is a tie-in, trust me.

NFI’s YouTube rebuttal of Piven’s Good Moring American interview is getting quite a lot of attention. In fact the celebrity blogosphere is percolating with our fact-based assessment of Piven’s tale, complete with headlines like The Human Thermometer is Trying to Salvage His Reputation.

Our review of his interview with Dianne Sawyer came before the previously mentioned FDA report was posted, so we didn’t have the opportunity to include this little nugget- and this is where it gets worse for Piv– the FDA report states, in describing Table IIIA, that overt harm from mercury is seen at levels more than 100 times the average level in the U.S.

Now, let’s think back to the Good Moring America interview (insert blurry oscillating lines here accompanied by flute & timpani riff) when Piven suggested the overt harm he received came from 6 times the average level and what’s more he suggested doctors were stunned by his levels and had to test 3 times befor they believed how high they were. Why this wonderful story just gets curiouser and curiouser, doesn’t it?

Piven seems like the literary type. So, for him a subtle reminder from Sir Walter Scott, “Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.”