National burn centers use colloidal silver to prevent infection on their burn victims.

Doctors put silver drops in the eyes of new born babies.

Debunking Colloidal silver

Some articles and web sites are devoted to the debunking of all alternative, non-pharmaceutical therapies, including colloidal silver. This intentional disinformation is being promoted by pro-pharmaceutical shills who want to freighten people away from using colloidal silver. Why? Because colloidal silver works too well, and the drug companies know it! If the general public knew how wide-spectrum and incredibly effective collidal silver is, people might begin to realize that they don't need to take all those expensive pharmaceutical antibiotics, with their wonderful side effects. When you consider both human and animal consumption of antibiotics, the loss would represent billions each month!

The principle scare story used is always about Argyria, a rare blue/grey skin condition. For the past couple of years, the drug company debunkers have been dragging around a poor woman by the name of Rosemary Jacobs. Rosemary has Argyria and her skin has a slate-grey cast to it. The debunkers trot her out at press conferences and at medical conventions to demonstate what will happen to people who take collodial silver for a prolonged period of time.

For many years, Rosemary used nose drops, prescribed by her doctor, that contained colloidal silver protein. Articles written by debunkers about Rosemary's condition will discuss her use of colloidal silver and type the initials "csp" in parentheses behind the words colloidal silver only once, at the very beginning of the article. For the balance of the article, they will use the term colloidal silver repeatedly and denounce it as the cause of Rosemary's condition.

However, Rosemary's condtion was brought about by the use of a prescription drug, a protein compound that contained colloidal silver; and not colloidal silver itself. They are two entirely different things. Hydrochloric acid, for example, is something entirely different than water and table salt, yet hydrochloric acid is composed of the elements found in water and table salt. Pure colloidal silver is simply a superfine suspension of submicroscopic silver particles in water.

There is No protein, No Argyria, and No problem. The debunkers would prefer to mislead the public to believe otherwise, however. And more often than not, they succeed, because fear will win out every time over positive, affirmative stories- at least for the naive, the easily manipulated, and the uninformed.

My two and a half years of not having a cold, sore throat, flue and chest cold is absolute proof that colloidal silver is better than any antibiotic.

Those who choose to not believe and not investigate silver will just have to suffer the consequenses and get numerous illnesses which they could so easely prevent.

Ignorance is pure STUPIDITY!!!!

-- Anonymous, December 14, 2000

Answers

http://educate-yourself.org/index.html

For those who want to educate themselves and who are in search of the truth.

-- Anonymous, December 14, 2000

"My two and a half years of not having a cold, sore throat, flue and chest cold is absolute proof that colloidal silver is better than any antibiotic."

"Absolute proof" it is not. There could be many other factors affecting why you haven't had a cold or flu.

By the way, antibiotics won't help you with a cold or flu, because antibiotics are not effective against virus infections, which these are.

-- Anonymous, December 14, 2000

Even the pioneers 150 years ago were smarter than you guys.

They put silver dollars in their milk and water to keep it pure!!!

Silver kills virusses, germs, bacteria and parasites!

If you don't believe and fail to investigate, just get sick like you usually do.

I live in a better world than you do. It is so simple to join my world without illness if you have an open mind.

Check out www.silversolutions.com

-- Anonymous, December 14, 2000

What color is the sky in your world, Freddie? (let me guess... Silver?)

-- Anonymous, December 14, 2000

Where does this "pioneer silver dollar" bull come from, anyway? 150 years ago actual cash money was a rare thing among pioneers, who usually bartered. If you said miners in Nevada, I might believe you, but otherwise, I need to see a citation.

I would much rather have a temporary head cold than a permanent case of grey skin!

-- Anonymous, December 14, 2000

Poole needs to rename this board to "Negative Roost".

When ever anyone posts an interesting article, all he gets is negative remarks.

-- Anonymous, December 14, 2000

Why is it that there is only one person in this whole world who has grey skin?

Since millions of people use colloidal siver on a regular basis, you would think the opposing party could find more than just one person with grey skin!!!

I have been using CS for ove 7 years. I don't have grey skin!

You guys are all full of crap. If you keep on talking that way, your skin will turn brown like crap!

-- Anonymous, December 14, 2000

I don't use colloidal silver. I only use a silver bracelet and neclace and twenty one ounce silver rounds in my drinking water container. Because of that I don't need to use colloidal silver.

For two and a half years not getting the usual illnes that everybody else gets, this tells me my theory is sound and cannot efectively be challenged with negative answers.

Either you give my theory a try, or just keep on getting sick and lose big bucks paying your stupid doctor and losing time at your job.

YOU CHOOSE!

Have you ever seen anyone have grey skin that wears silver jewelry or who drinks out of a silver water pitcher?

You grey skinners don't have a leg to stand on!

-- Anonymous, December 14, 2000

Snodgrass-

Colloidal silver is not used by millions of people every day. In fact, it's still relatively unknown.

Freddy-

Your knowledge of human anatomy astounds me. Silver can't be ingested through the skin, and the amount of silver you would get from drinking pure water from a water pitcher would be infintesimal compared to the amount you would consume from drinking colloidal silver. Moreover, I don't know anyone who drinks all their water from a pure silver pitcher.

-- Anonymous, December 14, 2000

Poole needs to rename this board to "Negative Roost".

When ever anyone posts an interesting article, all he gets is negative remarks.

-- Buddy (buddy@aol.com), December 14, 2000.

Interesting? Only mildly interesting in the sense that it's fun to jack with ignorant fools.

-- Anonymous, December 14, 2000

Freddie is p*ssed because he's not getting enough attention over at Unk's. Someone send him to TB on SlEaZy. He'd fit right in.

-- Anonymous, December 14, 2000

Jenny?!?

-- Anonymous, December 14, 2000

Freddie --> Snodgrass ===>schenker.

FAQ: Men working the Silver Mines die from silver poisoning.

Be sure to find out how much Product Liability Insurance these Quacks carry so you will know how deep their pockets are when you file the law suit against them for "Practicing Medicine wihout a License".

-- Anonymous, December 14, 2000

Thanks, Tarz. Now I can go back to lurking and watching the cross- post flame war that's breaking out among Helen, Bardou, and Not a Believer. Heads Up. It may make here and FRL.

-- Anonymous, December 14, 2000

Flame war? I've missed it. Which posts?

-- Anonymous, December 14, 2000

Do not meddle in the affairs of net geeks, 8675309, for you are crunchy and good with...
Tarzan you really don't want to know. It's time for everyone to move on.

-- Anonymous, December 14, 2000

Of course, there's another factor that's being ignored in all this idiocy. Namely, that colds and the flu are caused by viruses, not bacteria - antibiotics aren't of any help for colds, and of course Silver's properties are antibacterial, plus the concomitant risk of argyria doesn't strike me as that attractive.

I mean, you're welcome to believe in a wonder cure that doesn't have the properties claimed in clinical trials and runs the risk of looking like a smurf. You can also believe in the orgone accumulators, genocidal Vaccine plots, and chemtrails (yes, CHEMTRAILS!, everyone remembers CHEMTRAILS! Right? They were the paranoid flavor of the week when Y2K was starting to appear less spectacular last year) that the "educate yourself page" mentions. Still, if I'm gonna go for fantasies, I want bigger, more exciting fantasies, preferably with hot women.

-- Anonymous, December 14, 2000

It's very interesting to note that your source, www.educate-yourself.org, is selling colloidal silver, devices to manufacture colloidal silver, and other questionable products. Not to mention promoting belief in chemtrails and the NWO.

Now, why am I not surprised?

-- Anonymous, December 14, 2000

What the hell's a chemtrail?

-- Anonymous, December 14, 2000

"Chemtrails" were a reference to theory that the Evil Gubbmint was using the contrails of aircraft to seed mind-altering drugs across the general population to make us a more tractable breed of "sheeple."

It obviously doesn't work. I pass by the airport in Birmingham on a daily basis and remain a rather feisty curmudgeon. :)

On this colloidal silver thing: Fred, feel free to post what you like, just don't post advertising for the stuff. (That not only violates my rules, it breaks Greenspun's guidelines for the board.)

(Of course, no one told that to all the shills and huckters at TB2000 last year, but that's a digression.[g])

I'm not automatically opposed to these claims, either. I just need more independent and unbiased evidence.

Last year at Christmas, Sandy and I were both exposed to someone with a bad cold. On the way back from NC to AL, we were both feeling miserable; by that time, noses were running, eyes were watering and we were both running a fever. I had heard that echinacea and zinc would help, so I tried them. Sandy didn't. I ran the fever for one day, had a stuffy and runny nose for the next, then got over it. It took her a couple of weeks.

Likewise, last year, Sandy was taking a really powerful drug for her medical condition, one which leeched potassium from her bloodstream, causing all sorts of misery. Orange juice and bananas (recommended by the doctor) didn't seem to help, so on a lark, we tried an old remedy that I had seen in one of my herbal books: blackstrap molasses. The difference was amazing -- she was a new person; no more crushing depression, irregular heartbeat, you name it. I was honestly amazed.

(This is the closest I've ever come to one of those "it's a miracle" testimonials that you'll read online.[g])

The point? I'm not automatically skeptical of claims like these, because I like natural remedies. I DO think you should be very careful not to consider them a cure-all, and they do NOT replace modern medicine for serious conditions (ginseng and aspirin ain't gonna cut it if you're having a heart attack; get to a hospital!).

But I'm not opposed to the concept itself. What I'd like to see, though, are some double-blind studies on silver. Don't think that people are being unreasonable when they ask for this, either, and the MOST useless response is, "fine, just go on being sick!"

What separates a "quack" remedy from a real one (how do you know it's not just a placebo effect? The human body has an amazing ability to heal itself, you know), in fact, is just such studies.

Seriously: do you (or anyone here) know where such scientific study has been done?

And an aside: I, too, have difficulty believing that enough silver would leech (or break away, or be dissolved, or whatever) from a coin in water or milk to make a difference. Again: I need to see some studies.

Likewise,

-- Anonymous, December 14, 2000

Stephen-

I haven't found any concrete evidence for colloidal silver, but here's a Medline search for argyria. There's a hell of a lot of people who have been poisoned by the miracle of silver.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/htbin-post/Entrez/query_old? db=0&form=4&dispmax=100&term=argyria

-- Anonymous, December 14, 2000

Oops, I hit "Enter" too quickly. Scratch the "likewise" and add this: echinacea and zinc *have* been tested in clinical studies, especially in Europe. Echinacea increases the body's ability to fight infection and contains a mild natural antibiotic (echinacide) besides; zinc prevents cold viruses from attaching to the cell walls in the mucus membranes of the sinuses (which is where cold viruses live).

I'm not aware of any "official" studies on blackstrap molasses, but as the problem was a lack of potassium, and the stuff is loaded with it, I felt like that was a good try. Sandy and I both are glad we did try it.

I've probably made no sense, but let me reiterate what I said above: the WORST possible response is to say, "fine, just go on being sick!" Fred, since the FDA semi-deregulated this stuff, we are being bombarded with claims, most of which are colloquial or second-hand or legendary. Some of this stuff works, some doesn't, some may actually make you sicker. Figuring out which is which is the hard part. :)

-- Anonymous, December 14, 2000

Thanks, Tarzan.

The one that really concerns me is the Hallelujiah Diet, which is listed on Quack.Net as "dangerous." In case you haven't heard of it, this one wants you to eat raw fruits and vegetables. Hey, nothing wrong with that; we SHOULD eat more of that stuff ... the problem is the CLAIMS made for that diet by its proponents. They claim that if you follow it religiously, you won't get sick, and that whatever ails you will be healed!

-- Anonymous, December 14, 2000

Re: The Hallelujah diet.

As with Y2K, most of what bothers me these days is that a lot of this is just alternative marketing, primarily of dubious material. I regularly attend an acupuncturist to help with my CSI, and it appear to work for me. Similarly, I tried the echinacea material last year, and it didn't work for me one way or the other (incidentally, judging by the reading I've done, it sounds like the Zinc works on the ancillary symptoms - heavy metals have antibacterial properties). My irritation with the colloidal stuff is the argyria in particular, along with the associated lunacy and cultish mindset - basically, the educate-yourself site encourages people to engage in the same cultish and loony behavior they accuse reductionist medicine of engaging in, only with a different and far less productive set of axioms.

Enough rant, I go to seek pizza.

-- Anonymous, December 14, 2000

Hallelujah Diet? Must be followed religiously?

Oh man, my side aches!

-- Anonymous, December 14, 2000

Well:

Hydrochloric acid, for example, is something entirely different than water and table salt, yet hydrochloric acid is composed of the elements found in water and table salt.

Yep, getting a PhD in Chemistry sure didn't help me. I had no idea that HCl contained sodium. And I have been using silver resistance as a genetic marker in bacteria for more than a decade. I had no idea that bacteria couldn't develop resistance to silver.

Yep & Yep: you have changed my whole research program.

Best Wishes,,,

Z

-- Anonymous, December 14, 2000

Z,

Well . .. .. .. .. ..

Maybe what he meant to say was that hydrochloric acid contains elements which are ALSO found in water and table salt. (Two, to be exact.)

:)

-- Anonymous, December 14, 2000

Poole, do this test if you want to be convinced. We all know that milk turns sour if you give it enough time. It is caused by bacteria in the milk.

Stir in some colloidal silver in the milk and let it stand for a month.

IT WILL NOT GET SOUR!

CASE CLOSED!

-- Anonymous, December 15, 2000

Barney,

OK, I can try that. Does it have to be pure silver, or will a silver alloy work?

That still leaves the question of safety ... from what I've read, the argyria condition is caused by the silver itself, NOT a protein. I mean, a cupful of Clorox in that same milk will also keep it from spoiling (provided you tighten the lid on the jug), but it'll hardly be palatable .. . :)

mpc,

Absolutely. I left that part out: these remedies don't work for everyone. I had a friend here whom I talked into trying echinacea; it was a waste of time. Another friend had results similar to mine. The echinacea seems to help the little nicks and cuts that I pick up in my line of work to heal more quickly, too -- but again, I can't claim that'll be true for everyone. Hey, it may even be a placebo effect, but I don't think so.

Similar diseases with similar symptoms can also be caused by different pathogens. Maybe you had an echinacea-resistant strain of bug. If your luck is like mine, maybe it enjoyed the echinacea, and wanted some zinc for dessert! :)

-- Anonymous, December 15, 2000

Poole, most likely an old silver dollar in the milk will work also.

-- Anonymous, December 15, 2000

Herbs and botanicals have been studied more carefully in the labs. The interactions of Tamoxifen, for example, can be described at the molecular level. The same cannot be said of cs. Why? Is there really a "cover-up"? Does the FDA really get huge kickbacks from the drug manufacturers to keep from approving certain compounds? Perhaps. But not in this case.

I submit that if cs worked as claimed, it would be in widespread use in the major teaching hospitals, at the very least. This is not a new substance. Only the current marketing campaign is new.

-- Anonymous, December 15, 2000

If you would only take the time to read the above article "Debunking Colloidal Silver", you would learn why they don't use CS in hospitals.

-- Anonymous, December 16, 2000

Because CS turns your skin blue.

-- Anonymous, December 16, 2000

Only one person's skin has turned blue from overuse of "doctor prescribed nosedrops". Only one in millions of users of CS!!!! It simply proves that doctors don't know what they are doing!

Give me a break!

You guys have no case whatsoever!

-- Anonymous, December 17, 2000

Actually, several people have developed argyria. Here's a MedLine search:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/htbin-post/Entrez/query_old? db=0&form=4&dispmax=100&term=argyria

-- Anonymous, December 17, 2000

No one has posted in a while.... I will add my two cents.... I have been using collidal silver for over a year now and love it... The FDA, and powers that be want you to not know of the power of collidal silver. That is why they are trying to label it as a drug that requires a prescription. That way they can stop and control its use. Big Brother never sleeps....

U would be wise to educate yourself on the medical practices prior to 1940.... Collidal silver is real... Income taxes are voluntary.... Life is truly a blink of a eye.... If you haven't found these truths yet...U are along way from being informed about anything that isn't spoon feed to you by everyone that attempts to brain wash you...

-- Anonymous, April 11, 2001

FWIW, "medical practices prior to 1940" didn't always have stellar results :-)

-- Anonymous, April 11, 2001

Ignorance is pure STUPIDITY!!!!

Define your terms.

Not all Ignorance is pure Stupidity, and not all pure Stupidity is Ignorance.

Or are you perhaps referring to the overlap, that certain subset of sub-cretins wherein is found the consummate blend of Pure Ignorance and Pure Stupidity ?

I must have your answer by Friday.

-- Anonymous, April 11, 2001

"No one has posted in a while...."

Because this thread had been put safely to bed.

"I will add my two cents...."

Be careful, Cornelius. Those two pennies are copper, not silver. You could get a nasty infection that way.

"I have been using collidal silver for over a year now and love it..."

Good for you. Now, how about all those people Tarzan cited with Argyria? What about them?

"The FDA, and powers that be want you to not know of the power of collidal silver."

Bull. Unproven assertion on your part. Why?

"That is why they are trying to label it as a drug that requires a prescription."

If people are getting sick from it, then it SHOULD be labeled.

"That way they can stop and control its use."

If people are getting sick from it, then its use SHOULD be controlled.

"Big Brother never sleeps...."

And neither do the loons on the Net.

"U would be wise to educate yourself on the medical practices prior to 1940...."

Does that include leeches and garlic poultices? Those were Middle Age remedies, but that's prior to 1940. Aren't leeches supposed to work on leukemia? And garlic poultices are good for bone fractures? Just asking.

"Collidal silver is real..."

Sure, it's real. But not real useful, and not real safe.

"Income taxes are voluntary...."

Bullshit. Prove it. Nut.

"Life is truly a blink of a eye...."

In your case, it's a bad dream after a spicy meal.

"If you haven't found these truths yet...U are along way from being informed about anything that isn't spoon feed to you by everyone that attempts to brain wash you..."

And in your case, you're a credulous nutcase who makes wild, unsupported claims and who expects people to believe him. You're an arrogant ass, Cornelius, and not nearly as intelligent as you would have us believe.

Have a nice day.

-- Anonymous, April 11, 2001

SUCH BS. Looks like Ole Doc Schenker has the Medicine Man show out on the road again.

FACT: Mistletoe forces humans to kiss at the same time every year. That is the "logic" employed for colon-oid silver. The reality is that if you take enough of it, you will screw up your body. If you do not take enough past the threshold doseage required to screw up your body nothing will happen (maybe).

For the CS SHILLS try this. Substitute Cynanide. Try that in "minute doses" and see if it has the same curative magic powers. Try Arsenic. Try nice doses of Mercury now suspected in causing illness in one Sir Isaac Newton.

Better yet, try bigger doses to show how big and brave you are. Then go take a hike back to the Fruit Loop Believers.

-- Anonymous, April 13, 2001