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The
Renaissance of Silver in Human Health
Presented
to the 3rd International Silver Conference By
On the other hand, it is a fact of life that bacteria have shared life with every living thing on this planet for the last 3 billion years. And never developed resistance to silver. It is ironic that everyone associated with this beautiful metal knows that…. So why, one must ask, was silver forsaken for products that would ultimately damage DNA , and thereby put at risk the master plan for survival in all living species? What kind of arrogant self-confidence is it that could render such a statement as…. infectious disease will soon become a thing of the past when there was no long-term research to support it? Such ‘blind faith’ as expressed to the world by contemporary ‘authorities’ decades ago was painfully shortsighted. But so much of the science and technology of the twentieth century has only led us to the incipient crises we are now facing. And that is where silver comes back into play, even though its history in matters of health has for the most part been discounted by those ‘authorities’. We need to understand why that is so…. Silver enjoyed considerable success in medicine for the first half of the last century, for two reasons: first, the new colloids of silver, first developed in the 1890s were a new development that was neither caustic nor toxic; therefore they were both safe and to some extent effective. And second no other products were available that performed the same antiseptic function as well as silver. But there were problems, and those problems persisted ….as you will see. The makers of these early colloids really were on the right track – until they turned to silver proteins to coax greater amounts of silver into the formulas. The pure colloids did actually work, but were not as powerful as was desired. So it was inevitable that, given the thought processes typical of the 20th century, they were inclined to pursue ‘more is better’. But that did not solve the problem either; the efficacy of such products was simply not convincing. Nor did they ever overcome this problem. Our company, by contrast, returned to the root of the technology that first gave rise to this most interesting development. In fact it went much further than any of its predecessors over the last century. With equipment that was not available in the early days, we were enabled, as none of our predecessors were, to actually ‘see’, and thus understand, what we were doing … Of course there was much more to it than just ‘seeing’ (and by seeing I am of course referring to the use of transmission electron microscopy). The whole process took us a couple of years, but finally we were able to advance the state of the art in producing the finest silver hydrosol ever seen, and one that worked….! What we created in our silver hydrosols went even beyond the nano-technology that is a current frontier for science the world over – we actually crossed the threshold into pico-technology, where the therapeutic power of silver is exponentially increased. Such silver hydrosols are able to outperform every other product in the current pharmacopoeia for infection, ….all infection. And with no damage whatsoever to the normal mammalian cell. The silver hydrosol we have developed presents with almost perfect dispersion [in electron microscopy]. That dispersion demonstrates the powerful charge each particle possesses. Thus isolated, they have a mean diameter of 0.8 nm (or 8 Angstroms), although that has been rounded up to 1 nm in the electron microscopy lab at the University of Miami Medical School where such work was recently done. We won’t quibble over 2 Angstroms! Furthermore, at least 97% of the silver we produce in our hydrosols fall into this speciation of active silver. By contrast, only trace amounts of that species are present in virtually all other colloidal silver products ….that has been true from the 1890s right through the present. And that accounts for the significant performance between what we have created and ‘all the others’, the hundreds of other products that have entered the marketplace for a hundred years , . The only reason any of them ‘worked’ at all was only ever due to the attenuated presence of the same species we isolated. For it was unknowingly a by-product, not the objective, of those that manufactured colloidal silver products. Of the more than 100 similar products categorized as colloidal silver, or colloidal silver proteins, that we have tested in our laboratory ….the most any of them possess of this species is 1½% or so, quite the inverse of our technology. The achievement therefore appears to be unprecedented. That alone accounts for the problem proponents of such formulations have faced for over a century; the cause of less-than-acceptable levels of therapeutic effect ….that is their defect. And that has in turn given rise to skepticism. And that skepticism has plagued the marketplace for silver-based therapeutic products ever since their earliest presence here. The net result of our work is that we have effectively increased the antiseptic properties of silver, making it 40 times more powerful than AgNO3 (when compared by equal silver content). Silver nitrate is an accepted antiseptic and has been catalogued in pharmacopoeias for over two thousand years. (Third party references for the claim I have just made [about its power] are not yet available, but will be shortly as we are co-sponsoring third-party laboratory assays with one of our new distributors. We are confident these experiments will confirm the findings we have obtained in our own laboratory, those that gave rise to the above claim). Over the last five years or so that we have been doing such experimental bacteriology assays in house, we also noted another interesting fact, which in its simplicity must give rise to further research. Antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria have consistently shown even greater susceptibility to the silver ion than the wild type strains that have been around ‘forever’. The value of silver appears even greater and at every step in the proper research it deserves. So, what was the single event [if there is ever a single event] that ostensibly caused research into silver to be aborted? It was most certainly the advent of antibiotics. On the face of it, these new systems were much more effective than all the silver preparations up till then. Thus, even though silver products had become a norm throughout western medicine during the first half of the last century, when contrasted with penicillin, they were just too crude to stand up to the new ‘medicines’. It is an obvious truth that we just don’t know what we don’t know! No one knew how crude they were. In fact it is surprising that such formulations could have been infused intravenously into human beings with certain success. I recall in a citation published in 1916 by the British Medical Journal, the Lancet, that such a preparation actually reversed an otherwise surely fatal septicemia in a young woman. Our work with silver
hydrosols ought to help reestablish silver as the primary anti-infectious
therapeutic available today. Although it is questionable whether such
an event is likely to occur. The marketplace is effectively controlled
by those with an economic interest in continuing the use of antibiotics. Respect for ancient wisdom was what sustained man throughout the hundreds of thousands of years he took to arrive in the present era many thousands of years ago, not new technologies. In our time such wisdom is frowned upon. But let us return to scientific purposes, leaving economic and political considerations to those who must deal with their consequences. Rest assured, as Nature is sure, they will have to…. Current research has been significantly served at Tsinghua University in Beijing in 2000. Researchers there, for the first time ever, showed the effect [by transmission electron microscopy] of silver ions on the cell wall and mitochondria of bacteria. This was a watershed event in the long history of this vital antiseptic material. Never before had anyone ‘seen’ silver actually effecting the ‘kill’. The micrographs produced by these experiments were stunning examples of silver’s potential. Note that the authors of this study also pointed out that further research was indicated. But it is the pioneering research of Dr Robert O. Becker that stands out as a beacon in the noble path of scientific enquiry. His work inspired our own quest for the grail of the silver hydrosol. In collaboration with other researchers at SUNY, the State University of New York, in the 1970s, he drew for us all new understandings about the therapeutic uses of silver. Instead of attracting the attention his work deserved, little note was taken of it . He and his team had achieved notable success in bringing about recovery from multiple infections in compound fractures that simply would not heal. Most of those patients who underwent treatment by these researchers would otherwise have been candidates for amputation. It is curious that what started out for Dr. Becker as a project to explore bioelectric and electro-magnetic systems in biology ….turned into a revolutionary rediscovery of enormous value. His hypotheses first led him to examine negative current, and then positive current ….as the operative agent by which to achieve antisepsis. He himself was quite surprised, and then forced to conclude that it was in fact the silver electrode by which he was conveying the current –and not the current –that was bringing about the stunning results he achieved. And then he understood that the extraordinary antiseptic effects he saw were coming from the iontophoresis of the silver mesh he was using. Dr. Becker had taken a giant step in returning to ancient wisdom. Such knowledge, long silenced by the pyro-technicians of contemporary science, barely made an impact. Over the course of his research he noted yet another profound property of silver in the induced dedifferentiation he saw occurring in the wounds of his patients. As a physician, Dr. Becker was also preoccupied by both the ethical and technical difficulties in the use of stem cells derived from human embryos for the treatment of diseased tissues. It was a surprise to him too that he may also have found a more rational approach to this problem. He then set out to prove that the silver ions were inciting the evolution of stem cells in the blastema tissue of recovering wounds , , and these results have been published in peer-review in 2000 and 2002. In the elegant language of one of his important papers, he concluded that “these observations are believed to represent either the dedifferentiation of mature human cells and their subsequent clonal expansion, or the production of an expansion of preexisting stem cells in the tissues by the action of iontophoretically introduced free silver ions .” In light of this important discovery –I again point out that the medical establishment took little note – he further proved that iontophoretic therapy with silver was safe, without significant side issue and effective. He quoted Slocum’s criterion: “A great advance would be the ability to induce the production of progenitor cells in situe by dedifferentiation of differentiated cells”. As a footnote to these comments, I personally had the privilege of conveying to Dr. Becker recently ….clinical evidence not only of remission in a case of MS [multiple sclerosis] following treatment with our silver product, but of restoration of myelin sheath, such lesions being a significant factor in that terrible disease of the nervous system. And in common with other such serious researchers in the quest for human understanding and enlightenment, this profoundly important teacher is also calling upon those concerned with science to pursue further research into this remarkable metal with respect to its implications for human health. So here we are today in a country where respect for ancient wisdom is a centerpiece of its culture. And at this auspicious event I present you with these exciting facts, facts that can perhaps address many of the threats that face our new world. I am but a guest bearing an opportunity, an invitation. For I know I am in a place where the use of natural elements for medicinal properties is not forgotten. In fact it is a tradition going back thousands of years. There is an urgent need for wider research into silver now, for it brings with it a timely lifesaving promise. You see, we have not only inherited a daunting quagmire of crises; we are also responsible for them. We were taught that Nature had only to be conquered! in a belief system that got it very wrong. And actually continues to believe that these threats can, and will be, solved through an ever-developing technology….. For those who cling to this belief, consider the problem of nuclear waste…. An issue that was raised 60 years ago, and is no closer to being solved today then it was then. How long are we going to pursue empty belief? Where is the desire, let alone the will, to protect us from the increasing danger of exposure to technology? _________________________________ W. C. Burhans et al,
Apoptosis-like yeast cell death in response to DNA damage and replication
defects, Mutation Research 532 (2003) 227-243 |