Colloidal Silver

[Jon Parr]

So, a highjacked water catchment thread here http://community.theaquaponicsource.com/forum/topics/rainwater-coll...

spawned a discussion of Colloidal Silver, and quite rare and hard to believe, I have no strong opinion for nor against. 

Convince me, please.

On the Nay front, medical science says that silver is not needed in diet, ineffective at treating ailments or preventing, and quite possibly may be toxic. 

http://nccam.nih.gov/health/silver

On the Yay front, many health nuts I know swear by it's benefit.

[Eric Warwick]

I find it HILARIOUS that people believe the medical establishment--who are total a-holes to LGBTQ people, fat people, Autistics, other disabled people, non-whites etc., but not rich/middle class white, able-bodied, heteronormative, and skinny people*--are the money grubbers who use us as guinea pigs (1), rather than the self-proclaimed homeopaths who sell cheep products at inanely inflated prices, without testing.

*but not anorexics

(1) the AMA and others--such as the UN and USA--outlawed blatantly harmful testing like that in the 50s. However, some people weren't regarded as people back then, so blacks, gays, and the disabled had to fight for their rights. 

[Pat James]

HEY NOW, Jim, I resemble that remark!!! Why do you think I consider smoking "job security"??? :) Them and diabetics who do not control their blood sugar are my mainstay. (Coronary artery surgery)

now I know several surgeons who take large amounts of vitamins on a daily basis, and go the whole homeopathic route themselves. But you can bet they DO NOT recommend that to their patients.....

WHY? For the simple reason that there are are lawyers out there who would love to get ahold of just a single patient who says "I took those vitamins and minerals for a whole 6 months and still had a heart attack!!!" it would be, "Doc, pay up!!! MILLIONS...

Eric, I have no idea what you do for a living. Your profile says you are 16... Butwhere you get your misguided views that health care professionals are all a-holes etc, I have to wonder. People in the medical fields live under some of the most stringent rules of any career I can think of. Everything they do is regulated. EVERY action is scrutinized and if you make a mistake, you might find that career has just ended.

When I decided to go to perfusion school, a cardiac surgeon I knew advised me to consider it carefully. His comment was "You make ONE mistake and you can find your career over.." I thought he was exaggerating.

Later I found out (from one of the largest malpractice insurance companies) that he was not... 50 percent (HALF) of all perfusion it's who are sued, end their careers right there, WIN or LOSE! Some are forced to and some find the process that traumatic.

Don't sell medicine or homeopathic treatments short. Just be aware of what drives the train... MONEY or litigation.

[B. H.]

  1.  Some folks just can't be convinced of anything outside the "norm". 

2.  The AMA is our friend .......... yeah, right.  Read their bylaws that member doctors must abide by. 

3.  The FDA is our friend and protector ...... yeah, right.  FDA, Monsanto and Big Pharma all sitting around a campfire singing nice little Koom-Ba-Ya songs.

4.  The UN ....... Most of the members hate the US and do everything in their power to block anything we want to do.

5. . "...... self-proclaimed homeopaths who sell cheep products at inanely inflated prices, without testing."  Well, what can I say ...... our capitalistic system at work.  If anyone is dumb enough or ignorant enough to take anything these snake-oil salesmen say at face value, well, sorry 'bout that.  These people have been around for centuries and will be round for centuries to come.  A bit of self education and research on your part can go a long way. Just because you haven't heard of something doesn't make it so.   Who said anything about "blatantly harmful"?  That's quite a jump.  But..... "Blatant - very obvious and offensive" ..... according to the online dictionary.  Then I guess listing side effects can be considered blatant ..... quite obvious in the fine print and offensive to those who exhibit the listed side effects.  See, I can learn new things.

6.  Like Jim, been around for 66 years.  Learned a lot.  Most by listening, researching and learning...... not by pissing on everything I know nothing bout.  Everyone's ignorant of something, most are ignorant of a lot. 

7.  I have no desire to try to convince anyone of anything.  I am NOONE"'S keeper  You don't know me, I don't know your circumstances.  Plus, I truly don't care what you think.  It's not my day to worry about you or anything else other than me and my family.... I have better things to do than get all wadded up about someone's post on a forum. 

8.  I'm going to interject a little Bible talk into this conversation, I won't do it again.  Don't know where to tell anyone to look, but I read it somewhere and am paraphrasing ...... everything to heal man's ills was put on this earth in the beginning.  It's up to us to find it.  Interpret that any way you want. 

9.  Hey Jim.....

[Eric Warwick]

I take your anecdotal evidence and raise you an entire website that includes case-studies, hard-facts, and analysis. 
Enjoy, and remember to check your privilege. http://autistichoya.com/ (I am sixteen, by the way, and I have homework to do, thus no delineated article(s), but an entire website.) Also, I didn't want to implicate all doctors, but the stigmas attached to members of the disabled, queer/LGBTQ, and fat communities are real and lethal. Many doctors can be real shmucks, while some are amazing, selfless contributors to society--nurses and surgeons especially.
Pat James said:

Eric, I have no idea what you do for a living. Your profile says you are 16... Butwhere you get your misguided views that health care professionals are all a-holes etc, I have to wonder. People in the medical fields live under some of the most stringent rules of any career I can think of. Everything they do is regulated. EVERY action is scrutinized and if you make a mistake, you might find that career has just ended.

[Jim Fisk]

The main point I would like to get back to here is the one I raised months ago that started this thread. Will cs help in your AP system? and from the research I have done since asking that apparently loaded question I would have to give a resounding "yes".

Eric has some great points and I would love to hear more when he is around say 35 and starting to rack up some real experience and Pat and B. H.: Thanks for the heavy lifting and great writing skills and life experience. And Pat I am well aware of the "lawyer" problem you face as my daughter who just left in her car to go save some more lives as a Paramedic faces the same lawyers every minute on the job. She is seriously moving toward nursing in order to get under the shield of the MD's and hospital's insurance. Tort reform is way over due but until we get enough Tea Party candidates elected we will never see it happen. Certainly not under this present admin. nor the last. Way too much conflict of interest and pressure from the lobbyists. We need to take our country back. I can say that here as this is "The Threadjacker"s Group"

[Keith Rowan]

facts are facts, and that is usually lost on people..

the whole "dead doctors don't lie" - a florida congressman quoted an opinion piece  from cosmopolitan (june 1936) that was basically an ad for vitamins,, read into the record in the congress and now quoted as a government study?  sounds like a michelle bachman study..

if there was scientific merit to using cs, it could easily be proven..and repeatable..i'm guessing that the truth lies somewhere between "miracle cure" and "hoax"

i'll bet that many of the "sites" supporting the claims of the efficacy of cs are selling cs... and you don't trust pharma? (not that i trust pharma - i'm a skeptic)

you think that if something really worked, that the folks selling it would be able to prove it.. anecdotal evidence aside..?

 

[Jim Fisk]

It has been proven thousands of times to MY satisfaction and for me that is all that counts. Do as you please but some people on here appreciate the truth and need help with their systems. It is simple to most: cs works just as zinc oxide works for other needs and so on and so on. Your close minded opinions really get old. I have been enjoying the benefits of cs for about 20 yrs while the "skeptics" have not. It is just that simple. I guess that I am winning

BTW my surgeon tells me that her instruments are now silver plated to help prevent bacterial growth during surgery. Now why would that be? BTW results ARE facts.

[Eric Warwick]

ASXFSBFHJDSJLVJJKVCMKVM VM,BJGIRJFBMKF! COLLOIDAL SILVER=/=ELEMENTAL SILVER! That's all, carry on. Sayoonara. 

[Jim Fisk]

I find it interesting not to mention amusing that rocket scientists seem to know more about cs than these naysayers on this thread. About 35 years ago the NASA scientists were trying to figure out a safe way to keep the drinking water on the space capsules potable and they did not want corrosive bleach in the system like city water so after years of research they looked back in time and came up with silver as the best and safest answer. I am guessing as to the time frame based upon the fact that by about 1980 that "space age" tech was made available to the us the consumer. About the same time that NASA brought us Memory Foam they also brought us silver impregnated activated charcoal water filters. If you have a water filter I urge you to look into the silver impregnated type. That is what we have been using for about twice as long as our friend Eric has been on the planet. Anti bacterial silver filters have been to the moon and back.

Perhaps the most important realization and lesson in life that bright teenagers need to learn is that not only do they not have all the answers but their AP teachers don't either and certainly the people writing their science books, chemistry books and even their math books don't have all the answers. It took me until about my mid 20's to learn that valuable lesson. Some people never do.

Back in my 20s when I came down with my first bad attack of arthritis nearly every MD of the time (70s) was absolutely sure that joint tissue could not be repaired or rejuvenated and were quick to tell you so in their office and in every article of the time. I was keenly aware of their stance on this as I had gone thru about 20 years of watching my mother being told that constantly and she ended her days in a wheelchair unable to lift a fork under the care and treatment of her doctors. This was particularly distressing to me as a young adult as she was a famous artist that among other things had designed the presidential series of PO stamps of 1938 and was on display at the 38 World's Fair in NYC.

Knowing that the medical profession had no clue whatsoever that would help me I started my own 30 year endeavor to cure my own ailing joints and read every study I could find. Well I did cure my ailing joints and have helped many others do the same and now 40 years later I have no discernible joint problems at all and if after a day or three of cutting, splitting and stacking of firewood my joints do start to flare up I know exactly what to do and NOW it is general knowledge among natural healers and a select few open minded MDs that joints most certainly can be salvaged and brought back to health.

Back to cs. Silver is supposed to be a natural element found in our soil and plants will naturally as nature intended draw it up along with all the other natural minerals in colloidal form. Unfortunately due to "modern" farming practices we grow our food on bomb making materials and dead soil and never address the vast problem of "soil depletion". My father went before Congress in the late 50's warning about this looming problem particularly here in the US. He is in the Congressional Record as stating that "Americans are starving to death at a full dinner table" Just one of those lost minerals is silver.

So Eric as far as I am concerned your immature uneducated rantings are just that. Try actually doing something rather than regurgitating what your teachers and text books are telling you. We need intelligent young minds like yours to think outside the box and not be a slave to the norm. My advice to school children is to question authority and take everything you read or are taught in school with a healthy grain of salt. You will thank me in the end.

[Jim Fisk]

And Keith, do you know anything at all about the book "Dead Doctors Don't Lie"?? Do you know the author as I do DR. Joel Wallach? His credentials as a famous veterinarian are well documented and have nothing to do with anything whatsoever from 1936. I suggest you read his work BEFORE you criticize it. You and Nancy Pelosi must be pals based upon her record of passing laws before she reads them.

[Eric Warwick]

Oh, for f'ks sake. Could you provide any sources for your rantings--other than "natural news?" Skepticism is by definition questioning authority. Also, I'm finding these facts to be very, very relevant right now. http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/10/02/20788519-the-side-of-t... Oh, but wait, that's just the "lerbral mredria--iz canz trutz thaz!" Interesting side note: older people are generally more credulous of claims, which is why many scams, tragically, target the elderly. (http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/33535/title/W... Notice that they site a rigorous scientific study, which has been peer-reviewed and replicated.) Also, it is well-known that elemental copper, silver, and similar elements have strong anti-bacterial properties; however, colloidal silver is a complex structure with a silver ion in the center. That is different. Please, do not confuse the two. In any case, I'm setting up a aquaponic system soon, so I'm going to post my plans later today. 

Also, just because I'm a masochist or something--seriously, why do I get into these things?--I'm pro genetically modified foods, pro-vaccines, pro-western medicine, but that just comes from being pro-science. If you want to argue about something that is not a complete science (ex. economics), I'm in favor of the welfare-state. Do with that as you wish. 

[Eric Warwick]

Last thing: "science is more than just a body of knowledge [and it is]--it's a way of thinking, a way of skeptically interrogating the universe."--Carl Sagan.  All I can say right now, is that this thread should probably be removed, because it doesn't exactly set a good example for the community, in general. This kind of argument is not why I joined when there were only ~800 members, around three years ago. Jim, I'm more than happy that you're not getting pain from your arthritis. To me, how pain is reduced is not exactly a problem--except if it involves a hyper-expensive placebo that may very well be harmful to your health. Anyway, I wish you all luck. Live long and prosper. To end this, here's some nice music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VucczIg98Gw.