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THE SILVER LINING Improving public health is much too important a matter to be left to the medical profession. That profession, for all its admirable qualities, thrives on disease, not its absence. And with the NHS drugs bill exceeding three billion pounds a year, the pharmaceutical industry is obviously thriving on the treatment rather than prevention of disease; indeed, there is plenty of evidence to show that this industry exerts far too much influence on medical politics as well as treatment. But times are changing , and it becomes clearer by the day that hi-tech surgery, ‘miracle drugs’ and ‘blunderbuss’ immunisation programmes are making little impact on the incidence and outcome of most common diseases; indeed, it is officially confirmed that some of these diseases are on the increase. Divide the year-on-year annual NHS bill by the number of people treated and then try to persuade yourself that more of the same means progress. On the same graph, show the annual statistics for major diseases and death rates, also immunisation figures, and you’ve got more than enough evidence to challenge the bland reassurances of medical pundits and their spin-doctor colleagues. Disease means dependency, and an unhealthy population is inevitably burdened with ever-rising NHS bills along with all the indirect costs to social services and the economy. A radical shift of resources from disease treatment to health promotion is the only sensible way forward; whereas we hear government ministers and their medical ‘authorities’ actually boasting about increasing treatment numbers , when what we need to see is fewer people needing treatment. Most people will be aware of the current anxieties about drug-resistant organisms making life inside hospitals more hazardous than life outside. An example is the MRSA (methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus) organism commonly responsible for many dangerous infections. The prodigious reproduction rate of common pathogenic organisms means that they soon produce offspring impervious to drugs once regarded as ‘the answer’ to septicaemia, TB, VD, pneumonia, etc. And all we hear from officialdom is calls for better hygiene in hospitals(!) ; while the drug industries and research institutes demand even more funds to develop new ‘answers’ which, of course, will very soon fail for the same reason. So it is scarcely surprising that very serious questions are now being raised about the cost-benefit performance of the NHS, along with dire predictions of untreatable future epidemics on the scale of the 1918 ‘flu’ catastrophe which killed several million people. And sombre warnings about terrorist germ warfare only add to these anxieties. So conventional antibiotics - at best only effective against a few types of disease organism - are already obsolescent. Meanwhile, these same drugs are themselves liable to produce a variety of sometimes serious side-effects, if only because they indiscriminately destroy beneficent organisms in the body. They may also interact dangerously with other medications. Since we can no longer depend on conventional medicine and the drug industry to protect us against infectious diseases, there is every reason to look for alternatives which are at least as effective as any modern antibiotic and also easily affordable. Fortunately for us all, this particular cloud has a silver lining. More precisely, the remedy is colloidal silver. Being an elementary substance, it cannot be patented and has therefore never interested drug manufacturers. Recognition of silver as a disease-preventing substance has nevertheless been around for a very long time. The preference of Greeks and Romans for silver food containers and drinking vessels was based on more than ostentation; and European aristocrats would use nothing else during the times of pestilence. (So much so that excessive ingestion of silver gave rise to a bluish tinge in the complexion; hence ‘blue-blooded’ aristocrats). Early American settlers commonly left a silver dollar in the milk jug to ‘keep it sweet’, and laboratory workers sometimes put a silver coin in a petri dish to prevent it becoming infected. There is now abundant scientific evidence that silver is the safest and most powerful antibiotic known. It destroys at least six hundred types of common disease-causing bacteria within six minutes, along with viruses and parasites which antibiotic drugs cannot touch. Moreover, it is impossible for all such (unicellular) organisms to develop resistance to silver colloid. It is entirely safe, with no side-effects, and does not interact with other forms of medication. It works by disabling the disease organism’s ability to obtain oxygen, thereby literally suffocating it. There are several firms (check Internet ‘colloidal silver’ web sites) selling the stuff at hugely inflated prices, or selling absurdly expensive gadgets for making it. In fact, you can easily make it on the kitchen table using a jar of distilled water, four PP3 batteries (connected in series), a couple of ‘crocodile’ clips and two pieces of pure silver wire. This last is obtainable from jewellery-makers/suppliers; but failing this you could use two Canadian 99.9 per cent pure silver dollar coins (sold on the Internet). When connected to the batteries and suspended an inch or so apart in the jar of distilled water, positively-charged silver ions separate from the wire/coins and remain suspended in the water. Leave the jar to one side for an hour or so, or until the water acquires a faint yellowish tinge. Store the liquid in a dark glass (not plastic) bottle ready for use, either in teaspoonful doses or applied directly to wounds or other skin lesions. It will also kill plant and pet infections and disinfect containers. Don’t expect the medical profession, much less the drug manufacturers, to trumpet the virtues of colloidal silver; there’s nothing in it for them, only for the patients. Indeed, the American FDA (Food and Drug Administration), intent on protecting the medical monopoly and drug industry, tried to suppress its availability to the general public without prescription. And for a time it succeeded, but was finally overruled by more and more States satisfied that colloidal silver represented no threat at all to public safety and actually offered better and cheaper protection against infection than anything the drug industry could provide. For reasons already given it will take considerable political leverage along with a massive publicity campaign to exploit the full potential of this remarkable substance. Even so, it offers huge savings on the NHS drugs bill and the only reliable defence against the looming threat of dangerous epidemics, so is certainly worth the effort... Meanwhile there’s nothing to stop any household making the stuff and thereby protecting itself against bacterial, virus and parasitical infections, many of them resistant to all pharmaceutical products. F Kimbal Johnson March 2007
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