Doug: Count me in for $20 to start, and more later as we make progress. I completely agree with the need to do something to move this technology forward from a scientific point of view.
Dean Woodward Let me know where to send my check. -----Original Message----- From: Douglas McMurtrie [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Monday, July 06, 1998 4:06 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Doc stuff and more Wil, Ted and other list members, I appreciate all your thoughtful comments and I hope I was not taken to be holding the position that doctors are infallable. Progress and truth are perpetually moving targets that all are hopefully striving toward. There is much to say on this whole issue and it touches on many disparate but related things. I will try to stay focused. My posting was in response to the "doctor bashing" and generally negative view of what is called western medicine. Given the marvellous history of western medicine this strikes me as something akin to slapping your kid because he only got a B+ on his report card instead of an A. Room for improvement. Absolutely. But not too shabby nonetheless. I have great sympathy for Damien and his problem. My family lost a dear friend last year to CF. A delightful young man of 21 years with much promise and we are still saddened by the thought of it. I also have a close friend, a 40 year old woman, who was saved from the ravages of breast cancer by the same western medicine that failed our young friend. I would be the last to deny that we as human beings have much to learn but we is where we is. Since beginning to look into CS about six or eight months ago I have come to believe that there is the POSSIBILITY that this may be a substance of serious importance that has been overlooked. The majority of evidence presented on this list has been anecdotal in nature. This is not to diminish it but the fact remains that this is not the strongest form of evidence on which to conclude the truth of a thing. Wil, you are right that it has much value as a feedback mechanism, serving to confirm and bolster the confidence in conlusions drawn from experiment and controlled study. An example. A friend of mine was suffering for months from a sinus problem resulting in headaches, runny nose, and flu-like symptoms. I gave her some of my homebrewed CS of indeterminate concentration which she began to take. Within a week all the symptoms that had plagued her for months were gone. Did the CS cure her? Damned if I know. Maybe it was an allergy and she changed her shampoo. Maybe she dropped something from her diet. Maybe it was only coincidence and her immune system finally just caught up to the task. These are the kind of problems that are presented with anecdotal evidence. Well, you might say, look at all the positive anecdotes presented here. Again, for drawing scientific conclusions it is no more than suggestive. Maybe those who try CS and get no results simply walk away without ever reporting the negative results. It seems to me that much on the list is asserted as fact e.g. that 650 known pathogens can be killed by CS, or that CS is both bactericidal and virucidal, or that CS functions by disrupting the metablic pathways of bacteria, etc, is really nothing more than opinion, speculation, or the repetition of previously espoused myth. This sort of talk is fine and fun but does nothing to move CS closer to having a solid base of test evidence which might intrigue mainstream researchers enough to take the ball and run with it. About a week or so ago Bob Wells posted an interesting message about a friend that put him in contact with a firm that specialized in doing "microbial challenge" tests for industry. They were supposed to be quite capable of determining the minimum inhibitory concentration of a particular substance. The cost for testing was given at about $400. This strikes me as exactly the kind of basic science that we should be pursuing. I suggested at that time that we start a small fund to cover the cost of such testing and that I would be happy to salt it with $20 to get started. No response :( . I reopen the challenge now and I will up the ante. With a positive response from the list I will throw in $50 to jump start it. Don't tell me that you all wouldn't love to see the results of such a test! I know that I would. Best to all, Doug. -- The silver-list is a moderated forum for discussion of colloidal silver. To join or quit silver-list or silver-digest send an e-mail message to: [email protected] -or- [email protected] with the word subscribe or unsubscribe in the subject: line. To post, address your message to: [email protected] List maintainer: Mike Devour <[email protected]> -- The silver-list is a moderated forum for discussion of colloidal silver. To join or quit silver-list or silver-digest send an e-mail message to: [email protected] -or- [email protected] with the word subscribe or unsubscribe in the subject: line. To post, address your message to: [email protected] List maintainer: Mike Devour <[email protected]>
