Dear Taylor, A fascinating and disturbing story indeed. One thing puzzles me though. I happen to edit health industry news including FDA approvals, trials, etc., and it's been my understanding that the FDA doesn't test anything -- it's up to the applicant to organize, operate and pay for all studies and clinical trials. The results are then presented, sometimes to an FDA expert panel, or directly to the FDA commission if they're feeling especially favorable (for whatever reason). The expert panel recommends and the commission usually, but not always, takes its recommendation. But no one at the FDA does anything but review the results of the research the applicant has done.
Can you tell me why the Impro investigation was done differently? Sam Taylor wrote: Sac> Hi Alex, about your theory of cows as antibody factories and the Impro Sac> story... Sac> Ok, let's see.... Sac> In about 1980 I worked in a friend of mine's law firm. There was a client, Sac> Impro, a company formed and run by a family by the name of Collins. Mary Sac> Collins was the President of Impro at that time. I worked with her brother Sac> Jim the most. At that time he was in his 70's. Sac> The issue I worked on was the testing of Impro by the FDA, which had been Sac> performed some years before. I believe that it may have been 10 or l5 years Sac> before. The testing seemed to show that Impro was not effective in Sac> increasing milk production in cows (increased milk production was one of many Sac> claims on behalf of the product...I'll get the the medical ones later) a Sac> finding which was completely inconsistent with the family's work with their Sac> cows for 20 plus years. The family was stunned, but found themselves Sac> stonewalled by FDA. They hired a lawyer, the founder of the firm I worked Sac> for. Unfortunately, the founder of the firm, who worked at the headquarters Sac> in Iowa, was nearly certifiably insane. Although he of course treated the Sac> Collins like family, and for years they thought he walked on water, his Sac> manner with everyone else was atrocious. He was an intimidator of the worst Sac> sort. I have plenty other things to say about him, like he skimmed the till, Sac> but this is the relevant quality he brought to bear in this case. He Sac> attempted to proceed to convince the FDA by intimidation to repeat the test. Sac> The FDA dug their trenches even deeper. Sac> The whole family smelled a rat of some type. My memory of what they did Sac> before I met them is sketchy, but it is my understanding that they Sac> interviewed some of the farmers about the tests personally, and found Sac> terrible deviations from the experimental protocol. However during these Sac> interviews their upset about what they were hearing, and their lawyer's Sac> atrocious manner, got the farmers in an uproar, and communications completely Sac> broke down. Investigation into what happened was discontinued. Sac> Now, my contact, Jim, was rather unusual. The rest of the family didn't take Sac> him quite seriously. He was thought of as the odd duck. His form of Sac> communication was unique...I don't know how to describe it to you, really, Sac> except that rambling might hint at it. And although he was in his 70's, he Sac> was quite innocent, and almost like a child. He was very dear. I just Sac> seemed to know how to hear him. Sac> Over the years Jim had continued relentlessly in his statistical evaluation Sac> of the data they had managed to get from the first few farmers they Sac> interviewed. Jim's statistics finally convinced the family to let him go to Sac> the individual farms involved in the test and interview some of the other Sac> farmers to see how they had performed their tests. Sac> Because I paid attention to his statistics and could see his logic, and my Sac> understanding somehow helped convince his family that he was onto something Sac> worthy of the money it would cost to investigate, and because he felt I would Sac> be a good diplomat with the farmers, everyone agreed he should take me along Sac> to help out. We traveled around for about three months. Sac> What we found out was that the FDA didn't bother to communicate to the Sac> farmers what the experimental protocol was supposed to be. Each farmer Sac> performed the "experiment" in a different manner from the other. None but a Sac> very few were told the entire protocol. I remember that among other things Sac> there were issues to do with timing which were critical, and timing issues Sac> were wholeheartedly ignored by the FDA in all but one or two cases. Sac> Note: because this test involved cows, and because the FDA did not keep Sac> cows, the FDA contracted with individual dairy farmers for the experiment. Sac> For some reason, Impro was not involved in the process of communicating the Sac> experimental protocols to the farmers. Whether it was because the FDA Sac> insisted on keeping the reins, or whether Impro just trusted the FDA to do Sac> right, I don't remember. Sac> So the results were all over the place. But the few farmers who did receive Sac> the entire protocol, or a nearly complete protocol, had great results. Sac> However, the FDA would not acknowledge the disaster surrounding its Sac> communication of the protocol, would not agree to a retest, and at the time I Sac> left the firm were still shutting the Collins family, and its nutty lawyer, Sac> out. I don't know what became of it all. Sac> Now Impro was made by ...let's see if I remember this correctly... a process Sac> whereby an antigen substance ...a bacteria in a form something akin to a Sac> vaccine... was given to the cow in her udder. I believe I'm remembering this Sac> correctly. When the cow calved, the milk would contain antibodies specific Sac> to the bacteria with which she was innoculated. The whey would then be taken Sac> from the milk, and it was that product which would then be bottled and given Sac> to people sick with the bacteria, and it would cure them. There was some Sac> information about the colostrum from those cows, but that information hasn't Sac> surfaced yet from stirring my mind on these long ago events. Sac> Impro had incredible potential. They had used it with fantastic results on Sac> many, many sick people who were at the end of the medical factory's ropes. Sac> People who had been left to die by their doctors experienced a return to Sac> health after taking Impro. The whole reason it failed to become known had to Sac> do with the FDA's test. Sac> Almost unbelievably, the failure of the test could be raced back to an old Sac> rivalry between the then-head of the FDA and the inventor of Impro. (The Sac> inventor was not in the Collins family, but the Collins family took it on for Sac> the inventor, and refined the idea over many years.) The Collins believed Sac> that the reason the communication of the test protocol was performed in a Sac> slip shod manner was because of shear spite. The rivalry had been terribly Sac> bitter and intense..I can't remember the details now. I have flotsum of Sac> details floating about in my brain...something about the inventor beating the Sac> FDA head to the punch in inventing Impro... they had both been in some Sac> professor's class together in college, gotten similar ideas because of this Sac> class, but one the inventor came up with a workable solution before the Sac> other... Sac> So, there...that's the story. Sometimes it makes you feel like we need to Sac> start the world from scratch again, doesn't it? Entanglements inside of Sac> entanglements... what a mess we are in. It reminds me of the FDA going after Sac> CS. Who can know what motivates such things? Sac> Best wishes, Sac> Taylor -- 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]>
