Hi Judy, Just in case there's any confusion:
Remember that viruses are small molecules of genetic material (DNA or RNA) that have evolved the ability to get into living cells and hijack their reproductive organs for the purpose of replicating the virus. Without a cell to do that work, the virus wouldn't be able to propagate. There are viruses out there that will infect just about any kind of cell; mammalian, plant, even bacterial. Bacteria are single celled organisms, some of which cause disease in higher organisms like us. Compared to viruses, they're huge. You can see bacteria with an optical microscope, but you need a much more powerful electron microscope to image viruses. Antibiotics, as generally defined, are substances that are targeted at bacteria. Viruses are not directly vulnerable to antibiotics. It is, in fact, the over-prescription of antibiotics to people with viral infections like a cold or flu that has helped create the antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria that plague mainstream medicine now. The problem is there aren't a lot of really good known anti-virals, at least that I'm aware of. Those we have tend to have side-effects that make them less than ideal. So medicine is still searching for the "cure for the common cold" for exactly the reason that they don't yet have really good anti-virals and antibiotics don't work directly on cold viruses. What antibiotics do, like our silver preparations, is prevent secondary bacterial infections from complicating the course of viral colds or flu. This is why they prescribe them for viral infections at all. Silver has the advantage here, because bacteria have a much harder time forming resistance to silver than to antibiotics. Even in the few cases where silver-resistant bacteria have been found in nature, once removed from the silver-rich environment they lose their resistance within a generation or two. The immunity is not genetically transmitted. And I know of no pathogenic bacterium that has ever done this. We do have some indications that silver also has at least limited anti-viral activity, such as the reports of folks curing aids or hep-c with it. But for most situations, it only serves to keep bacteria at bay leaving our immune systems free to deal with the viruses. There is a whole cascade of processes in the immune response to viral infection, most of which serve to control the damage being done until the body can create antibodies targeted to the specific virus. That finally kills the virus you've been fighting off, and you gain immunity to it and won't generally catch that exact bug ever again. Viruses, however, tend to mutate so rapidly that new strains are constantly being created which are just different enough to bypass the immunity from the last one and re-infect us the next time they circulate through the population. So there's this whole industry whose business is trying to predict which viruses are going to be big this year so they can produce flu vaccines in time for flu season. They don't always get it right. I haven't seen the show you're talking about, but if they're actually using the term "antibiotic" to describe an anti-viral, it's a totally new use or a mis-use of the word. As far as I know, the only silver-resistant bacteria that have ever been observed were found in extremely silver-rich soil environments near silver deposits or mining tailings or some-such unique situation. And as I mentioned above, the adaptation reverses when the bugs are taken away from that extreme environment. In our efforts to use silver therapeutically, as far as I know we've never seen any bacterium manage to become resistant. As for its effect against viruses? That's less obvious. Experience shows that it seems to help stop an infection if you catch it early enough, or you can take it routinely as a preventative. There have been a lot of folks that report going for years without catching a cold by taking a little silver every day or two. I've been one of them. Be well, Mike D. On Sat, 2014-12-20 at 16:57 -0500, Judy Knowlton wrote: > program on CNN – hunting for a new antibiotic because of the > increasing resistance of viruses to the present antibiotics. > > Have I been mistaken in believing “buglets” are unable to build up a > resistance to CS? It has been a matter of “faith” with me, I think! > > Judy Down Maine -- The Silver List is a moderated forum for discussing Colloidal Silver. Rules and Instructions: http://www.silverlist.org Unsubscribe: <mailto:[email protected]?subject=unsubscribe> Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html Off-Topic discussions: <mailto:[email protected]> List Owner: Mike Devour <mailto:[email protected]>
