CNN Health carried this story on Nov. 8th... Here's the interesting part of it, or follow the link for the whole story.
http://www.cnn.com/2001/HEALTH/11/08/universal.drug.ap/index.html "Another supplement under serious academic study as an all-purpose drug is silver. It has been hawked for decades as a popular remedy for a variety of ailments, so microbiologist Ron Leavitt at Brigham Young University balked three years ago when a company first asked him to test its solution scientifically. "I said, 'Go away!"' he recalled in an interview. "I fully expected it not to do a thing." Reluctantly agreeing, he compared the silver compound to the common antibiotic tetracycline in action against 11 germs. In each case, he says, the silver compound worked as well or better. Leavitt says he doubted his own findings, so he did the experiments again -- and again. The results were the same against those strains and nine others. One was E. coli, another potential agent of terrorism. The interested company, American Biotech Labs of Alpine, Utah, has begun to test the solution for anthrax and ear infections, says spokesman Keith Moeller. Leavitt says silver, at the levels used in the solution, appears to be toxic to germs but safe for people. He plans to extend his experiments to animals. He suspects the silver acts as a catalyst, perhaps promoting a reaction that short-circuits a germ's energy metabolism. One potential drawback, he said, is the danger of killing desirable germs, like those that protect the skin and mouth against disease microbes. Immune-regulating drugs are less likely to show this disadvantage, because the immune system knows pretty well how to tell friendly forces from those of the enemy. " Copyright 2001 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
