COMMENTARY — Medicinal silver

One dose of silver oxide may prolong the life of terminally ill patients stricken with acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), according to a study conducted at a clinic in Central America. The triple-charged silver in silver oxide appears to significantly increase the effectiveness of the metal in combating disease-prone bacteria and viruses that rage through AIDS-infected patients.

This action of silver offsets the loss of the body’s bacteria-fighting immune system caused by HIV, the AIDS virus. At the Struggle Against AIDS Clinic in Honduras, 10 patients diagnosed as terminally ill (each was suffering from AIDS-related conditions known as wasting syndrome and candidiasis) were treated with polyvalent silver oxide.

Before the administration of a single dose of polyvalent silver oxide, (approximately 40 parts per million of blood volume), the patients were removed from the standard AZT therapy. Following the administration of the polyvalent silver oxide, the white blood cell count in eight patients increased by between 10% and 350%. The patients were then treated with standard antibiotics.

Two of the patients had conditions so far advanced that they were unresponsive to the subsequent treatment and succumbed to the illness within a year. However, the single treatment appeared to prolong the lives of the eight remaining patients by as much as three years.

Further research is needed to investigate the optimal modes of administration and dosages of polyvalent silver oxide for AIDS therapy.

Additional clinical trials are now being organized in South Africa to gain more data.

For more than a century, single-charged silver has been a proven barrier against blindness in babies exposed to disease during birth. Single-charged silver replaces hydrogen atoms, which supply energy to bacteria and extra-cellular viruses. Blocking the energy supply renders such viruses inactive. The more powerful, triple-charged oxide signals new potential in combating disease.

In one laboratory experiment, polyvalent silver oxide, in a concentration as low as 20 parts per million (ppm), was inserted into cultured HIV-1 infected cells, resulting in a kill rate of 98.4%. This news, reported by the National Virology Laboratory of Israel at Tel Hashomer, encouraged the Kaplan Hospital, also in Israel, to conduct a study of laboratory mice stricken with murine AIDS. A single administration of 40 ppm of polyvalent silver oxide reportedly resulted in an effective cure on the lab animals.

These early experiments with AIDS infections indicate that polyvalent silver oxide may be more than merely a multi-spectrum antibiotic inactivating a whole range of bacteria, such as candida albicans, that ravage the AIDS-weakened immune system. Further studies may reveal that silver also stimulates the body’s immune system to restore at least some of its normal function.

— The preceding is an excerpt from Silver News, the publication of Washington, D.C.-based The Silver Institute.