Fellow silver-listers, in regard to the recent discussions of the FDA and its recent announcement about products containing silver . . .
I seem to recall that there was a "FDA scare" regarding aloe vera product sales a few years ago. A doctor who fervently preached this scare, as well as the medicinal values of aloe vera, on the lecture circuit -- and had written on the subject as well -- had decided to get out of the business of selling aloe vera products "to avoid having his products confiscated by the FDA." His plainspoken advice from the podium to everyone was, "If you sell, don't tell. If you tell, don't sell." Today, I believe that there are more aloe vera products on sale everywhere than back then (five years ago) during the "FDA scare period." And today there is a private industry watchdog group that puts its seal of approval on aloe vera products it has examined and certified. The labels I read now on the aloe vera products in the stores don't claim anything other than a nutritional product/value. And today I only purchase an aloe vera product that displays on its label the "Seal of the International Aloe Science Council\." (IASC). If you want good, authoritative, and objective information on aloe vera you can just browse for this Council on the Internet. I use aloe vera products for my "personal nutritional purposes" because they seem to meet some of my perceived personal health needs. Those who manufacture colloidal silver products should seriously consider setting up a similar watchdog organization -- an "International Colloidal Silver Council" (ICSC) -- to voluntarily police your industry and create a Seal of Approval or Certification. You could get some good pointers by studying the way the IASC started up and now functions. It is a relatively new organization. I am sure the founder of the IASC will talk to you. You could let your ICSC do your "telling" of the fabulous colloidal silver story. It would be more credible as well as legal in the USA. The ICSC would have more clout with government entities and the public. If this has already been done why have I not heard about it on the silver-list forum? When the FTC took over control of the USA sale of nutritional supplements and OTC products, in 1994, they set up some rules. These rules included the rule that company literature that accompanied their product was considered to be the same as labelling ON the product. Fair enough. Another rule was that if a therapeutic claim was made for the product, the claim had to be substantiated with research references. Negative research results also had to be reported. Hence the "shocking" TV commercials we see and hear these days for some OTC products. I believe, also, that this research reference information must be made available in writing to any consumer who requests it of the manufacturer. It would appear to me that colloidal silver is still marketable as a mineral supplement along with other colloidal mineral supplements, for its nutritional value. It seems to me that there is an obvious danger of overdosing on anything especially colloidal mineral supplements as presently labelled and marketed in the USA. Mineral supplement products that do not list on the bottle label the bottle's exact content of each mineral are particularly worrisome to me. Even more worrisome is the colloidal multi-mineral label that reads, "contents may vary from batch to batch" or somesuch. Yikes! Talk about playing Russian Roullette with your body! For example . . . If your ancestry is at least partly of Western European origin you owe it to yourself to browse and read thoroughly the Internet-available information you turn up when you browse with the words, "Iron Overload Syndrome." If you think you are of this ancestry, albeit distant, and you use a colloidal multi-mineral supplement or a multi-vitamin supplement that does not say on the label, "Without Iron" or "Iron Free," YOU BEST DO IT SOON. "Silver beaucue [bow-coo] may turn you blue, but iron may be much worse for YOU." Why did Belgium, France and Germany prohibit food companies from adding iron to their food products and the United States of America required it to be added? -- Spiroflex, an Iron Free Advocate and Aloe/CS Sipper
