On October 17, 2011, I discovered that Margaret Durst had published an article http://www.masoncountynews.com/news/article/46644 in the Mason County News on October 12, 2011 promoting colloidal silver and submitted the following comment.
Margaret, where do you get this stuff? Some references please. Search PubMed, the online index of medical journal articles, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=pubmed. Give me a reference to one study that shows that ingesting silver in any form or amount offers benefits. Then search it using the term “argyria” and see all the documented cases of skin discoloration caused by consuming silver, even the kind made electrically.
I’ve had argyria for over 50 years and been reviewing the medical literature on it for decades. I’ve never found any evidence that consuming it in any form or amount offered any benefits whatsoever or that there were any effective antibiotics prior to about 1940. I have found lots of evidence, see PubMed for starters, that consuming silver causes harm, that it is dangerous snake oil. And I am not alone. Check here:
http://nccam.nih.gov/health/alerts/silver/index.htm (Search NCCAM using the term "silver".)http://www.fda.gov/Food/DietarySupplements/Alerts/ucm184087.htmhttp://www.drweil.com/drw/u/id/QAA363388 (One of the major US promoters of "dietary supplements" and "natural remedies".)http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/colloidal-silver/an01682This is the site of a lawyer who is getting out-of-court settlements on behalf of people who have gotten argyria recently from silver supplements.http://www.goldenberglaw.com/CM/PracticeAreaDescriptions/Colloidal_Silver-Argyria.asp
And BTW you are breaking the law by making drug claims for a dietary supplement. The FDA and the State of Texas have taken legal action against people who have done that.
It will be interesting to see if you post this comment or ignore it like you did my previous one.http://rosemary-jacobs.blogspot.com/2011/10/margaret-durst-mason-county-news.htmlRosemary Jacobs
I also sent the following email to the paper.
Your columnist, Margaret Durst, is breaking the law by making drug claims for silver, a dietary supplement. http://www.masoncountynews.com/news/article/46644
It is illegal to do that. The FDA and the State of Taxes have taken action against others who have done it.http://www.star-telegram.com/2011/08/30/3325034/state-suing-fort-worth-naturopathic.html
I just posted this comment after her "article":
Margaret, where do you get this stuff? Some references please. Search PubMed, the online index of medical journal articles, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=pubmed. Give me a reference to one study that shows that ingesting silver in any form or amount offers benefits. Then search it using the term “argyria” and see all the documented cases of skin discoloration caused by consuming silver, even the kind made electrically.
I’ve had argyria for over 50 years and been reviewing the medical literature on it for decades. I’ve never found any evidence that consuming silver in any form or amount offers any benefits whatsoever or that there were any effective antibiotics prior to about 1940. I have found lots of evidence, see PubMed for starters, that consuming silver causes harm, that it is dangerous snake oil. And I am not alone. Check here:
http://nccam.nih.gov/health/alerts/silver/index.htm (Search NCCAM using the term "silver".)http://www.fda.gov/Food/DietarySupplements/Alerts/ucm184087.htmhttp://www.drweil.com/drw/u/id/QAA363388 (One of the major US promoters of "dietary supplements" and "natural remedies".)http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/colloidal-silver/an01682This is the site of a lawyer who is getting out-of-court settlements on behalf of people who have gotten argyria recently from silver supplements.http://www.goldenberglaw.com/CM/PracticeAreaDescriptions/Colloidal_Silver-Argyria.asp
And BTW you are breaking the law by making drug claims for a dietary supplement. The FDA and the State of Texas have taken legal action against people who have done that.
It will be interesting to see if you post this comment or ignore it like you did my previous one.http://rosemary-jacobs.blogspot.com/2011/10/margaret-durst-mason-county-news.htmlRosemary Jacobs(There may be minor differences. I edited the comment before submitting it but didn't save the changes.)
Is there something you can do to alert the public and prevent someone else from getting argyria?
RosemaryRosemary Jacobs
The following response arrived immediately.
I’ve also forwarded your comments to Mrs. Durst.G
Gerald L. (Gerry) Gamel, Editor
Mason County News
325/347-5757 Voice -- 325/347-5668 FAX
To which I responded:
Thank you. I hope that Ms. Durst very quickly presents solid evidence supporting her claims or admits that she was mistaken and alerts the public to the danger and uselessness of ingesting silver. I also hope that the paper does a well researched article about dietary supplements and the need to independently verify any claims, especially those from salespeople, about safety and efficacy.
Then I checked the first Durst article that I had commented on and blogged about http://rosemary-jacobs.blogspot.com/2011/10/margaret-durst-mason-county-news.html and discovered that my comment had been posted after it, yet when I looked again today, October 21st, it was no longer there and as of today, the comment I submitted after her article promoting silver has not appeared.
Ms. Durst’s columns are also published on http://www.lewrockwell.com/, a site which does not enable readers to post comments and, as far as I can tell, doesn’t provide anyway for them to contact or communicate with the site owner or its writers.
I personally don’t take such a site seriously. To me the failure to include an easy way to offer different opinions or to present evidence of factual errors indicates that the people running the site are promoting their personal beliefs, agendas or goods and services and that they don’t want their readers to hear anything contradictory. That plus the fact that Lew Rockwell bills itself as “anti-state, anti-war, pro-market” leads me to believe, well at least hope, that any rational person who bothers reading it will take what it says with the proverbial grain of salt.
However, I don’t think the same can be said for material published in “newspapers” since journalists have long indoctrinated us with the idea that papers have editors who check sources and facts zealously deleting anything that can’t be independently verified. In fact, I’ve very recently heard publishers claim that that is exactly why traditional publications are needed by society and why they are so much superior to Internet sites where anyone can and does write whatever he wants.
If it were true that reporters and editors do the job we have been taught that they do, I don’t think the newspaper and broadcasting industries would be suffering the serious declines in readership that they are today. But till the word gets out to everyone that they are not, let me repeat, do not believe claims about anything as important as your health, not even those that you read in the paper, hear on the radio or see on TV, unless you independently verify them or, if you lack the time and resources to do that, have them verified by an expert with no financial interest in the products or services being promoted.
While that is especially true for claims made by salespeople, it also applies to those made by the media, which unfortunately often uses promotional material written by salespeople to fill space. And, of course, since newspapers, TV and radio stations are in business to make money, they have to publish material that interests the public and pleases, or at least doesn’t offend, advertisers in order to make a profit so that they can stay in business.
Tags: Margaret Durst, Mason County News, Mason County Texas, colloidal silver, the media, newspapers, Lew Rockwell.
