>NO, colloidal silver is not a part of a ferret's healthy diet .. any more
>than Amoxicillin is!  They are both antibiotic/antibacterial agents, NOT
>diet supplements!
 
Something that needs clarification here--the FDA has just ruled that it is
now illegal for colloidal silver to be sold for medicinal use, or for the
makers or retailers to claim that it has any effectiveness in fighting
illness.  It can now only be legally sold as a dietary supplement.
 
>BTW, St. John's Wort is also not a "drug" and not regulated by the FDA.
>Do you want to guess what the most prescribed antidepressant in Germany
>(where it IS a regulated substance, and where clinical trials have been
>done on it by Commission E) is?  It's not a prescription medicine .. it's
>St. John's Wort.
 
Ah, but St. John's Wort IS the subject of clinical trials!  A lot of
them, at this point.  Eventually, it will almost certainly be a regulated
medication, and probably a prescription one as well, simply because it's
fairly powerful.  Valerian is on the same track, I think, and melatonin,
and a host of other herbal medicines.  I've taken St. John's Wort myself,
I dig my own ginseng, I use a locally-growing plant known as Cramp Bark
for that time of the month, I use willowbark for an analgesic, and pine
needle/bay leaf/cinnamon infusions make excellent mouthwash.  If you get
a cut and we're stomping around in the Maine woods, I'll find a dock leaf
to cover it.  I take raspberry leaf for coughs and I love to eat roses--
the flowers and the hips.  I brew Wild Tea (also known as sweetfern and
stinkweed) and use it fresh as an insect repellent.  I harvest wild
chamomile and drink a tea of it and a bit of spearmint or pine to help me
sleep.  (Chamomile with mint makes an excellent hair wash that I've used on
the ferrets before too.) I am one of the few people who will literally eat
a bouquet if I don't remember not to.  If I had a reason to use an herbal
remedy on my ferrets, I would consider it--provided it was an herb I
understood well, and that I considered safe, and that the medium it was
dissolved in was neither sugarwater nor alcohol.
 
My point?  You're not talking to someone who's totally
establishment-friendly, or who trusts the FDA implicitly.  I simply do my
own research--lots of it!--and, based on that research, I do not believe in
the efficacy of colloidal or any other form of silver in combating disease.
I also do not believe that any two commercial preparations of CS are likely
to be what they say they are, or anything alike for that matter.  I would
absolutely refuse to purchase a product from manufacturers who persist in
wildly fraudulent claims, such as that CS is not retained by the body (it
is, in nearly every tissue and organ), that it doesn't kill beneficial
bacteria (it does, in water at least; in human blood and tissue it is less
effective) and that it has no harmful side effects.  In fact, silver is
toxic--read OSHA's definition of it for starters.  Argyria is simply the
FIRST side effect.  The others are less pleasant and some are
life-threatening.
 
I ask anyone who wants to look into Colloidal Silver for either themselves
or their ferrets to do what I have done and research the subject first.
Think for yourselves--and never blindly believe anyone who has a vested
interest in selling the product.
 
Jen and the Crazy Business
 
[Moderator's note: Will be taking the CS discussion offline for a while
too, as noted in yesterday's FML.  I'm ill tonight or I'd have done it.
And don't ask me if I'm gonna take CS... I won't tell!  BIG]
[Posted in FML issue 3091]