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Water + Salt + Energy = Clean!
codesmith.ca writes "CTV News is reporting about a device built at the Russian Institute for Medical Engineering that can convert standard water and salt into an antimicrobial solution. Apparently it's works on almost anything (virii, bacteria, cysts...) and it's safe for human consumption to boot. I can't find a site for the institute, but there are articles around. This one is fairly detailed, but hard to reach. Here's the Google cache. Here's one about a paper shows it's not exactly super-new technology." Any chemist care to comment on what sounds to be too good to be true?
val kilmer shows up and proves it to be a hoax.
four-oh-four
cool
does this mean that windows machines will be virus free from now on??
Stand on you own head for a change! --TMBG
This one is fairly detailed, but hard to reach.
ALL links in Slashdot are hard to reach. This one is just soon to be impossible to reach.
who has ever been told to gargle with salt water for a sore throat?
1. Claim to have invented salt water
Mod my comments down. It'll be fun.
I can convert beer into a water and salts solution! What do I get?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Then why aren't you supposed to be in the ocean during a thunderstorm? Seems highly similar...Except apparently with real lightning and salt water you die.
Using electricity, it splits table salt (NaCl) into Na+ and Cl- ions, and you get chlorinated, swimming pool water. And the Na+ is recycled by recombining with Cl- and all you ever add is salt. I saw one of these units on "This Old House," for a swimming pool. Bottom line: never add chlorine, just salt and electricity.
The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.
From what the article says, it sounds like all they're doing is passing a high electrical current through a saline solution. I don't understand how this solution is supposed to retain its charge, let alone not decompose the salt solution into base molecules. (hydrogen, chlorine, oxygen)
Has anyone seen a more detailed description of how this thing actually works? It can't be as simple as the article describes, solutions just don't work that way.
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Add some cough syrup to it and you get a Flaming Hom^H^H^H^HMoe!
"Derp de derp."
Let's have a look at that CTV report:
The resulting solution is so energy rich, it dissolves all microbes it comes in contact with, in water, on objects and on human skin. It also happens to be odorless, colorless, and completely safe for human consumption.
It dissolves microbes, but is safe for human consumption? Is anyone else not convinced?
Researchers said the technique used to control bacteria, viruses, cysts and germs is 200 to 300 times more efficient than any other purification alternative.
200 to 300 times more efficient, how, exactly? And what does it do to help cysts?
(and, er, what's the difference between a virus and a germ?)
The process is cheap. It costs just fractions of a penny to purify a litre of water. Researchers have even been able to take spoiled milk and, by passing it through the Emerald, make it fresh once again. Sounds like science fiction, doesn't it?
Yep... it does. Sorry.
Here's a report summary I found on the technology from the Foundation for Water Research. It's not all that and a bag of chips.
http://www.fwr.org/wrcsa/832100.htm
just putting salt into solution ionizes it. if you apply electricity you will hydrolyze the water and split it into hydrogen and oxygen gas. put the crackpipe down.
-- john
No rocket science here, don't understand why something as simple as the electrolysis of brine makes in on Slashdot ...
...
... as expected, Cl- -> Cl2 ... but the trick
here is that the formed chlorine reacts with water
and even better with the NaOH that diffuses from
the cathode to form ... bleach (hypochlorite that is) ! ... "The anolyte has powerful bactericidal characteristics and is effective in the control of harmful organisms like bacteria, viruses, cysts, and germs."
:-)
Freshman chemistry tells you:
NaCl -> Na+ + Cl-
H2O -> H+ + HO- (actually H3O+ instead of H+ but that's details)
Then, you add some electricity and you get:
At cathode (- electrode), H+ -> H2 (bubbles out) which means a lot of Na+ and HO- are left floating around - thus, per Google cached article in the original post: "The catholyte is a powerful alkaline solution used for [...]" -- not surprising at all, as you can see
Then, at anode (+ electrode) you've got HO- and Cl-
Cl2 + NaOH -> NaCl + NaClO
Now what does the article say?
Damn that highschool chem
END-OF-CHEM-LESSON
This is an experiment I did in elementary school.
It's called electrolysis. You separate salt water into
Use enough voltage, and maybe you bump oxygen to ozone, a superoxidizer (see above).
None of this takes any kind of chemist to see.
Note also that these chemicals are extremely hazardous in their uncombined forms. Remember Apollo 1 and its pure oxygen atmosphere at full sea-level pressure? Skin catches fire almost explosively in that sort of atmosphere - it's truly horrible what pure oxygen can do. Combine hydrogen and oxygen in the right proportions and they will explode. Sodium is poison and explosive when combined with water. Chlorine is poision.
Some of the more recent explorations into silver as a disinfectant with good tolerance in the body might be more profitable to follow, but also have snake-oil potential because too few people recognize that as another century-old technology that has a mass-market application in swimming pools today.
Were I you guys, I'd kill the story.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Sugar can also be used to kill bacteria, the sugar creates an osmosis effect to explode the bacteria.
Actually they dehydrate and essentially implode.
The egyptions used honey on surface wounds, and mouldy bread on deeper wounds. THe honey worked on the same principle.
As best I can tell, the idea here is to kill bacteria by applying charge. It might not be very effective after the charge was released (for those that don't know, the salt creates a pathway for electrons to pass through the solution, but they are passed in the form of H+ and O- ions, and this gives off H2 and O2 as the electricity is applied.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
This was already on the news this week. It's being touted as a non-toxic way to clean a building of anthrax and reoccupy the building within hours.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
A virus is basically a self replicating (with a hosts help) package of RNA.
A germ (or bacteria) is a single celled organism.
Here's the problem as I see it. "spoiled" milk is not JUST caused by bacterial action. It's also a chemical conversion of lactose and lipids. Unless this stuff is some Uber-Converter that can reverse time, this story is full of crap. Now, it COULD have enough energy to 'dissolve' the biological matter present in it. Hell, if I put a huge current though an ionic solution, I can almost guarantee everything in it is going to be toast too.
That's not remarkable, that's bad swimming pool pump maintenace.
Find out about my new childrens book: SS Death Camp Criminal Batallion Go To Monte Carlo For The Massacre
Ok, when you dump salt (NaCl) into water, it instantly dissolves into the respective ions, Na+ and Cl-. Cl- ions are not what are used for sterilizing swimming pools; Sodium hypochlorite is used for this, that splits into Na+ and a Hypochlorite- ion. Hypochlorite is very aggressive & will reduce (give an electron to) practically anything.
What makes me suspicious of the Emerald device is the following line:
"The catholyte is a powerful alkaline solution used for treating industrial effluent like the ones from Electro-plating, photographic, and/or textile plants. Catholyte has powerful properties for flocculation, coagulation, bionutrient transfer, cleaning purposes, and neutralizing the toxicity of heavy metals."
Ok, if the catholyte is a powerful alkaline solution, it then follows that the anolyte is a powerful acid solution. Can't make one without the other. And powerful acid solutions aren't exactly benign.
And don't forget, the first 20 collers get a free Elbrus E2K CPU!
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
The water breaks down the sodium and chlorine ions itself, the eletricity just pulls them apart, giving you chlorine gas (I think).
I don't see how it would be safe for humans, but whatever.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
The reaction isn't, as some have said:
NaCl + 2H20 + electricity -> Na + Cl + 2H2 + O2
Rather, you get a hypochlorous acid ion, an a sodium hydroxide ion. In effect, the reverse of mixing hypochlorous acid and lye.
However, you get it in VERY dilute quantities, nowhere near what you'd need to damage human skin. But if you are an itty bitty microbe, the oxidizing effect is deadly.
Really, this is just a "bleach on demand" sort of thing.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Keep in mind that no more energy is going to be released by this thing then put into it, so the byproducts won't be all that bad.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Basically, the idiot who wrote the CTV article has taken a straight scientific story and turned it into a gee whiz pseudoscientific fantasy.
Look, unless you believe in alchemy and slow retort cooking under the full moon, the only thing you're going to get from this contraption is Hydrochloric Acid and Sodium Hydroxide, a strong acid and a strong base (alkali), both of which have antibacterial properties. From the technical description of the actual device, it looks like they're using some kind of ceramic membrane to prevent the positive hydrogen ions and the negative hydroxyl radicals from actually recombining with the Sodium Chloride to form the respective acid and base, so what you end up with are free hydrogen radicals (basically just free protons) and free hydroxyl radicals (basically water that's missing a proton). Neither of these is safe in any sense I can imagine. I certainly wouldn't want to be around if the two products came into contact with NaCl by accident. Heat, Light, Boom, Burn! Or maybe just a slow dermal sizzle.
There's a real pastiche of data here. Variations on a theme mixed together in a haphazard way. None of which adds up to what the CTV article suggests. What you get when you send a reporter to cover a technical story.
Useful technology no doubt, but nothing you'd want to drink.
Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.
When you have a cold you're immune system is weaker, and antibiotics can help prevent extra infections, and kill off any opportunistic ones that happen to show up.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
No doubt the electric field applied causes small bubbles to form within the solution, and then rapidly collapse. This collapse leads to extroardinarily high temperatures and pressures, which in turn cause nuclear fusion to take place. Stray gammas generated by this fusion result in the destruction of nearby pathogens.
Seriously, this technique sounds like a load of crap, for the most part. I can buy the electrochemical action bit, sort of. Pure molten NaCl (salt, hereafter) will electrolyze to form sodium and chlorine gas, sure enough. With a little creative engineering, it is possible to separate these to products and collect them for later use. Indeed, this is exactly what is done for commercial production of these two elements.
On contact with water, pure Na will form a solution of (aggressively basic) sodium hydroxide plus some hydrogen gas. (This, I assume, is the catholyte we hear about.) Chlorine in water forms an acidic solution which is, to be fair, definitely germicidal.
I see two problems. The first is technical. In a water solution, the electrolytic yields of sodium and chlorine are typically both very low, because oxygen and hydrogen gas are preferentially formed first. (There are sound thermodynamic reasons for this.) Maybe these experimenters have gotten around this somehow, perhaps using exotic catalysts or something.
The second problem is a bit more difficult. If the two component solutions (sodium + water and chlorine + water) are kept separate, individually they would be quite toxic. Brought together, there is a very quick reaction that brings us right back to salt and water--not a particularly powerful disinfectant, and what we started with before we had a mystical black box.
I can think of some other more creative possibilities, as well. Perhaps they're talking about generating some sort of activated state oxygen to do the dirty work (the salt just makes the water conductive)--in which case, they're definitely frauds. There just aren't any activated oxygen states that are stable long enough (in water) to get to the surface to be disinfected. Atomic oxygen might do it, but that's already been invented--and I'm pretty sure it won't last very long in solution either.
Finally, from the article, we have the quote:
f a letter is suspected of containing anthrax spores, it could be passed through a dry mist made from the Emerald solution and the letter would be sterilized.
The letter wouldn't even get wet. Anyone exposed to the spores could bathe in the solution and be germ free.
Erm. Dry mist. Sure. What's in this dry mist, exactly? Chlorine? Nope--it's way toxic. Sodium? Nope--it's a metal. Hydrogen? Um. Yeah. Oxygen--maybe, but atomic oxygen generators already exist (they're used for restoring artwork and whitening teeth). Singlet oxygen will kill things, but it only lasts a few nanoseconds in water.
So, to conclude this lengthy post--I call bullshit!
~Idarubicin
Oh the pain! The people complaining about the state of science education in the US are RIGHT!!
Electrolysis of salt solution produces a solution of sodium hypochlorite, similar to Clorox bleach. Nothing wrong with that, this is a GREAT disinfectant. But new technology? I DON'T THINK SO. We have been chlorinating water supplies since 1908 or so.
Some technological historians believe that the addition of chlorine to drinking water is the primary reason for increased life expectancies in the 20th century, and claim that this one innovation has done more to prevent disease than the rest of modern medicine combined.
Here are the reactions:
anode: 2Cl- = Cl2(aq) + 2e-
cathode: 2e- + 2Na+ + 2H20 = H2(g) + 2NaOH
2NaOH + Cl2 = 2NaOCl + 2H+
To stabilize the NaOCl it is best to add a bit extra NaOH. (See LeChatlier).
You can use the H2 to power your laptop. (See fuel cells.)
The problem is that the common cold and the flu are both viruses, and as such antibiotics have absolutly no effect on them. It is/was quite common to prescribe antibiotics to help combat secondary infections (I seem to always end up with a chest infection for example) which seems to have lead people to believe that unless their doctor is prescribing something they are in some way not being treated effectivly.
:) Soon enough we start to breed up a bigger better stronger bunch of killers. (Darwin by example)
To compound the problem many people stop taking their antibiotics when they feel better (they have done their job right) which means that the bacteria have been exposed to a level of the antibiotic that hasn't killed 100% of the little nasties (a scientific term
To compound the problem in the western world we think its perfectly ok to feed our livestock constant doses of antibiotics even when there is no real evidence that its a) useful or b) more efficient. There is some evidence that such animals do grow slightly faster - something thats worth throwing away our furture use of antibiotics for..
the chemistry behind this is basic and proven. There are numerous saftey issues inherent in the process and there is not enough doc on the site to see if this is a new and valid application of the process or a 'snake-oil' sales oppurtunity.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Unfortunately, what sells more papers? Good discoveries on topics or things which the layperson has no understanding off. Or "revolutionary" discoveries doing miracle things everyone can grasp the basics of?
Think nothing is impossible? Try slamming a revolving door.
Ok, for those of you who might make the mistake of listening to this guy, pay close attention: english is a living language. If enough people think that the correct plural spelling of virus would be potatoe, then potatoe it is! I think if I wrote viruses, more people would try to correct me than if I wrote viri (virii looks wrong to me), and if my goal is not to have a debate about spelling, I'm going to go for the one that looks right to more people. Same goes for octopi, ain't and eventually, yes, even hax0r will be a valid word in the american dialect of english (and in many other dialects and languages for that matter).
Actually that last one intrigues me a great deal. Words like hax0r, 1337, d00d and other techno-slang are catching on like wildfire. Currently they are only used in limited sub-cultures but certainly some of these words have such a strong and unique connotation that they will leak into common usage. This is a radical shift for english as it adds new characters into to language for the first time in a very long time (mostly characters have just been removed).
That depends on the concentration really...I've had 0.1M sodium hydroxide on my hands before and it doesn't burn, though it exfoliates the skin quite nicely.
I don't think the concentration is likely to get to that range by decomposing salt water.
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Salt water is essentially hydrochloric acid (stomach acid) and sodium hydroxide (lye); it's just that, when combined, they basically exactly cancel each other out.
If you electrify the salt water, they separate. If you turn off the power, they recombine. Anything that was near one side or the other will be pretty effectively fried. Of course, you're not going to entirely separate them, so there's a middle section where it's still just salt water. This device does some fluid mechanics and such to pass anything that is in the incoming water through both regions before the water (now recombined) comes out of the device. It's actually a bit of tricky engineering to make sure that absolutely nothing can get through without going through both regions, which is what this is all about.
The electrolysis experiment is trivial. The trick is being thorough when you've got water flowing through.
Ok, that makes more sense....the article itself states that the amount of energy being passed through it is equivalent to being hit by lightning, or a mini-reactor....that kind of juice would decompose the water itself into component H2 and O2, which is why this didn't sound feasible.
Will Cl- ions react with a microscopic organism? I mean, Cl- ions are already present in sea water (albeit not in as high concentrations) and there are plenty of microbes in the sea....same deal with sodium ions.
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So, aside from oxidising bacteria, this thing can also undo the side effects caused by them? Gee, i always thought if you disinfected spoiled milk, you get cheese, or somehing close
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
"Virii" isn't not a Latin plural of any known word. The most plausible latin nominative plural would be "viri", but some people don't buy that.
Unfortunately, some of the things Bruce has stated are not entirely accurate. The general facts are correct. but some bits need modification.
Hydrogen is reactive. It's only 'highly' reactive if you haven't played with really reactive stuff, like fluorine, chlorine and, er, oxygen. Potasium is fun too.. (I have only seen Cesium once. That's quite enough).
Skin only catches fire if you get it very hot. An uncontrolled fire in a pure oxygen atmosphere is more likely to vaporize the skin; then the fat underneath will start to burn. Pure oxygen at reasonable (3atm) pressure will not cause spontaneous combustion of people. But if a fire starts in that environment, then you won't be able to put it out. The fire in Apollo 1 was not spontaneous. It was started by an electrical fault. The three astronauts suffocated in flame. Not nice.
You can happily mix hydrogen and oxygen in a 2:1 ratio. You can pressurize the mixture to astonishing levels. If there's a lot less oxygen, you can breathe the mixture for days at a time (google for "deep hydrogen diving"). If you make a spark, then you'll understand just how reactive oxygen is. The lesson learnt will be very short, and terminally instructive.
But hydrogen and oxygen are not hypergolic. Ask a rocket scientist. Even the Space Shuttle needs a match to get it going.
Sodium is a disinfectant. In the same way that a raging forest fire is disinfectant. Kids! treating your grazed knees with sodium metal may sting! Also, your parent's lawyers will have to contend with a stupidity counter-claim.
Oxidizing agents and reducing agents are defined by their ability to grab or release electrons.
If you want to understand this stuff, find somebody who knows what "Gibb's free energy" is about. Then, get them to explain it to me...
Even if the linked article proves to be true, we will never see widespread adoption of this low-cost treatment. Why? Because it directly threatens the large profit margins enjoyed by pharmaceutical companies the world over. Take silver, for instance. A well-known anti-microbial, it is cheap to process (effective colloidal solutions require only a few ppm of Ag), and has a devastating effect on many harmful microbes. So why aren't we all brewing up our own silver colloid and treating so-called "mycin-resistant" microbes? Because to do so would dig deeply in the billions of dollars pocketed by the big pharmaceuticals every year. Since the pharmaceuticals pretty much hold the pursestrings for the AMA, you won't see the AMA throwing in their support either.
Proven medical treatments, such as silver, acupuncture, homeopathy, etc. (proven not by a few piddly years of research, but in most cases many decades or centuries of use) will never be embraced by the mainstream medical establishment as long as the pharmaceutical companies are allowed to dictate medical policy and control the way we are permitted to keep ourselves healthy.
Cl is pretty much inimical to all forms of life, period.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
H2O + NaCl + e- -> Cl2 + H2 + NaOH
is one of the most important in chemistry and has been in industrial use for well over 110 years. To say this is "not exactly super-new technology" is a HUGE understatement, since this is the same basic technology that has been chlorinating drinking water in the U.S. since 1908.
The new (relatively speaking) technology here appears to be the miniaturization of the electrolytic cell and membrane. While this is interesting in and of itself, I cannot see how this will be the big lifesaver they are claiming. One would think that most hospitals can and do purchase disinfectants already and would not really need to generate these hazardous chemicals onsite, even in small quantities. I mean, think of the risks: Cl2 (poisonous gas), H2 (explosive gas), and NaOH (caustic soda). If a hospital does not have the resources to buy these relatively cheap chemicals, why would they have the resources (electricity to name one) to buy and operate these little machines?
Just my $.02
1. Get Water
2. Add Salt
3. Put in energy
4. ?
5. Profit!
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
Nothing like a bleached nose to let you know you're alive...
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
http://homepages.together.net/~rjstan/
--
Benjamin Coates
A relative of mine installed a reverse osmosis filter in his house. This filters out everything including chlorine: the water is so clean that it squeaks. The next time he refiilled his aquarium, the fish started dying. He had to add a little chlorine and flourine to their water to revive them. You have substantial amounts of chlorine incorporated into your own body.
It may also interest you to know that even oxygen can be poisonous. (-:
Perhaps you should have qualified yourself with `large concentrations of chlorine...' - even if only to reduce `period pain'.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Here's the page on colloidal silver at Quackwatch. Apparently the stuff can turn you permanently gray anywhere you're naturally light--skin, whites of the eyes, some of your insides (lungs? fat?) etc. And, the producers are big on hype, not so interested in rigorous testing or even keeping microorganisms out of their medicine bottles. See also this FDA site. As for a conspiracy preventing effective medicines from reaching the consumer, isn't it obvious that researchers, pharmaceutical company stockholders, scientists, and doctors are all ALSO consumers? They and their families are just as likely to get cancer or heart disease as you are. Think they'll suppress something that could cure their kid of leukemia so that the company can profit? Give me a break.
This poor woman wants to tell you about colloidal silver. She took it as a child, back when it was a standard ingredient prescribed by a regular MD. So much for it being alternative. Mainstream or alternative, it made her look permanently alien and did not cure anything or prevent her getting cancer in adulthood.
Actually....the human body in fact REQUIRES chlorine to live....what do you think makes up the "-chloric" part of hydrochloric acid in your stomach?
Gastric juices are, for the most part, 1M HCl...so every liter of stomach acid your body produces requires about 35.5 grams of chloride ion, (about 58 g of table salt)
There's even an FDA recommended daily allowance of sodium chloride that correlates to that. (they know how long it takes your body to make 1 liter of stomach acid...I don't)
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Using electricity, it splits table salt (NaCl) into Na+ and Cl- ions, and you get chlorinated, swimming pool water. And the Na+ is recycled by recombining with Cl- and all you ever add is salt
...
...
A while ago I read Neal Stephenson's Zodiac, which mentions chlorene. This post rang a bell, so I dug it up and pawed through it to find what it had to say. The book only tells you about the situation in bits and pieces, so this really took some searching:
Ionic chlorene's easy to get. It's in seawater. If you want to manufacture a whole catalog of industrial chemicals, you have to convert ionic chlorine into the covalent variety. You do that by subtracting an electron.
And it's just about that simple. You take a tank of seawater and you put a couple of bare wires into it. You hook up a source of electrical power up between the wires, and current - a stream of electrons - flows through the water. The molecules get rearranged. The ionic chlorine turns into the covalent kind, which is what you want. The sodium joins up with fractured water molecules to form sodium hydroxide. Or lye and alkali, depending on how educated you are.
If you're an engineer, and you're not very bright, it's easy to love polychlorinated biphenyls. They are cheap, stable, and easy to make and they take heat very well. That's why they end up in heat exchangers and electrical transformers. It's how they got into that machine in Japan and, when the pipes started to leak, it's how they got into a lot of rice oil.
Unfortunately, rice oil is for human consumption, and as soon as humans enter the equation, PCBs no longer look very good. The problem with humans is that they have a lot of fat in their bodies, and PCBs have this vicious affinity for fat. They dissolve themselves in human fat cells and they never leave. They are studded with loose chlorine atoms that know how to break up chromosomes. So when that heat exchanger started leaking, the city of Kusho, Japan started to look like the site of a Biblical plague. Newborn babies came out undersized and dark brown. People started to waste away. They developed a fairly disgusting skin rash called chloracne and felt very sick.
A benzene ring is a six-pack of carbon atoms. The six-pack is held together. It's stable. It's strong. It takes some effort to pull one of the atoms off. There are a couple different kinds. If you put two six-packs together, you have a twelve-pack. THe six-packs are phenyls, a twelve-pack is a biphenyl. If the six-packs are benzenes, it's a dibenzodioxin, because the connection between the six-packs is made by using a couple of oxygen atoms. But the toxic part of polychlorinated dibenzodioxin (PCDDs) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) is the chlorine.
The biphenyl or dibenzodioxin structure dissolves easily in fat. Once it gets into your body fat, it never leaves.
The second bad thing is, the chlorine there is in covalent form; it's got the normal number of electrons, whereas the chlorine in (safe) table salt is in ionic form. It's got an extra electron. The difference is that covalent chlorine is more reactive; it has these big electron clouds that can f*** up your chromosomes. And it slips right through your cell membranes. Ionic chlorine ddoesn't - the cell membranes are made to stop it.
In Stephenson's book, this guy Sangamon Taylor runs around trying to take down corporations that electrocute seawater to create PCBs, use the PCBs as coolant, then dump them into Boston harbor. Stephenson makes it seem like the root of all evil is zapping salt water, because it produces organic chlorine. So I would be very, very careful about intentionally electrocuting salt water and then swimming in it.
It seems like there must be something more to this if, as you said, "This Old House" recommended the process. Maybe it works differently with plain salt water as opposed to sea water. Or something. Scares the crap out of me, though. Maybe someone smarter can tell me what I'm talking about?
PUBLIC SPLIT ON WHETHER BUSH IS A DIVIDER -CNN scrolling banner, 10/15/2004
For those who truly believe in homeopathic medicines, I strongly recommend a homeopathic dose of oxygen, for about five minutes. It'll permanently cure you of everything that could ail you for the rest of your (short) life.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
When you have a cold, you should NOT take antibiotics to help your immune system fight off oppurtunistic bacteria. Unnecessary antibiotics will just kill off your symbiotic bacteria (the ones which are HELPing your immune system by competing with other germs) and increase the numbers of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in your system (endangering you and all the people around you).
I can't speak for silver (I've not done enough reading on this particular 'treatment'), but I can say that both
acupuncture and homeopathy are NOT proven treatments, nothing even close. I challenge you to produce
one paper in a reputable medical journal that demonstrates the effectiveness of these treatments.
"A reputable medical journal"? Like the AMA's journal, in which doctors subsidized by pharmaceutical firms carry on "research" in the name of objective science?
I challenge you to show me where it says the only effective demonstration of a medical treatment is to be found in medical journals. I've had friends die of cancer, horrible and lingering suffering, after being treated with cancer drugs declared "proven" by "reputable medical journals"...evidence-based medicine isn't all that it's cracked up to be. You've obviously been duped into believing anything the for-profit medical industry has to say about medicine.
I was speaking of elemental Chlorine, Cl2, not chlorine in compounds.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
In fact, most new drugs don't pass the "effective" test. Most are rejects. This is good; progress comes from surviving testing. Once something has been demonstrated to work at all, there's the possibility of figuring how to make it work better. Without testing, nothing gets beyond the "sort of works, maybe" stage.
The FDA tolerates homeopathic drugs for "self-limiting conditions", i.e. things on the threshold of hypochondria, but not for anything serious. It's worth noting that all the "alternative therapies" for AIDS proposed by various activists, none are still taken seriously.
There has been, famously, at least one major attempt by the drug industry to stop a new treatment that threatened profits. This was the discovery that ulcers are a bacterial disease that can be cured with antibiotics. Drug companies were making billions selling people Tagamet and such for years, when a two-week course of antibiotics usually knocks the disease out permanently. This was discovered in 1982, but it took a decade to convince people. The Center for Disease Control made a major effort to get the word out to doctors, too many of whom get their drug info from drug company sales reps. This worked, and finally, Tagamet has been relegated to an over-the-counter medication for indigestion. That's an unusual case, but it's real.
Run a couple of volts through salt water, the
Na+ ions go to the cathode, the Cl- ions go the
anode and discharged to Cl which disolves to
form Sodium Hypochlorite this is the main
component of household bleach.
2Na+ + 2H20 + 2e- -> 2NaOH + H2
2Cl- -> Cl2 + 2e-
Cl2 + H20 = HCl + HCl0
HClO + NaOH -> NaClO + H20
Similar reaction will happen with any other
disolved salts in the water.
Why do all the bullshit stories always come out of russia? Wasn't there some crazy story about a desktop supercomputer also that was developed in russia?
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Skeptics should read CSICOP's guide to critising before commenting. Being rude, and casually passing off claims as foolish does not make a good argument.
-Sean
Effective for what? Acupuncture has been tested and found effective for controlling pain;
Ulett GA. Acupuncture update 1984. Southern Medical Journal 78:233234, 1985.
Or do you think that's not "mainstream" enough to count?
IIRC, The skeptical inquirer did some research on it,
and also found that it was more effective than a placebo at pain control.
But that differing placement of the needles has no effect on pain reduction.
(Traditional acupunture claims that the placement of the needles matters.)
Alas, S.I.'s trial size was too small to be statistically significant.
-- this is not a
The real reason people don't look at such medicines is not a conspiracy but lack of economic incentive: unpatentable medicines are of little economic interest to drug companies. That's why we get dozens of useless cold treatments and no drugs for many other diseases.
Bacteria can mutate, and so can viruses. Some bacteria have already developed immunity to antibiotic. If we use this solution on a large scale, won't bateria and viruses develop immunity after a while?
This looks like a good article on the subject: http://www.healthsci.tufts.edu/apua/Pubs/Articles/ EID6_01.pdf
And they can develop some resistance even to antiseptics, by pumping the substance out or degrading it. Oxygen would make a good antiseptic if it weren't for the fact that aerobic organisms (ie, most organisms) have enzymes to break down reactive forms of it.
It makes me more resistant..
Of course.. and everyone knows that an annoying NASA robot can start just one to force a launch.
"'Tis great confidence in a friend to tell him your faults, greater to tell him his." --Poor Richard's Almanac
1. You turn gray from getting it into your system, not applying it to the outside, as in the case of newborns or Civil War spies. How much it takes to turn YOU gray will be different from others. See Ms. Jacobs's story. This picture is particularly telling--as is the fact that Ms. Jacobs developed breast cancer despite being visibly loaded with silver.
2. The self-promoting, profit-oriented pages trying to sell this dangerous heavy metal as a "supplement" far outnumber the objective pages describing its actual effects. Therefore, if I believed everything I read on the web, I would agree with you on this subject. Use some logic.
3. QW says medicines can be divided into two categories only: works and doesn't work. "Alternative", "mainstream," "profitable", "non-patentable" are all side issues.
4. The QW writer points out that there's a huge trade in such things as Vitamin C despite their not being patentable. So much for that issue.
5. QW's skepticism sometimes goes overboard. Although I wish they would be a bit more moderate, in general a model of reality will be more accurate if you practice skepticism rather than gullibility.
6. Show me fully-documented, double-blind, replicated studies that unambiguously support your claims, and I will accept your claims.
Please post the URL of the studies here so that we all can learn about them.
7. Do the sellers of colloidal silver have your welfare in mind any more than other pharmaceutical companies? Why should they? They're in business. The profit motive is a powerful corrupter on every level. Alternative medicine companies have no better a record, and often worse, than the mainstream producers.
I notice that you still didn't provide me with any studies (from a medical journal, or other scientific journal) proving your point.
I don't know of any scientific double-blind studies, but there is plenty of anecdotal evidence to be found. Again, this whole issue hinges on whether or not anecdotal evidence in and of itself is proof that something works. You claim it isn't; I claim it is. It's a circular argument neither of us will win.
I'm very willing to accept that 'alternative' therapies work, but advocates need to do the work, and prove their case. If they worked as well as you claim you do, then shouldn't they be mainstream therapies by now anyway?
I don't claim anything I suggested works "well"; I simply brought up the point that there exist many alternatives to accepted medical practices which may work based upon other than scientific evidence. Personally, I don't use silver, because I don't know how much it would take to start exhibiting symptoms of arygria (skin discoloration). But the anti-microbial effects are well-known (it was commonly used as an antibiotic in the early 20th century), and if there are people out there who claim to have cured themselves with silver, who am I or anyone else to disagree with them?
As far as being mainstream: What pharmaceutical company is going to spend millions to conduct double-blind research into a substance like silver that will bring them no royalties, no patent fees, and very little profit?
The plural of virus is neither viri nor virii, nor even vira nor virora. It is quite simply viruses, irrespective of context. Here's why: http://www.perl.com/language/misc/virus.html
That paper makes a good case, and is correct, but don't forget that language is a dynamic thing, and changes over the years. Compare Old English and Middle English to Modern English. Compare American, British and Australian Englishes, as well.
Virii (which I prefer based on visual aesthetics, though it isn't consistent with fungi) or viri is in common use now, and I suspect the etymologists will pick that up fairly soon.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
The solution was pioneered for swimming pools during the 60's in Australia.
I learned about saline chlorine generators when researching pool chemistry to find a solution for our daughter's special needs. See Therapy Pools links.
An excellent overview of alternate water purification systems is 'Alternate Systems' by Neil Lowery.
Modern controls and polarity reversing/self cleaning have improved the chlorinators since the 60's. The convenience of computer automated electronic chemistry ORP/pH control is nice.
I now believe that every pool owner should seriously consider saline chlorine generator for their pool. Most people cannot taste any salt at 2800-3500PPM. For more consumer info, follow the product links below:
Autopilot Pool Pilot Systems
Clear Tech Automation AutoClear
Clormatic
Goldline Controls AquaRite
Monarch Pool Systems {various brands}
Poolpower
TMI Salt Pure {excellent information, solution oriented}
Zodiac Clearwater
There is likely more info here than anyone asked for... but our daughters needs motived some serious research.
It's amazing what one can learn by surfing. --Beachcomber