2014’s Stupid Anti-Science Stuff

This Is the Stupidest Anti-Science Bullshit of 2014

A catalogue of shame.

| Mon Dec. 22, 2014 6:00 AM EST

2014 had its fair share of landmark scientific accomplishments: dramatic cuts to the cost of sequencing a genome; sweeping investigations of climate change impacts in the US; advances in private-sector space travel, and plenty more. But there was also no shortage of high-profile figures eager to publicly and shamelessly denounce well-established science—sometimes with serious consequences for public policy. So without further ado, the most egregious science denial of 2014:
Basically everything said by Donald Trump:

You can always count on The Donald to pull no punches. He got started early this year, when he pointed to freezing temperatures in parts of the country as evidence that “this very expensive GLOBAL WARMING bullshit has got to stop” and then told Fox News that the global warming “hoax” was merely the result of scientists “having a lot of fun.”

In September, Trump went on a Twitter screed linking vaccines to autism. A month earlier, he fanned the flames of unscientific Ebola panic when he objected to efforts to bring American health care workers infected with the virus back the the US for treatment. “The U.S. cannot allow EBOLA infected people back,” he tweeted. “People that go to far away places to help out are great-but must suffer the consequences!” Health care experts, meanwhile, insisted that the risk was minimal; the two patients Trump was talking about were ultimately brought back to the US and successfully treated without infecting anyone else. Let’s just stick to real estate and beauty pageants, Donald, shall we?
Unnecessary Ebola quarantines:

hickox

Reporters and state police keep watch outside of nurse Kaci Hickox’s house in Maine. Robert F. Bukaty/AP

Trump wasn’t the only one to catch a heavy dose of science denial fever in the midst of the Ebola crisis. The plague of denial started in West Africa, as efforts to stem the outbreak were stymied by persistent rumors that Ebola was a myth propagated by the World Health Organization and Western powers. When Ebola hopped the Atlantic and landed in the United States, a host of (mostly Republican) lawmakers clamored for travel bans and visa restrictions—even though America’s leading public health officials repeatedly explained that those steps would be ineffective. In October, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (R) forced Kaci Hickox, a nurse who had been treating Ebola patients in Sierra Leone, to stay in an isolation tent in a Newark hostpital for two-and-a-half days, despite the fact that she had no symptoms of the disease and therefore posed no threat to others. When Hickox finally escaped New Jersey, she was quarantined again in her home state of Maine. Doctors Without Borders, an NGO on the front lines of the Ebola crisis, issued a statement at the time declaring that the “forced quarantine of asymptomatic health workers…is not grounded on scientific evidence and could undermine efforts to curb the epidemic at its source.”
Lamar Smith’s war on the National Science Foundation:

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) Jay Mallin/ZUMA

Republican Congressman Lamar Smith of Texas took his opposition to basic science straight to the source: The grant-writing archives of the National Science Foundation. In an unprecedented violation of the historic firewall between the lawmakers who set the NSF’s budget and the top scientists who decide where to direct it, Smith’s researchers pulled the files on at least 47 grants that they believed were not in the “public interest.” Some of the biggest-ticket projects they took issue with related to climate change research; the committee apparently intended to single out these projects as examples of the NSF frittering money away on research that won’t come back to benefit taxpayers. The investigation is ongoing, and the precedent it sets—that scientific research projects are only worthwhile if they directly benefit the American economy—is unsettling.
Battles over Texas textbooks:

Citizens gathered outside a 2010 Texas State Board of Education meeting to protest changes to the state’s social studies standards. Larry Kolvoord/Austin American-Statesman/AP

The Texas Board of Education has long been a hotbed for science denial, as conservative activists and a handful of textbook reviewers have sought to influence textbook-writing standards in an effort to muddle the basic science around issues such as evolution and climate change. What happens within the pages of Texas textbooks matters because the publishing market there is among the nation’s largest; what gets printed in Texas is likely to wind up in classrooms nationwide. Early this year advocates for better textbook oversight won a victory when the board announced it would give teachers’ input priority in determining curricula. But by September, the battle was back on, with a raft of revisions that contained obvious biases against mainstream climate science—one McGraw-Hill textbook inaccurately claimed that scientists “do not agree on what is causing the change,” and a Pearson text similarly alluded to scientific disagreement. Bowing to public pressure, in November Pearson altered its text to more accurately reflect the scientific consensus on climate change, but the McGraw-Hill text still portrays climate science as an open debate. Meanwhile, a parallel battle played out in Oklahoma over new standards to improve climate science education.
Bill Nye schools creationist Ken Ham; John Holdren schools Congress:

Veteran science educator Bill Nye’s live-streamed takedown of outspoken creationist Ken Ham was perhaps the year’s most amazing barrage of scientific badassery. Nye piled on the evidence for why the Earth can’t possibly be just a few thousand years old (as Ham believes) and why the fossil record does, in fact, prove the theory of evolution. That spectacle was followed by another killer takedown, as White House science adviser John Holdren explained elementary school-level concepts related to climate change to members of the House Science Committee:

 

Senate overrun by climate deniers:

James Inhofe (R-Okla.) Louie Palu/ZUMA

Science denial on Capitol Hill is set to get even crazier next year. When Democrats (and environmentalists) got a sound whooping in the midterm elections, a new caucus of climate change-denying senators swept in. Almost every new Republican senator has taken a position against mainstream climate science, ranging from hardline denial to cautious skepticism. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the incoming majority leader, has vowed to make forcing through an approval of the Keystone XL pipeline his top agenda item in the new year; he also wants to block the Obama administration’s efforts to reign in carbon pollution from coal plants. And the incoming chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is none other than James Inhofe (R-Okla.), who actually believes that global warming is a hoax orchestrated by Barbra Streisand. You can’t make this stuff up.
“I’m not a scientist”:

 

2014 saw the proliferation of a particularly insidious talking point for those politicians who have realized that denying climate science is untenable but are unable to publicly accept the scientific consensus: “I’m not a scientist.” Possible 2016 presidential contender Jeb Bush used that line back in 2009, and in 2014 it reached new heights: McConnell, Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio), and Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) are among the guilty parties. It’s a cop-out that is at best exhausting, and at worst dangerous.
Anti-vaxxers are still a thing:

The first five months of 2014 saw the more measles cases than comparable time periods in any year since 1994; the CDC reported that 90 percent of those cases were among people who hadn’t been vaccinated. In May, a Tennessee hospital reported a disturbing spike in cases of infants with a rare bleeding condition that could have been prevented with a routine vitamin injection; doctors there blamed anti-vaccination fears for parents avoiding the injection. Yes, it’s not just Jenny McCarthya surprising number of people across the country continue to be preoccupied with the totally debunked fear that vaccines will lead to autism or other maladies.
Contraception ≠ abortion:

Hobby Lobby

A Hobby Lobby location in Stow, Ohio. DangApricot/Wikimedia Commons

The year’s biggest court battle over reproductive rights, in which the craft store Hobby Lobby objected to the Obamacare requirement that it provide contraceptive coverage for its employees, was premised on terrible science. The company’s owners, who have a religious objection to abortion, claimed that intrauterine devices and the “morning-after” pills Ella and Plan B cause abortions. But scientists say that these methods of contraception work by preventing pregnancy; they don’t result in abortion. If it’s not surprising that Hobby Lobby’s owners would come out against the science, it is a surprise that conservative justices on the Supreme Court would back them up, despite ample testimony from leading gynecologists. As Molly Redden reports, battles over science denial in reproductive rights are only going to heat up in 2015.

from:  http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/12/worst-science-denial-2014

Jon Rappoport – Questioning Ebola

Ebola: question all basic assumptions

by Jon Rappoport

October 28, 2014

NoMoreFakeNews.com

To understand what the sellers are selling, you have to go back to the beginning of their story.

You have to restrain yourself from buying the beginning, because if you do buy it, uncritically, you’re now on their river, you’re now traveling in their boat.

And even if you jump off later and claim, “They’re lying!”, you’re still holding the suitcase with their first assumptions in it.

At the beginning they say there has been an outbreak in three separate areas of West Africa.

The first part of “outbreak” means: accelerated dying is occurring.

How do you know that’s true? Where are the numbers to confirm that? Where is evidence that shows present deaths are jumping beyond recent past deaths?

The second part of “outbreak” means: the new accelerated deaths in all three geo-areas are linked by the same cause.

Where is the evidence for that?

The diagnostic tests? The antibody and PCR tests, both of which are useless, misleading, irrelevant, and rampant with false-positive results?

Is the evidence the symptoms these victims are showing? General symptoms like fever, fatigue, diarrhea, vomiting, bleeding, all of which can and do stem from a variety of causes? Of course not.

The third part of “outbreak” means: researchers have found what the link is among all the new deaths—the Ebola virus.

On what basis do they know this? Those useless diagnostic tests? Divining rods? The solemn assurance of the CDC? Quick eyeball diagnosis of every patient with a fever wandering into a clinic in West Africa?

On all counts, the beginning of the story is unproven—and the burden of proof is not on you, it’s on the “experts” making the claims.

Three cops are called to the scene of a death. In the apartment, a man is lying on the floor. He is, in fact, dead.

Upon examination, the cops and a medical examiner find no holes in his body. They find no shell casings, no weapons, no gunshot residue.

They confer. Their conclusion? He was killed at close range by two rounds from a revolver.

The papers and the local news broadcasts carry the story: “A man was shot to death in his apartment by an unknown assailant last night…”

The next day, the cops arrest a schoolteacher who has a revolver locked in the trunk of his car.

A few days later, you’re sitting in a bar watching the news on television. You see video of the schoolteacher’s arraignment on a charge of first-degree murder.

You say, “How do they know he did it?”

The people sitting near you break out into a chorus: “Who else could it be?”

Sixteen years later, while the schoolteacher is sitting on death row awaiting his execution, a lawyer manages to have the victim’s body exhumed.

On re-examination, the coroner finds no evidence of a gunshot wound…but the remains of the body are decayed beyond the point where a definitive judgment can be made.

Oh well, those are the breaks.

Here is what I’m encountering in many quarters. People are saying, or assuming: the CDC and the World Health Organization lie about everything under the sun EXCEPT…when they launch stories about outbreaks. Then they must be telling the truth. The basic beginning of their tale must be true.

In those crucial moments, they never lie.

Really, now. Think about that.

And then think about this: the 2009 “outbreak” called Swine Flu. In that situation, the CDC stopped counting cases in the US, because the overwhelming number of lab tests on diagnosed and likely Swine Flu patients were coming back…with no sign of Swine Flu or any other kind of flu.

So…as a “big lie” strategy, with roughly ten thousand bogus cases of Swine Flu cases on their hands, the CDC suddenly claimed there were 22 MILLION cases of Swine Flu in the US.

That was their “outbreak” story.

And now, when they tell a story about an “outbreak” of a virus called Ebola…well, they must be telling the truth, right?

Egregiously lying THEN means they must be telling the truth NOW, right?

from:    http://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2014/10/28/ebola-question-all-basic-assumptions/

XENEX Ultraviolet Light Robot Kills EBola

light

Ultraviolet light robot kills Ebola in two minutes; why doesn’t every hospital have one of these?

(NaturalNews) While vaccine makers and drug companies are rushing to bring medical interventions to the market that might address the Ebola pandemic, there’s already a technology available right now that can kill Ebola in just two minutes in hospitals, quarantine centers, commercial offices and even public schools.

It’s called the Xenex Germ-Zapping Robot, and it was invented by a team of Texas doctors whose company is based on San Antonio. (And no, I didn’t get paid to write this. I’m covering this because this technology appears to be a viable lifesaving invention.)

The Xenex Germ-Zapping Robot uses pulsed xenon-generated UV light to achieve what the company calls “the advanced environmental cleaning of healthcare facilities.” Because ultraviolet light destroys the integrity of the RNA that viruses are made of, it renders viruses “dead.” (Viruses aren’t really alive in the first place, technically speaking, so the correct term is “nonviable.”)

Ebola, just like most other viruses, are quickly destroyed by UV light. That’s why Ebola likes to spread in dark places where sunlight doesn’t reach. (Think of Ebola as a “vampire” virus that feeds off human blood but shuns sunlight…) The Xenex robot destroys Ebola on surfaces in just two minutes, zapping them with a specific wavelength of UV light at concentrations that are 25,000 times higher than natural sunlight.

Kill Ebola with electricity and UV light; no toxic chemicals needed

The reason I’m covering this medical technology is because I’m seriously impressed with the concept and the green technology behind it. The Xenex unit generates UV light using xenon — one of the noble gases — rather than toxic mercury. So there’s no toxic mercury to deal with, even when disposing of the equipment after its useful life.

So many of the approaches to disinfection in hospitals today are based on harsh, toxic chemicals that pose a secondary risk to the health of hospital patients and staff. But UV light emitted by the Xenex robot leaves no chemical residue whatsoever and requires no chemical manufacturing plant to manufacture. This is truly “light medicine” because it disinfects using specific frequencies of light.

Studies touted by the manufacturer appear to show extraordinary disinfection results spanning both bacterial superbugs and viral strains:

– 57% reduction in MRSA at Moses Cone

– 53% reduction in C.diff infections at Cooley Dickenson

– 50% reduction in bacterial contamination at Cambridge Health Alliance

– 30% reduction in C.diff at the MD Anderson Cancer Center

– 62% reduction in microbial load at the St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center

Already in 250 hospitals and growing…

The Xenex UV robot is already being used in about 250 hospitals. That number is likely to increase dramatically due to the current global Ebola outbreak.

The base price of the Xenex unit is around $100,000, and the unit pays for itself very quickly by preventing expensive infections. It can disinfect a typical hospital room in about 10 minutes, and it comes with organization and scheduling software that allows hospital staff to keep track of which rooms have been treated.

Colloidal Silver, MRSA, & Ebola

Read This Before You Feed The Ebola Hysteria Machine

Aug 4 •

ebla sqThe spread of Ebola is the big news now. And the news media “hysteria machine” (not to mention the end-of-the-world crowd on the internet grapevine) is running full force with scare stories about Ebola’s potential spread — particularly since it’s been announced that several American victims of Ebola in West Africa are going to be evacuated to the U.S. for treatment.

But do we really have a lot to fear from Ebola here in the U.S.?  I contend we have a lot less to fear from Ebola than we have to fear from the federal government using the Ebola hysteria to rob us of more of our freedoms and liberties under the guise of “protecting” us from a largely manufactured “national health crisis.”  

That’s the bad news.  The potentially good news is this:  Way back in 2008 the federal government itself demonstrated the fact that antimicrobial silver is, under certain conditions which I’ll explain below, extremely effective against Ebola and other hemorrhagic fever viruses. 

In fact, two years ago I was able to obtain from the U.S. Department of Defense formerly classified documents they probably now wish they’d never de-classified. These documents explain the positive results achieved by the DOD when testing antimicrobial silver against these deadly viruses. 

So with all of that said, here’s my somewhat contrarian view regarding the current Ebola “crisis,” as well as what I’ve discovered so far about the potential for colloidal silver’s effectiveness against this deadly virus…

How soon we forget how shrewdly the federal government used the overblown anthrax scare directly after 9-11 to rob us of many of our precious Constitutional rights

After the anthrax scare we witnessed the institution of illegal spying on America citizens, unconstitutional search and seizures, and severely diminished due process of law.

We also forget how the news media later whipped up the so-called “Bird flu” hysteria, followed by the “Swine flu” hysteria

Through these manufactured crises, various departments of the federal government were able to pass new “guidelines” and regulations on the detention and quarantine of U.S. citizens

These can now be used by the federal government to restrict travel at a moment’s notice, arrest and detain individuals, and even quarantine entire cities during a declared “national health emergency.”

That’s why I’m extremely skeptical of the current so-called “Ebola crisis.”

Yes, I understand how virulent and deadly Ebola and other hemorrhagic fever viruses are.

And yes, I also understand that the federal government is now said to be bringing Ebola victims to the U.S. for treatment.  And I understand what a threat that could pose should the virus ultimately get loose and go rogue in this country.

Psy-Ops Campaign

But I also understand how psychological operations (psy-ops) campaigns work, and what the federal government stands to gain from them

The federal government absolutely loves it whenever they can whip up enough public hysteria that the resulting public outcry to “protect us” allows them to step in as “saviors” and implement more laws that violate our fundamental rights and liberties under the guise of “keeping us safe.

And folks, this current “Ebola crisis” is indeed a massive psy-ops campaign.  In other words, the threat is largely being manufactured and planted into the minds of the American public, through the federal government/news media axis.

Real v/s Realistic\

That doesn’t mean the danger from Ebola isn’t real.  Quite the contrary.  It’s very real, if you’re exposed to it.

But what’s your actual likelihood of exposure?  It’s virtually nil.  Which means while the threat may be “real,” it’s not very realistic.

Let me explain with an example you can probably relate to:  The deadly, drug-resistant super-pathogen MRSA is also very real.  In fact, it’s just as “real” as Ebola.

But the difference between MRSA and Ebola is that MRSA is a far more realistic threat to the population of the U.S. than Ebola.

We know that, because the FDA’s own testing has demonstrated that 61% of all meat in supermarkets is already contaminated with the deadly MRSA pathogen (up from 50% only last year).  And independent testing backs those numbers up.

Largely because of this, some 39,000 Americans now get infected by the flesh-eating MRSA pathogen every single year, and a full 20% of those infected end up dying – constituting more deaths annually than those caused by AIDS.

Now that’s a news story, right?

After all, you have a proven, deadly, antibiotic-resistant super-pathogen like MRSA contaminating 61% of all meats in supermarkets.  And you buy that meat on a regular basis and bring it home to your family.  Wouldn’t you want to know about that?

Yet there’s not so much as a peep about it in the mainstream news media.  Listen carefully.  The only sound you’ll hear on this issue is crickets

On the other hand you have a virus like Ebola, which is largely endemic to West Africa, and which hasn’t caused a single death anywhere in the United States…ever.  Nor has there been a single infection in the U.S.

Yet the mainstream news media drumbeat about the so-called “Ebola threat” is absolutely relentless.  And as a result, people are quite literally going out of their minds with fear over it.

If you listen carefully, you can almost hear the mainstream news media and the end-of-the-world internet fear-mongers chanting, Ebo-laEbo-laEbo-laEbo-la…as if they’re actually cheering it on.

Why the dichotomy?

Why is there zero fear-mongering over the deadly MRSA super-pathogen, even though it represents an immediate, dire, realistic and already-proven threat to the American populace…

…while in direct contrast, there’s incessant fear-mongering over the Ebola virus, which has not so much as even been detected in this country?

And Now for the Other Side of the Story

Here’s the reality:

Dealing with the very real threat of MRSA would cost Big Agriculture billions of dollars a year in sales.

So if the USDA and the FDA publicly acknowledged the growing MRSA crisis, people would stop buying meat out of fear, and foreign markets for our beef, chicken, turkey, lamb, pork and other meat products would also dry up overnight.

The entire U.S. agriculture industry would crumble.  Billions of dollars would be lost.

So while community-acquired MRSA infections are now absolutely skyrocketing, we don’t hear so much as a squawk about it from the news media.

Nothing.  Zip.  Zilch.  Nada.  Pitch black silence.

There are no talking heads from the FDA, CDC, WHO, or other alphabet soup health agencies making appearances on national TV news to warn the populace about the growing spread of MRSA.

This is spite of the fact that, for example, some 30,000-plus hospitalizations of children for this deadly disease have taken place over the past few years alone here in the U.S. (which is double the annual rate of child MRSA infections since the year 2000).

Why is there no outcry from the health authorities?

It’s because the health and regulatory authorities have weighed the astonishing number of annual deaths being caused each year in this nation by MRSA, against the economic havoc that would be caused to the agriculture industry if they went public with this information each night on the national news.

And the regulators say, “This is an acceptable loss of life.  Let’s keep quiet about it.  We’ll save as many MRSA victims as we can.  And those who die, die.  We can’t risk destroying one of our nation’s largest industries over this.”

But hyperventilating over Ebola, on the other hand, poses no serious direct economic risk to anyone.

The feds and their news media lackeys can rile the population up, scare the living bejabbers out of them, and convince everybody they’re our saviors if we’ll just let them “protect us” from the threat, which of course, is largely non-existent.

The Real Question:
What Will Obama Do?

So the real question is this:  How far is the federal government willing to go with this charade?

Would they, for example, allow a few controlled Ebola infections to take place in the U.S., as a means of convincing the population that the so-called “Ebola threat” is “real” so new restrictions to our freedoms and new laws for detaining people could be implemented?

With the anthrax scare of 2001, the Bird flu scare of 2005, and the Swine Flu scare of 2009, the powers-that-be accomplished much of their mission of convincing Americans of the supposed reality of a huge and deadly medical apocalypse directly on the horizon.

“It’s not a matter of if, but when,” goes the relentless drumbeat from the talking head “medical experts” (most of them being paid, government shills) who have appeared on the nightly news for the past decade and a half to assure us our future is bleak.

That’s now embedded in the collective psyche of the entire nation.

So with the vast majority of Americans now convinced of a coming medical apocalypse, what next?  What exactly do the powers-that-be have in mind with the latest threat-du-jour known as Ebola?

I find it quite telling that Obama has already used the so-called Ebola crisis to sign a new amendment to an executive order that would allow him to mandate the apprehension and detention of Americans who merely show signs of ‘respiratory illness.’

According to an article on InfoWars.com:

“Obama’s amendment allows for the detention of Americans who display, ‘Severe acute respiratory syndromes, which are diseases that are associated with fever and signs and symptoms of pneumonia or other respiratory illness, are capable of being transmitted from person to person, and that either are causing, or have the potential to cause, a pandemic, or, upon infection, are highly likely to cause mortality or serious morbidity if not properly controlled’.”

The InfoWars.com article goes on to explain exactly how ominous this new executive order amendment is:

“Although Ebola was listed on the original executive order signed by Bush, Obama’s amendment ensures that Americans who merely show signs of respiratory illness, with the exception of influenza, can be forcibly detained by medical authorities.

Although the quarantining of people suspected of being infected with the Ebola virus seems like a perfectly logical move, the actual preconditions for this to happen aren’t restricted to just those suffering from the disease.

As we highlighted earlier this week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has measures in place for dealing with an outbreak of a communicable disease which allow for the quarantine of “well persons” who “do not show symptoms” of the disease.

In addition, under the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act, public health authorities and governors would be given expanded police powers to seize control of communications devices, public and private property, as well as a host of other draconian measures in the event of a public health emergency.

When the legislation was introduced, the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons warned that it ‘could turn governors into dictators’.”

The $64,000 Question
So why does the government/news media axis downplay a very realistic medical threat like MRSA, with very real deaths, and very real impacts on literally thousands of American families every single year, yet relentlessly hype an unrealistic “medical crisis” like Ebola that’s virtually non-existent in this country?

I don’t ask that question to start arguments or to inspire conspiracy theories.  I ask it only to bring some semblance of sanity to the table in regards to the supposed “Ebola crisis” and the panic and mass hysteria now evolving around it.

At this point, the so-called “Ebola crisis” is a fabricated one.  And the sooner we realize it, the lower the chances are that the federal government can take further advantage of it by reducing our freedoms under the guise of “saving” us.

Why So Fearful?
If you absolutely need to be fearful, you’d have far more reason to be fearful of a deadly MRSA superbug infection striking your household than you would an Ebola infection.

You can come into contact with the MRSA superbug just about any day of the week – right now — especially when you shop for meat at your local supermarket.

What’s more, with MRSA all you need is a small cut or scratch on your body for it to go internal, induce sepsis, cause organ failure and other calamities, giving you a one-in-five chance of living through the infection.

(But thankfully, colloidal silver cures MRSA with relative ease.  See the clinical and anecdotal evidence presented on the Colloidal Silver Cures MRSA website, and in my article “Does Colloidal Silver Really Cure MRSA?”)

So your likelihood of coming into contact with the deadly MRSA pathogen is quite high.  But your likelihood of being anywhere near the vicinity of an Ebola victim is just about zero.

So please think about it

My advice is this:  If you’ve got to panic over something, then panic over something that represents a realistic threat, rather than a sensationalistic threat.

Ebola may be a “real” threat, but it’s not a very realistic threat here in the U.S.  At least, not yet.

The true threat at this point is the federal government and the new regulations being implemented to give the federal government the power to detain anybody they want, at any time, under the guise of a “national health crisis.”

 

Colloidal Silver and Ebola:
What We Know So Far

Which, finally, brings us to the topic of colloidal silver and Ebola.  Here’s the good news:

Back in 2008, the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) in conjunction with several other federal agencies quietly conducted clinical research into the use of silver nanoparticles against Ebola and other hemorrhagic fever viruses.

What they found was astonishing.  They discovered that silver nanoparticles were highly effective against these deadly viruses, including the Ebola virus.

They later presented their findings to federal health regulators and other national health authorities.  But it was all kept top secret.  The presentation was called “Silver Nanoparticles Neutralize Hemorrhagic Fever Viruses.”

And the gist of the presentation was that silver nanoparticles displayed “powerful neutralizing effects against hemorrhagic fever viruses,” including Arenavirus and Filovirus (i.e., Ebola).

This clinical presentation was conducted under the auspices of the DOD’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) and the U.S. Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) Center for Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction.

And the presentation was given by researchers from the Applied Biotechnology Branch, 711th Human Performance Wing of the Air Force Research Laboratory.

In other words, those are the big guns, folks!   Which is to say, those are the very people responsible for keeping this nation safe from outside threats like bioterrorism

That clinical presentation, made to federal regulators and national health authorities, was later summarized in a printed document, de-classified, and cleared for public release.

But there was no news media hoopla surrounding the release of this information.  Not a peep.

And to this very day, to my knowledge, there still hasn’t been a single report in the mainstream news media on the release of this important information, in spite of the fact that Department of Defense researchers found antimicrobial silver to be profoundly effective against Ebola and other hemorrhagic fever viruses, under certain circumstances which we’ll discuss below.

Before we get into the results of this research, as documented in the published version of the DOD presentation, it’s important to note that one of the main tasks of the DOD’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency is to “anticipate and mitigate future threats long before they have a chance to harm the United States and our allies.”

In other words, the researchers were specifically looking for ways to stop Ebola or other hemorrhagic fever viruses from damaging our national security.

And the results they found when using silver nanoparticles for that precise purpose were strikingly positive — enough so to warrant not just the presentation to health and regulatory authorities, but its later publication and public release.

 

What Researchers Discovered

The researchers tested silver nanoparticles of several different sizes and concentrations on infected cells in vitro (meaning, in the test tube).

And they concluded that silver nanoparticles were able to neutralize hemorrhagic fever viruses inside the cells by “decreasing S segment gene expression and concomitantly decreasing progeny virus production.”

Translation:  Silver stops the Ebola virus and related hemorrhagic fever viruses from replicating inside the cells.  And when there’s no viral replication inside the cells, there’s no spread of infection!

The researchers had discovered the holy grail Ebola treatments.  But they also discovered that neutralization of the virus by silver occurs during the early phases of viral replication.

Therefore, they pointed out that for antimicrobial silver to be effective against Ebola and other hemorrhagic fever viruses, the treatment would have to be administered PRIOR to viral infection or at least within the first few hours after initial exposure to the virus.

In other words, for antimicrobial silver to be effective, an exposed person would need to have already been taking it, or at the very least would have to start taking it within a few short hours of exposure to an infected individual. 

Another interesting thing the researchers discovered is that while an enzymatic protein called Cathepsin B has been shown to play an essential role in Ebola virus replication, silver nanoparticles work to decrease cathepsin activity, thus further limiting viral replication in the cell and subsequent spread of the virus to other cells.

And by far the most interesting thing the researchers discovered (at least, to me) is that only very low concentrations of silver nanoparticles were necessary to prevent replication of the virus.

Indeed, low concentrations of 10 ppm nanosilver appears to have worked better than higher concentrations of 25 ppm or 50 ppm nanosilver.  This means there’s no need for overly high silver concentrations.

What’s more, the smallest silver particles tested by the researchers worked far better than the larger silver particles tested.

This demonstrates once more that the use of very small silver particles is far more important than the “ppm” or concentration of the colloidal silver solution one is using.

Simply put, smaller silver particles penetrate cells and tissues easier, and are therefore better able to get to the point of infection before the virus spreads.

Here’s a link to the printed version of the DOD clinical presentation, so you can scroll through it and read it for yourself.  It’s technical.  But if you take your time it’s relatively understandable.

People have written to ask me, “Steve, how much colloidal silver would you have to take in order to protect yourself from an Ebola infection?

And of course, the answer is, no one knows for sure.  As I mentioned, the DOD research discussed above was in vitro (i.e., laboratory test tube) reseaRCH.  NowI know that’s probably not what you want to hear.  But just as I refuse to join in with all of the doom-and-gloom hype about the supposed coming worldwide Ebola apocalypse, in like manner I also refuse to join in with those making blanket statements that colloidal silver is the sure-fire “cure” for Ebola.