But for every silver peddler the agency has tried to strike down, dozens more have sprung up, making virtually identical claims. In the same month, the FDA sent warning letters to seven companies telling them to stop claiming that silver was a treatment or preventative for COVID. At the same time, televangelist Jim Bakker, who’s previously promoted survivalist products, began selling a product he dubbed Silver Solution, prompting a lawsuit from the state of Missouri. In early 2020, Alex Jones began promoting a multitude of products containing nano silver or colloidal silver, including a toothpaste, supplements and creams, all of which he said would work as a “stopgate” against the virus New York Attorney General Tish James promptly ordered him to stop saying that. Then came COVID, which created a desperate new audience looking for any possible home remedy to feel safer and more protected. Colloidal silver is also one of a plethora of faux treatments foisted onto the parents of autistic children by opportunists, often under the guise of helping hildren’s supposed immune or gut issues.
Silver blue man skin#
Inevitably, celebrities looking to brand themselves as natural health connoisseurs also took up the silver cause: Gwyneth Paltrow claimed pre-pandemic that she sprayed the substance in the air around her upon boarding a plane, which, while useless and probably highly irritating for your seatmate, at least has the health benefit of not turning one’s skin blue.
Crookes then began selling products he called “Crookes Collosols,” although not for very long, as he died in 1915. Henry Crookes, who in the early 1900s began claiming that silver and other metals taken orally could kill bacteria.
But the NIH and Mayo Clinic warn that colloidal silver can have other side effects, including causing poor absorption of some drugs in rare cases and at high doses, it can also lead to organ damage and seizures.īefore antibiotics were widely available, it was believed to be an antibacterial and antiviral treatment modern bullshit Facebook posts touting its use still refer to the ironically-named British researcher Dr. (These days, “nano silver” is also sometimes marketed the difference is that nano silver products claim to use much smaller silver particles.) Argyria isn’t life-threatening, though it is cosmetically startling. In all, it’s a useful demonstration of the ways in which COVID has allowed a variety of old snake oil cures to make a roaring comeback, frequently carried along by misinformation purveyors like Owens who may not have a clear idea of the long and addled history of what they’re promoting.Ĭolloidal silver is a suspension of tiny silver particles in a liquid, taken by mouth, and it has been beloved by the medical fringe for decades. FDA warning letters from the past two years also show that a host of companies, large and small, are also attempting to rebrand colloidal silver as a COVID cure-all. Besides Owens, a host of personalities including Alex Jones and infamous televangelist Jim Bakker have promoted colloidal silver as a “treatment” for COVID-19, which it is absolutely not. In a post highlighted by liberal activist and tech entrepreneur William LeGate and then reported on by the Daily Beast’s Will Sommer, Owens said she takes “a teaspoon a day” of colloidal silver, which is more than enough to cause the product’s best-known side effect: argyria, which can turn one’s skin a permanent shade of blue-grey. In late December, right-wing personality and relentless headline-chaser Candace Owens generated a minor wave of news when she exuberantly declared her love for colloidal silver, a very old faux-medical treatment making a strange-but unsurprising-comeback in the pandemic age.
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