Maps, Directions, and Place Reviews
Original research promotion
The article currently uses a few studies which purport to see a certain effect on bacteria with a certain silver discharge. However, there is nothing to indicate that the authors of these studies are supporting the claims of colloidal silver as marketed by alt med outfits. To that end, I recommend removing the clause about these studies from the lead entirely. The only study which actually looks at colloidal silver in the way it is marketed in alt med situations is reference 5. Per WP:MEDRS, WP:FRINGE, and WP:ASTONISH, I think it is clear that this is the way we need to present information on this particular topic. ScienceApologist (talk) 14:19, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
Perfect example of how a few well meaning wikipedians can wipe out entire sections of world history or any understanding of it.. Even before it gets to mediation, discussion etc. Abd the whole POV accusation / blame game is useless. If you or I put something into, say a historical article, then yes of course it is because we think it should be there and _want_ it in there, but how in the world does it disqualify the entry in itself? There _must_ be a cohesive emphasis, throughout wikipedia, on _other_ and _better_ arguments than "it's just your POV", "no, no its your POV to keep it out" on wikipedia. Nunamiut (talk) 02:11, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
Colloidal Silver Multiple Sclerosis Video
proposal to end the constant reverting caused by the conflicting interpretation of "colloidal silver"
This article is not just about the scientific term "colloidal silver", but for the most part, is about the products sold on the current market as "colloidal silver". Most of the solutions on the market, and most of the directions for making colloidal silver involve water, silver anodes/cathodes and electricy -i.e., the solutions are made with electrolysis that produces solutions with silver ions. It is appropriate to bring into the article research articles about the effect of silver ions. Even some of this research talks about making the solutions they test with using electrolysis, water and silver. Here is one from the Applied and Environmental Microbiology, November 2005 issue Bactericidal Actions of a Silver Ion Solution on Escherichia coli, Studied by Energy-Filtering Transmission Electron Microscopy and Proteomic Analysis . Here is a quote of how they created the solution they used in this research:
If we are going to include all these references about colloidal silver as it is currently marketed, then it is appropriate to talk about ionic solutions. To selectively include any negative reference about colloidal silver, then when something is added pertaining to the properties of silver ions, to say "colloidal silver" is not ionic, is not about silver ions, is contradictory. If there is a problem with talking about silver ions in this article because the title is "colloidal silver", and the editors that continually revert any reference to ionic silver feel that only the technical definition of colloidal silver should apply to any reference used in this article, then let's create a separate article, ionic silver solutions, or alternative colloidal silver, and talk about the the history of colloidal silver solutions and current alternative colloidal silver products on the market in that article, and state that even though they are for the most part marketed as "colloidal silver", they are really a range of solutions going from ionic solutions created basically with water and silver and electrolysis, and solutions with other substances added (like salt) to create different solutions (usually to create higher ppm) to other methods used to create mostly true colloidal silver solutions. But I think this selective cherry picking of reasons for reverts.. one minute every reference about adverse results caused by alternative colloidal silver products is a-ok, but any reference about silver ions is not ok because "colloidal silver" is not ionic silver, is cherry picking references and editing to perpetuate a POV. So.. shall we split this into 2 articles? One for describing only silver solutions that are stricty "colloidal silver", and another for describing alternative colloidal-ionic silver solutions? stmrlbs|talk 19:24, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
Pursuant to how to convey the level of evidence for the modern uses of colloidal silver in a medical setting: Topical silver for treating infected wounds at Cochrane is inconclusive, and a similar protocol could find no matching studies (this reference should be checked for relevance to colloidal silver before use). While it is really cool to see surface-enhanced Raman scattering seeing some uptake in the bioresearch community, a search of PubMed basically agrees with Eubulides' quick check above. I did find Silver in health care: antimicrobial effects and safety in use (2006) (currently ref 29), which appears to be mostly about Ag+, but mentions colloidal silver; and Silver products for medical indications: risk-benefit assessment (1996), which is currently ref 14 but looks to be useful for a great deal more non-dated material.
It would therefore be inappropriate, per WP:MEDASSESS and WP:FRINGE, to report the current medical use of colloidal silver, especially orally or nasally administered, as well-accepted.
There is also some use of in textiles, which we appear not to mention at the moment. - 2/0 (cont.) 20:59, 21 October 2009 (UTC)
Edit warring
Can we please discuss changes here and not in the edit history? Full protection is so much less productive than simple cooperation (treat this like a page protection; no endorsement, just trying to spur discussion). Master of Puppets 17:59, 21 October 2009 (UTC)
I see a lot of editors here, Verbal, Eubulides, ScienceApologist, who have never contributed to the article in the past, and who now are just coming by to revert sourced statements, with general statements like NPOV, and no comments here, except to threaten Floydian who is a contributing editor. stmrlbs|talk 05:07, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
I think that both sides believe that they are trying to create a well informed and neutral article. I suspect that Verbal et. al. believe that a well informed article would make the lack of effectiveness and potential dangers of ingesting this material clear, while you appear to believe that a well informed and neutral article would show all of the potential benefits of eating silver. I suggest that everyone attempt to hew as closely to sources as possible - you, for instance, recently made the lead read that there are no experiments on the effectiveness of silver for various things. That's patently untrue, and no source has written that. Hipocrite (talk) 18:36, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
Reviews can be reliable, but what studies does the review cite? Surely it can't be that hard to find where NCCAM gets their information from... Or are they reliable and verifiable? I am bringing up tylenol because it is in the same subject matter and it clearly shows the pushing of bias confined to this article. Cabal is not an antisemetic term, it means a group of people that are (often, secretly) organized and push for the same views. - ??o??ia? ? ¢ 19:03, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
This looks like a distinctly ugly conversation. It doesn't matter if some people are arguing about whatever - a very good point is (and was probably already made) that people are indeed ingesting this substance, and it is disturbing to see people who have taken on the responsibility of educating others, breaking down into arguments about vague possibilities. Especially when dealing with the semantics of a word like cabal (did I use the word semantics right) I think you would all do well to stop bickering, and present some of that stuff called methodology (ho bout that one? or did I just invalidate myself with a typo) the point being is, that when someone feels so strongly about an issue, they should make it easier, for others to get real data on the subject. How bout a method for testing the anecdotal evidence? Or even antiviral? How bout CS's effect as a disinfectant, in relation to that effect of bleach, a much more common and supposedly non toxic ( have seen someone drink it, straight, and do quite well after ) disinfectant. Even a link would help some people who would like to see HOW to prove something like the function of substance's introduction to the human body, or any body of water whit stuff in it... anything is better then watching people sling words arund like -semantic (that word again!)bigotry-. Desolvent (talk) 14:20, 8 November 2009 (UTC)
Re-organise a bit - Horticulture bit?
I've re-organised the article, in part to get some of the disputed details out of the lead. No content changes made. Vsmith (talk) 00:52, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
It seems that the horticultural use section doesn't really belong here. It is about ionic silver compounds - not colloidal, and doesn't fit under the "commercial" alt. med. definition either. Vsmith (talk) 00:52, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
I replaced the summary of alt med use in the lead, as the lead should summarise the article. I removed the in vitro studies from the alt med section, as they do not have anything to do with alt med. Until the use of these studies and their relation to colloidal silver is demonstarated, and inclusion supported here, they should remain out. When reinserted they should not go in the alt med section, nor should they be juxtaposed which leaves a misleading impression. Verbal chat 16:46, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
Here's the relation: COLLOIDAL SILVER CONTAINS THE SUBSTANCE THAT THEY ARE TESTING UPON! Whats it called... Oh! Silver. - ??o??ia? ? ¢ 17:27, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
Yeah... The edit I'm vying for is the status quo, and the WP:BURDEN is upon you, and so YOU need consensus to put your contested edits in, which there is currently no consensus. I still see the usual split down both sides from the involved editors (Including those that edit other alt. medicine), and the neutral uninvolved editors take a bench seat for the most part. DHawker pointed out that Steven Schulz first sentence is "Sorry, but the well-known antibacterial effect of silver ions in vitro can in no way support any medical claims in [vivo]." (based on the sentence that follows, using a metaphor of the ingestion of alcohol, I safely assume that the last word was supposed to be vivo instead of vitro).
It does not matter if you use something intending it to be a medicine or not, it still has the exact same effect. In fact, using it AS a medicine only adds the placebo effect to complicate things. Same goes for the silver being a colloidal or not - The effects of the constituents are still there, just presented in a different form. Its akin to saying sugar is sweet, but if you mix it in water we need a new study to demonstrate that sugar IN water is sweet, since they are so very clearly two completely different substances. You are using wikilawyering to selectively cherry pick out information using the blanket statement of WP:SYNTH. - ??o??ia? ? ¢ 17:58, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
Most of the colloidal silver on the market today, or made by people for their own use is made very simply from the electrolysis of silver anodes in water. This method produces both silver ions and silver colloids. When you have research that talks about the effect of ions produced by performing electrolysis on water and silver anodes... yes, you are talking about the same thing that people are making at home for their own use from the same process using the same materials -water and silver electrodes, whether they use it for their horticultural experiments or they use it for their own medicinal purposes. Research involving silver ions in water shows the effect that ... silver ions in water will have. Most of the research is about germicidal effects -the same effects that silver (with or without water, in various forms and mediums) has been used in for medicine for centuries. The particular research that I quoted from above [1] only performed electrolysis for 28 seconds (with silver electrodes and water), and yet showed a germicidal effect with E. Coli. To say that this has nothing to do with colloidal silver (at least the form produced by simple electrolysis) is to say research on chili beans, chili spice, and tomatoes is not really research on the dish called chili - because no one actually called it "chili" in the research. stmrlbs|talk 03:12, 23 October 2009 (UTC)
The horticulture section
I removed this because it doesn't talk about colloidal silver preparations, as the text itself states. Mangoe (talk) 03:59, 23 October 2009 (UTC)
Locked
Alright, apparently warnings don't get read correctly, so I've locked this for a week in the hopes of some discussion occurring. First, though, let's go over some extremely basic stuff;
- edit summaries are not for discussion. They're for explaining what you're changing or giving insight into what you're doing in an edit (see Help:Edit summary if you'd like extra explanation). Therefore, please don't use them to argue back and forth while reverting.
- edit warring accomplishes nothing. If somebody's made a contested edit that you don't agree with, discuss it. Do not revert. If they're making it in spite of an admin's warning, report it. Don't take it into your own hands to revert.
- 3RR isn't a 'life system'. It isn't like you've got three free reverts to edit-war with without fear of punishment, so don't act like you do.
I hope this makes sense (you can find me on my talk page if you have additional questions). For now, please try to discuss this civilly and without further conflagration. Master of Puppets 04:12, 23 October 2009 (UTC)
Questions
When unprotected
Can we change the first sentence to take out the word "true"? If this is an article on a form of an element then it should read like that, like a chemistry article. We need to state very firmly what colloidal silver is. If when it is used in medicine the definition is different then that has to come afterwards. Itsmejudith (talk) 18:10, 23 October 2009 (UTC)
Argyria images.-- Brangifer (talk) 02:43, 26 October 2009 (UTC)
Possible useful reference
See [3] which is a dermatological article. It has extensive discussion of toxicology and the history of FDA findings. Mangoe (talk) 17:46, 26 October 2009 (UTC)
In the NASA report they did analysis on many of the reports of side effects of silver in an effort to determine what would be a safe level in the water that the astronauts would be drinking. This analysis actually has some numbers and threshold levels which I think would be of benefit here, if this article became one on the medicinal purposes of silver, or on the article about argyria if this stays colloidal silver. stmrlbs|talk 01:45, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
The NAP book linked way up there ^ and already used has more possibilities. Also the Quackwatch article has relevant info and good refs. Vsmith (talk) 15:00, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
The NAP book is what has the NASA report [4]- I'm talking about the same thing. stmrlbs|talk 02:50, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
RFC Renaming the article
Should the article be renamed to Medicinal use of silver (use or usage), remain as Colloidal silver, or [option 3 here]?
So far there have been no objections to renaming this article as Medicinal use of silver, so as to not focus solely on the technical definition of colloidals. Would usage be more appropriate? Is another name more appropriate? Or perhaps, should the article just stay put. Thoughts? - ??o??ia? ? ¢ 01:55, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
Would it not stay up on the listings even as a redirect? - ??o??ia? ? ¢ 18:05, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
The name Medicinal uses of silver is too specific; it should be Medical uses of silver, as Medicinal use (i.e., use in medicines) is a subset of medical use (i.e., use in any aspect of medicine). For example, silver has had an important role in the development of radiology, but that is not a medicinal use. Also, Medical uses of silver is a bit shorter and easier to understand. Eubulides (talk) 01:15, 31 October 2009 (UTC)
Sources
Other sources to consider:
- FDA on colloidal silver and argyria: [5]
- Washington Post on marketing of colloidal silver: [6]
... there are a few odds and ends floating around about the current niche for colloidal silver - as a swine flu cure, of course - but that's probably too recentist. MastCell Talk 05:15, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
New article structure
I've noticed that Stmrlbs removed the *inuse*-notice from the article diff. Well, I myself am of the opinion that none of the edits I've made to the article were any changes that would need to be discussed first. I didn't change the scope of the article in any way, and I didn't bring in any new points that weren't already mentioned in the article. I really didn't bring in any new statements, although I've supplemented a few statements with more sources. The only sources I've removed for now were concerning the statement on what colloidal silver is marketed as, diff, but those sources are only hidden, not removed completely. I could were well continue editing the article for another 2 hours, but I think a 3-hour-marathon is enough.
In case that the purpose of the new article structure isn't obvious to everyone: The idea, that colloidal silver should have some anti-bacterial effects in-vivo, too, since it has anti-bacterial effects in-vitro, can now be discussed on a separate section: Discussion based on in-vitro studies. There is actually one source on the issue (although I would have to take another look at that one), and if sources discuss this, then Wikipedia should discuss this, too. And with a (balanced) discussion in a separate section, there would be no need to get into an edit war concerning NPOV.
Also: There is no meaningful way I could have discussed these changes before I made them. I think I can justify these edits as a whole, but I don't think that it would be possible to justify every single one of it independently. I hope that the long discussion at the noticeboard has achieved some results, if not, I fear the discussion will simply continue. Zara1709 (talk) 16:35, 31 October 2009 (UTC)
External and internal use of silver as medication
After another round of reading the (already present) sources, fixing citations and adding more statements, I would summarize the issue as following: External use of silver compounds as medication = good (at least sometimes) / internal use of silver-containing medication=bad (always). Previously the article didn't actually differentiate between these two uses. Since silver is germicidal, it can be used to treat infections, as long as these are on the outside of the body. I created a separate section for these uses, and brought this as subsection under the same section heading as the use of silver as disinfectant. To me, these appeared to be the most plausible solution, but since we now have this material in a separate (sub-)section, we can rearrange the sections if necessary. I can't imagine any argument against discussing the use of silver compounds as externally applied medication (in the treatment of wounds etc.) in a separate section. If there is such an argument, we would have to discuss whether my version as a whole is acceptable. (But don't do it like this anonymous ip editor and make a full revert without a discussion. On the other hand, if there are smaller errors in my work, feel free to fix them. I am no medical expert, and concerning several articles I only had the abstracts available - but on the other hand, I think that these abstracts were sufficient. Zara1709 (talk) 09:07, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
New lead paragraph
So, we needed a new lead paragraph anyway, since the article was moved. Now, I am not sure if "Medical uses of silver" is the right title, however, since this is a *general* title, there is no need to repeat the name of the article somewhere in the lead paragraph in BOLD. The point that silver has some established medical uses is now included, as well as the fact that colloidal silver was used historically. The paragraph is now probably even more explicit on the point that colloidal silver, as alternative medication, is a 'fraud', but, as far as I've read it, that would be the view of the "medical literature". If you want some example warnings from the literature, I can readily provide them. Zara1709 (talk) 20:46, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
I used "activated" because the "activated silver ion is toxic to bacteria and yeasts" - http://www.chemistryexplained.com/Ru-Sp/Silver.html I think its more accurate to use the word "activated" here, but I'm not going to stress over it. Wdford (talk) 13:24, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
Wdford, I don't understand what you are attempting to do here. You still haven't made a serious attempt to address my concerns that you are simply harassing me with you edits here; if you want to do some honest work at this article, I would suggest that you start by making smaller edits. During the last few I days I probably spent 8 hours altogether working on this article - since there is no indication that you have spent an equal amount of time working on the topic, why would you think that you could write a better lead then me? And no, you did not "reinstated other important medical uses", as you wrote in the edit summary. Neither the sources currently present in the article (and during the last few days I've read all of them) nor the source you have mentioned on this talk pages, Silver - Chemistry explained, says that silver wound dressings are "highly effective" or that Silver is "widely used in endo-tracheal tubes and catheters". We know that silver is used in wound management and "shows promise" there, and that "silver-based vascular and urinary catheters have now entered clinical use" by 2007. (Chopra 2007). That's it. Instead of "reinstat[ing] other important medical use[s]", you overstated them. If you have some information on this topic that is currently not included in the article, you should include it in the appropriate place, and not try to bring it in the lead first. At this article, there isn't a dispute about the scope (you suggest to move it to medical uses of silver, anyway), so there is no reason to work on the lead paragraph instead of the article. I intentionally didn't mention silver based "endo-tracheal tubes and catheters" (or that like) there, because we only have the basic information of their existence mentioned in the article. If you want to include a statement on these in the lead paragraph, you first need to add more info in the article. Then we can start to discuss the lead. Zara1709 (talk) 16:22, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
Article structure proposed by Wdford
Wdford, I don't know where you are heading with you current edits, but please show some diligence. I did some massive edits at this article, too, but 1) I've limited myself to using the sources already present 2) I was and am preprepared to justify the article structure I proposed . You, however, already added several new sources with your first edit diff; I haven't checked out all of them, but those I've checked out appear to be news reports and promo material, not the most reliable sources: This alone would give us enough reason for a discussion. With your second edit diff, you moved material based on an article in a medical journal about the (scientific) historical medical uses of colloidal silver preparations into the section on alternative medicine, which doesn't make any sense. We need to keep the historic medical uses (which were discontinued sometime in the 1940s) separate from the current alternative medicine uses. Your final version (here), did not include a section or subsection on those historic medical uses as internal medication. In the section "historic applications" you used the sentence "Physicians used it as an eyedrop for ophthalmic problems,[4] for various infections,[5][6] and sometimes internally for diseases such as tropical sprue, epilepsy, gonorrhea, and the common cold.", without the necessary addition: "In the 1940s, however, the medical use of silver diminished, due to both the development of safe and effective modern antibiotics and concern about argyria and other side effects of silver products." The version you proposed does not treat these "historical applications" adequately, and there are a several more issues. I think we could discuss your edits step-by-step; your first edit appears to include some useful material, but the article structure you propose is not an useful approach to the topic. Zara1709 (talk) 23:22, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
Wdford, I took a short look at http://www.imref.org/; That website is either a hoax or these people are total freaks. They write, http://www.imref.org/vision.php, quote:
I don't know what that side is about, and I possibly even don't want to know. But from this short look, this site is certainly not a reliable source. Zara1709 (talk) 00:31, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
Since this talk page could probably attract a lot of attention in a few hours (when I'll either be sleeping or at the university), let me summarize the issue of the article structure. I've made two series of bold edits at the article (using an in-use tag), that established the article structure before Wdfords edits. If someone had objected to my suggestion of an article structure back then, I would have tried to justify it (without reverting), but, against my expectation, no one challenged it - Until Wdford a few hours ago. The first thing I did in this respect was to establish one section (full diff) on the medical uses, with one subsection on the historic uses as internal medication and one subsection on the current controversy about colloidal silver as alternative medicine. These are different issues, but they are not unrelated. I also created a section on the "Biological effects of silver" to give the reader a general overview. There was some criticism, but I think I can say that my proposed article structure found acceptance. For the next series of bold edits, I took a look at a source that was previously disputed and finally (after reading it 5 times) figured out that this source was talking about silver as (external) treatment for open wounds. I've checked several other sources, and realized that this was a medical use of silver (if you want to call it that) which was different from the two kinds I had identified previously. I brought this kind of use (the use of silver-containing medication as external treatment for infectious wounds, burns and ulcers) under a separate subsection. There was an anonymous ip who reverted me during that series of edits, but I filed that under 'vandalism' and not under 'honest objection'. diff The remainder of the discussion and editing since then consisted in a move of the article, a rewrite of the lead on my part with a friendly discussion with Floydian and an unfriendly one with Wdford, a merger (or rather a copy&paste) of a section from the article "silver" into this article, and now the series of edits by Wdford. Aside from several other problems with Wdfords edits, as far as the article structure is concerned, Wdford version does not include separate subsections on the historical medical used of silver as an internal medication until the 1940s and the current alternative medicine uses. Since the most reputable source I could identify, (the article by Fung & Bowen, 1996) makes a clear distinction between these uses, the article should make this distinction, too. Before we continue to work on the article, we need to discuss this issue. I think that, in a fair discussion based on reliable sources, the article structure I had previously established should find the support of the majority of editors, and then we can see how much of the material Wdford had also added (and which, of course, is preserved in the edit history) can be useful. If you consider the bold-revert-discuss-cycle, this is actually the only way to discuss this issue. Anyone can propose a new article structure (which would be impossible to implement with only one bold edit), but if someone else disagrees, then this someone can make a revert and then the issue would have to be discussed. If we are going to discuss this, I think that I have very good arguments, so I am not afraid of it - and I certainly would not be willing to accept Wdford's article structure without a discussion Zara1709 (talk) 01:41, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
Protected again
OK, I see the page has been protected again. Discuss the specific problems during the next 3 days and come to some form of agreement. Vsmith (talk) 01:33, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
As I said above, I found Wdfords general structure to be an improvement so would it not have been easier to allow a revert to Wdfords version, followed then by working on removing Wdfords dubious references. This may be easier than trying to discuss content AND structure all in one go. I don't think Zara should be too opposed to this as Wdfords removed very little of Zara's material. Beaupoint (talk) 02:05, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
Once again, Zara mis-states the position. Zara never made a "suggestion of an article structure", she merely wrote what she wanted to without any discussion, and now defends her work as though it has some special badge of approval. When I objected at the time to the imbalance in the lead I was ordered by Zara to first add the necessary material to the body of the article, which I did. In that short time (a day or so) Zara's unilateral structure (complete with imbalance, randomness and duplication) somehow became cast in stone, and is now considered to be the status quo. The edit history records clearly show that.
Please note that "Medical uses of silver" is not a controversial topic - silver has a long history of medical usefulness, as the huge body of literature shows. The only controversial aspect is that some people sell colloidal silver for ingestion, which has no proven benefits (yet) and which can be harmful if you overdose. I do not support drinking colloidal silver myself, and I happily retained the dedicated section for colloidal silver, as well as retaining warnings in other sections. All this material is what Zara put here - I did not add or remove anything "controversial", I merely renamed the dedicated section to "Colloidal silver preparations for ingestion" so that readers could better understand. My interest in the article is not about drinking colloidal silver.
Zara's main criticism of "my" structure seems to be that, in her opinion, I failed to include "separate subsections on the historical medical used of silver as an internal medication until the 1940s and the current alternative medicine uses." Well actually I retained the section on the history of silver in medicine, which clearly includes using silver as internal medication until the 1940's (I merely broadened it, and moved it to the top of the article), and I also retained the separate section on the "alternative uses", but merely renamed it as mentioned above. I therefore see zero justification for Zara's "concerns" about my structure. If she thinks it necessary to repeat that paragraph in the dedicated colloidal silver section, then a simple cut-&-paste would suffice - there was no (legitimate) need for a blind mass-revert.
Zara's structure, however, is still based on a dedicated "colloidal silver" article, with a tagged on mention of the broader uses of silver in medicine to reflect the expanded scope, and an extra section of useful stuff imported in from elsewhere without integrating it properly. Zara admits herself that she was not previously aware that silver is actually very useful in modern medicine. My efforts here have been to better report the rest of the story - without undermining the warning against drinking colloidal silver. This involved bringing in extra material, reordering existing material, and removing duplications. Any objective person reading my contributions can clearly see that. Yet this work is repeatedly mass-reverted by Zara, on a series of increasingly flimsy excuses.
I am once again amazed that Zara claims for herself the right to use the bold-revert-discuss-cycle, but denies that same right to any editor who disagrees with her. She states that she "certainly would not be willing to accept Wdford's article structure without a discussion", and yet she defends her own flawed structure with repeated mass reverts in contravention of WP:RV, without ever having subjected it to a discussion in turn. Secondly, Zara has no problem with saying about a medical research foundation, lead by a board of highly qualified medical specialists (http://www.imref.org/), that they are "either a hoax or these people are total freaks," - with no justification at all, merely because they disagree with her own POV. I object to Zara's flawed structure being granted God-given status, and I think we should all be allowed to improve articles without illegal mass-reverts by would-be article owners.
Finally, there is no shortage of reliable sources on this topic. Please point out (specifically) which of my sources you object to, and I will happily replace them with a range of others.
Wdford (talk) 11:48, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
I don't have much time at the moment, but I'll have to comment this: Wdford, your are wrong on several levels: 1) Quote: ""Medical uses of silver" is not a controversial topic." R: Previously, when this article was still called colloidal silver, there were at least two threads on it at the fringe theories noticeboard and one at the ANI. There is a fringe POV involved in the topic of colloidal silver, since it is marketed from some people with unsubstantiated claims of effectiveness, to the extend that the Food and Drug Administration (United States) "banned colloidal silver sellers from claiming any therapeutic or preventive value for the product". However,in your first edit, you actually added the fringe POV to the article with the statement "The non-profit, Washington State-based Immunogenic Research Foundation is interested in clinical research about silver's potential to combat global epidemics and pandemics including cancer, hepatitis C, HIV, Lymes Disease, Multiple Sclerosis, and drug-resistant super-germs." You even had the nerve of stating your intent in the edit summary as "to provide a more balanced picture" - which you certainly are not doing by adding a fringe POV to the article (without identifying it as such).
2)Quote: "actually I retained the section on the history of silver in medicine, which clearly includes using silver as internal medication until the 1940's." R: "Colloidal silver preparations for ingestion" (your section title, not mine) were marketed as a conventional medical treatment until roughly the 1940s and are marketed again since the 1990s as an alternative medical treatment. You are using the quotes from Fung & Bowen about conventional medicine in that section, but the section doesn't actually distinguish between conventional and alternative medicine any more. Your "Historical applications" section, on the other hand, doesn't actually say anything about colloidal silver as an conventional internal medical treatment until the 1940s! You have separated the statement: "Physicians used it as an eyedrop for ophthalmic problems,[4] for various infections,[5][6] and sometimes internally for diseases such as tropical sprue, epilepsy, gonorrhea, and the common cold.[7][8][9]" from the next paragraph, which explains why these uses were discontinued: The use of colloidal silver preparations (CSP) to treat or prevent "gonorrhea and gonorrheal conjunctivitis due to purported bacteriocidal properties" has largely been replaced "by less toxic antimicrobials with substantiated effectiveness."[38] Considering "direct application to mucous membranes in the nose, throat, urethra, and colon", there is "no evidence that CSP [colloidal silver preparations] are effective at these other sites and toxicity has been reported."[38] Although "silver products were infrequently promoted for oral use, benefits have been even more questionable."[38]
In short, Wdford, what you considered (and still considers) to be "imbalance, randomness and duplication" were quite often important distinctions - and since you apparently didn't read the sources properly, you are still failing the see these distinctions.
3)And on top of your failure to see or admit these mistakes (and I've identified several more in your edits), you are bringing in some unnecessary polemics in your comment. My work doesn't have "some special badge of approval." It previously found consensus from the editors, and if that wasn't enough, I spent an hour last night on explaining my article structure again. I've previously explained that I would have accepted a justified full revert of my edits, and I am asking you to do the same. If you are changing the article structure, you are incurring the risk that someone disagrees, and in that case you have to justify your suggestion and explain what problems you see with the previous article structure - but you are not even attempting that. Instead you simply call my previous article "flawed" and say that you object to it "being granted God-given status". Hey, if you can't explain why you think that my article structure is "flawed", you polemics are quite unnecessary. Polemics are useful make an argument more obvious, but you are not even having an argument. And by the way, no one, and certainly not me, said that the article structure I had established was "God-given." Zara1709 (talk) 12:52, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
1) Wdford, I am not accusing you of promoting a fringe POV here; I am pointing out that you failed to identify a fringe POV source as such. You added a fringe POV to the article without discussing it as such and there is no way you can deny that.
2)This article is about a topic (Medical uses of silver), which has several sub-topics.
I think it's obvious that each of these subtopics needs a separate (sub-)section. Your wording of the article does certainly "not contain all the necessary detail to reflect the true picture." I have previously given you an explicit example: You moved several quotes about the use of silver-containing conventional medicine to the section in alternative medicine. I could give you several more examples, but so far you have failed to even reply to this one.
3) Fact is: Until you came along, no one challenged the article structure; now, I might take silence to imply consensus, but this doesn't matter here. I was and I am prepared to justify my article structure on this talk page, whereas you are obviously not willing to do that. Why else would you avoid actually discussing the article structure, and instead try to make it appear as if you version found consensus on this talk page. (If mine didn't find consensus, yours has certainly found less.) I've offered that we could go through your edits step-by-step, but you didn't even show a sign that you noticed this offer. This is not the first time I was unable to discuss a controversial issue with you, and I've had enough. I'll write a long thread at the ANI. Zara1709 (talk) 18:37, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
Wdford: Floydian and I had been discussing this article for a week or so at the noticeboard, and you did not participate at all in that discussion. As soon as I had pointed out there that the article was unprotected, you made an edit at the article. Why would you do that? I said previously, that I find it incredibly hard to believe that, among the million+ articles at Wikipedia, you would "accidentally" be interested in the same one as I. There are dozens of articles discussed at the noticeboards each day, and I intentionally picked this one, because to me it looked like a controversial issue which could be resolved with relatively little effort, as long as all participants agree on our basic policies (especially: reliable sources). Probably I should not have started to edit this article after I saw that you might get involved, but on the other hand it was indeed relatively easy to fix the core of the issue. But the issue of balancing is difficult at this article, and your edits to the lead paragraph upset that balance. We could have discussed them, but then you went on an started a rewrite of the article, with massive problems. The most severe problem is that you added a fringe source to the article, which at an article, which has been discussed at the fringe noticeboards already twice, simply must not happen. And instead of admitting your mistake, you are trying to downplay it. Wdford, you did not try do inform the readers that there some people out there who consider colloidal silver to be a cure for (almost) everything. You wrote in the article: "The non-profit, Washington State-based Immunogenic Research Foundation is interested in clinical research about silver's potential to combat global epidemics and pandemics including cancer, hepatitis C, HIV, Lymes Disease, Multiple Sclerosis, and drug-resistant super-germs." see here You completely missed that this "non-profit, Washington State-based Immunogenic Research Foundation" is a bunch of, to put it mildly, alternative medicine promoters. And on top of that, you misplaced the reference and your next sentence starts with the words: " In a paper published in 2006 in the international scientific journal Current Science ..." Your version of the article was giving the reader the impression that SCIENTISTS were discussing "silver's potential to combat global epidemics and pandemics including cancer, hepatitis C, HIV, Lymes Disease, Multiple Sclerosis, and drug-resistant super-germs." This is the worst problem with your edits, but there are several more, which is why I went for a full revert as soon as I realized what errors you made already in the first edit. Well, it's ok to make mistakes, but you are simply unable to admit them. I made mistakes in my first series of edits, too, and "mastcell" corrected them. Nobody started an edit war about that. You, on the other hand, don't even want to know what problems I see with your edits. Instead of discussing your edits, you are accusing me of a "blatant contravention of WP:RV.." If I think that one or two simply modifications would not suffice, then of course I can do a mass-revert. If you want, I can take a look at each of your edits and explain to you which mistake you made. But that would require that you have the ability to accept valid criticism, which you simply lack. You are wasting all your efforts of finding the mistakes of other people. I mean, have you read wp:rv? There is a paragraph in that guideline, in italics and in bold writing:
Wikipedia:Reverting doesn't say anything anything specific about mass-reverts. But the guideline is abundantly clear on the point that the first revert (in this case mine) should be followed by a discussion, not by several counter-reverts. If I think that your edits are so bad that I'll have to revert them as a whole, you have to listen to me while I explain my view. But you are not only a sub-average editor (which wouldn't be a problem if you were actually able to learn something), but you are also completely unable to take into account the possibility that you might be wrong. At least this is the behaviour that you have shown so far. If you want, I can spent a few hours on this and give you a detailed analysis of the mistakes you made in you edits. If you don't want that, please leave this article alone, so that other people have a chance to edit it and we don't have to solve this dispute first. Zara1709 (talk) 17:52, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
How (not) to discuss undue weight
Wdford, now we might actually be getting somewhere. I mean, you are still including superficial and UNNECESSARY polemics in your comments, and you completely failed to notice that only editor who supported your article structure turned out to be a sockpuppet of an editor who was banned from this article (and is now completely banned), but at least you admitted that you are seeing "undue weight given to the negative aspects of the medical use of silver". So this is a discussion about balancing POVs after all! And the first thing you have to admit when you want to discuss issues of balancing is that those issues can often be quite complex. People have read different sources and come from different backgrounds, so consequently they differ in their prior knowledge of the issue and would give different aspects a different weight. The only way to solve this dilemma is to get down to it and discuss the issue - until a discussion has taken place, different viewpoints on due weight are legitimate. You, on the other hand, are not even willing to discuss the issue, and are not bringing forward any source-based arguments at all. You are saying that the "literature contains an abundance of evidence" for what you call the "positive medical uses of silver", but you are not actually referring to any literature in your comments. Try adding a link and a quote at least once! That would be extremely helpful, because I've read all the available sources in the article, and I am utterly perplexed by your conclusion. There are some uses for silver-containing medication in the treatment of external infections. Silver compounds are also sometimes used in medical equipment to prevent infections, and as disinfectant (which might or might not be a "medical use" in the strict sense.) I certainly don't see any "abundance of evidence". The only way you could have come to such a conclusion is by an inadequate reading of the sources. I mean, the article by Chopra (2007) is mainly talking about silver compounds in the treatment of infections wounds, and not at all about the internal medical uses of silver. My version has this somehow taken into consideration, but with your edits, we lost that distinction again, see here. Whereas you apparently thought that you were fixing a duplication, you in fact created a misquotation in the article. You wrecked up a quotation which I had just fixed. I still don't think that you are a Fringe POV-Warrior in the strict sense, but from what I've seen you are neither able to evaluate source correctly, nor are you able to take part in a source-based discussion of your edits. Probably you are subconsciously taking in unreflected positive stance towards silver as a medicine, and are simply reading the sources your way, instead of trying to figure out what they actually say. However, since you are also utterly unable to accept criticism (you are e.g. still defending your quotation of a fringe source), I see simply no way you can make a useful contribution to this article. Zara1709 (talk) 20:15, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
Wdford, I am not making personal attacks against you. I am only honest. When I come to the conclusion that you are incompetent as an editor, then I can say that. When I am feeling that you are harassing me, then I can say that.
And you did not understand the legitimate differences on due weight "fully", you apparently did not understand them enough NOT to waste 3 days with laments about my "mass-revert". You did not understand this well enough to see that you should have limited yourself to either 1) bringing in more sources or 2) changing the article structure, because the differences on this couldn't possible be discussed at the same time. Also I DID bring in the positive uses of silver into the lead with one of my latter edits: "Physicians use silver sulfadiazine (Ag-SD) or silver nano-materials in wound dressings to treat external infections." I didn't mention silver based urinary catheters and that like there yet, because the sources on this are inconclusive: "trials have provided mixed results" 1, "...studies published after the meta-analysis have reported more mixed results" 2. You see, I've indeed taken a look at your sources, and I have (so far) come to the conclusion that your version of the article is misquoting them. Now, I know that there are more important issues in life than a discussion of the effectiveness of silver-based urinary catheters - but I've also concluded from your edits so far, that you would create an article full of misquotations and statements based on less-reliable sources, if you're edits would go unopposed. Every time when I write a reply, I ask myself: Is this really worth it? Why should I care, when the article on Medical uses of silver at Wikipedia includes some grave errors - I am not basing my health decisions on Wikipedia. But then I think of the fact that many people will not be able to spot these errors, and I remember that you already sabotaged my work at two other articles. So this time I am putting up a fight. And if you think you can simply re-do your edits as soon as the full protection is gone, then you are wrong. Zara1709 (talk) 23:44, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
Copyvio
I've reverted User:Wdford's last edit as the first paragraph was basically [8] a cut-paste WP:Copyvio from the abstract at http://content.karger.com/ProdukteDB/produkte.asp?doi=10.1159/000093928 - we simply don't do that. Vsmith (talk) 13:31, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
I think that finishing the merger of that section is going to take at least another hour. I am not going to cut&paste a sentence without verifying the sources. Actually I've just discovered that there is a source that at least says that silver sulfadiazine has an "antiherpesviral" effect here, but I don't know any source on an anti-viral effect in general. Zara1709 (talk) 15:27, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
Unrelated to the quarrel, is "Chronic intake of silver products, especially colloidal silver, can result in silver or silver sulfide particles in the skin" correct? I don't believe there is any preference... Just "chronic intake of silver products can result in"... - ??o??ia? ? ¢ 17:42, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
Wdford, I would have done a few more edits to the article myself a short while ago, but since this is a controversially discussed article, I've limited myself to the minim that was necessary to dissolve the section merged here. I would ask you to limit yourself to a discussable amount of edits, too, so that we have time to discuss them here. Otherwise we are risking another confrontation. Zara1709 (talk) 19:25, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
OK, I'll work on the wounds section off-line, and only upload it tomorrow night. What time-zone are you in? Wdford (talk) 19:54, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
Institute for Optimum Nutrition
I've removed a bit sourced to the Institute for Optimum Nutrition [10] as, although it labels itself as a not for profit educational charity, it seems to be a promotional website and therefor not WP:RS. Please avoid use of non-reliable sources. Vsmith (talk) 21:02, 8 November 2009 (UTC)
Wdford, I think I have do to at least a partial revert of your edits. The discussion about the Institute for Optimum Nutrition is still pending, and whereas I think that some reword would probably be justified to take concern about the reliability of that source in account (Fung & Bowden say more on that point, and they are certainly a reliable source) with your second edit you brought in at least one other source which is even more problematic: You added an article about Ionic Silver from a website www.thenhf.com. First, the article quotes remarkably little in the way of academic literary, which is rather problematic, considering the exceptional claims it makes. More importantly, the site from which you have the article also includes viewpoints on Fluoridation and Vaccinations. Now, whereas I personally do feel that the WP article Water fluoridation understated the opposition to water fluoridation when it was recently featured and I've been following the controversy on swine fly vaccination closely, I know that an organization that takes a viewpoint on these issues is, quite often, not a reliable source. Since I don't think that we need to use material from their homepage as a source (everything that they say should also be found in medical journals), I am asking you to justify why you want to use that source, and until then, since we still need to discuss the other source, I am restoring the previous version.Zara1709 (talk) 23:53, 8 November 2009 (UTC)
Expert needed
As I've said that previously, I am going to flag the article with *Expert needed*. Using reliable web sources, free article abstracts and publicly accessible articles in medical journals, you can only work on the article up to a certain point. If we haven't reached that point already, we're approaching it rather fast. I mean, we certainly have a lot of sources. We could easily find many more, using google, but we shouldn't do that. Why? Because we don't need as many sources as possible, but only the most reputable sources. We don't need to fill in the fact from 20 different sources, if we have 5 sources that say the same. Only when we're dealing with specific facts (which aren't covered in the 5 most reputable sources), we need specific sources. Aside from that, I also helps the readers if they have a literature section which helps them to identify further reading material, instead of a long list of references.
The problem here is that the most reputable sources are medical journal articles, to which only experts from the medical professions have easy access. (Theoretically I could get them, too, but that would require some money and quite a lot of effort.) So, instead of spending another 1-2 hours trying to extract some facts from the sources we are having access to, I'll rather spent that time trying to get someone over here who has access to the medical journals. I'll put up the tag now, and latest by tomorrow I'll write a notice at an appropriate Wiki-Project. Zara1709 (talk) 20:45, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
Documentation needed on the claim "silver is adviced against"
Is there really any large collective or substantial body of work anywhere that advises against the use of silver in medicine? Where is the documentation for that? the article also says that there have no been no clinical studies made of either beneficial or adverse effects. How could a collective or substantial body of scientific work advice against that being so? Nunamiut (talk) 03:14, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
"medical authorities advise against the use of these silver preparations because of their ineffectiveness and potential toxicity" Hm. With no deaths (one alleged death) and no adverse effects documented except skin discoloration in a extremely few and cases of extreme consumption, how can there be warnings of potential toxicity? How can there even be said to be a potential for toxicity? This is not scientific. It's excuses for not being scientific, as in academically dishonest attempts to escape facts and real science.Nunamiut (talk) 03:20, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
This seems more like wordplay than any kind of clarification. The common use of the word "toxic" generally refers to the (a) level of serious harm any substance can do to any given human or living being. Ingestion of any product in excessive quantities is toxic in the sense given the term here and gives no sensible meaning to useful information by any standards. I was under the impression that this is not a medical dissertation, it's public information. Don't we have to / should we not rather adhere to some standards and levels of comprehensibility that is useful to the general public? And for the record: I am interested in how information is presented, an not interested in any accusations or speculation on what my intentions are. Nunamiut (talk) 05:04, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
I'm not arguing that the usage of colloidal silver has any beneficial medical effects, and I never have, and never will, until scientific studies have been made. I'm arguing that the information is misleading since no scientific medical studies have been made, as the article itself clearly states. And yes, I would prefer that change to the statements since its clear that ingesting excessive colloidal silver does have serious side effects. Very few people wish to turn grey or have their skin discoloured, yes. By the way, doesnt the FDA state that the levels of silver normally used in and associated with commercial or privately made colloidal silver are so ridiculously low that they are on a par with the distilled water homeopathy uses, i.e. just like pure water?Nunamiut (talk) 05:41, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
If quackwatch is considered acceptable here, [11] exists. Hipocrite (talk) 19:30, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
Guys, quoting web pages is ok, if they are a reliable sources. However, I did flag this article with *Expert needed* for a reason. Reliable web sources are acceptable, but academic journals are nearly always better. If we want to have a good article some day, we have to switch from quoting web sources to quoting medical articles at some point. Zara1709 (talk) 17:46, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
Wdford's counter edits
Wdford, you wrote in the edit summary "streamlined and rebalanced the lead, as proposed on the talk page with no objection" [12], which only is try because I didn't have that much time to for Wikipedia the last few days. If you had read what I've written on this talk page or taken a look at my edits, you would have known that I would disagree at least with some of your edits, BECAUSE YOU RESTORED AN EDIT WHICH I HAD CHANGED BACK PREVIOUSLY. I even gave you an explanation of that change here, and you said that you were agreeing to it. What are you trying to pull of here? Do you want to sneak back and restore your edit to the article, while I am not looking? Your edit summaries didn't say that you also removed some important information on argyria from the article and from the lead. I'll have to go with a full revert. Zara1709 (talk) 16:57, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
Wdford, you replaced several statements that were sourced to medical journals with a statement sourced to a web page. That web page looks like a reliable source, but we don't need to use it there, since we are already using the medical journals. Edits are supposed to improve the article, not make it worse - of course I had to revert that edit. Zara1709 (talk) 17:55, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
I disagree that the literature on silver's toxicity is based "largely or wholly on approved medical uses of regulated pharmaceutical products and devices." The ATSDR summary clearly includes the event of people drinking silver as well as breathing it in and a host of non-medical exposures. It also clearly concludes that you need a huge amount of exposure in order to get sick. There is no conflation or synthesis here.
Zara prefers to refer to "medical journals", but the information disseminated by the ATSDR is based on a review of ALL medical journals, and exactly as I said in my edit comment, the ATSDR info is thus more general than individual medical study reports. Using the ATSDR info thus reduces the risk of bias in any particular individual study, which is a concern since we seem to be a bit restricted in exactly which reports we reference here. I can't accept Zara's excuse that referencing the ATSDR website makes the article worse - those guys are the experts, and they are fully informed.
I am fully supportive of the efforts to distinguish between the FDA-approved medical usage and the snake-oil remedies, and my lead section preserved two distinct paragraphs for that reason. My concern is not to white-wash snake-oil, but merely to get some balance into the lead that more appropriately weights the article toward treatments that save tens of thousands of lives rather than just the repetitive emphasis on a few hundred cases of agyria ever in history, and most of those probably due to working in silver mines and refineries rather than drinking colloidal silver, which contains way less than the dangerous dosage anyway. All I ask for is balance. Wdford (talk) 19:11, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
Introduction
Totally aside from the long standing and bitter controversy surrounding this article, this thing is a mess (actually, I suspect that this is partly due to the controversy). Come on: two definitions of argyria in the intro? The hideous first sentence "The medical uses of silver include as an antiseptic and a disinfectant" (might it not be better to say "the element silver (Ag) is used as an antiseptic and disinfectant", or some other statement less offending to the english language)? This article, especially the intoduction, needs someone to form it into prose that doesn't hurt to read. And it's not going to be me cleaning up the mess that other editors have made in their efforts to advance their own viewpoint. It's not just that I think the ones who mutilated this article should be the ones to put it back together again. I'm also scared that if I change so much as a comma, someone's going to start a diatribe against me. So instead I'll vent my frustration on this talk page without putting in any real effort to improve the article. I know I'm sounding critical and being unhelpful, but the editors of this article need to know that the quality of this article is low, and that simply inserting sentances in random places that support your view isn't helping.Buddy431 (talk) 02:36, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
Wdford, I don't know what you attempted with your last edit, but you must have made an error using cut&paste or that like. And of course this article needs to get into the details of argyria, unless you want to create a separate article on colloidal silver again. The reputable secondary sources on colloidal silver, which I identified a few weeks ago, discuss argyria in detail, and so has Wikipedia. 'Balance' is not some sort of compromise between editors with different POVs, but a treatment of the article topic based on reliable (secondary) sources. If you want to have a discussion on balance in this article, you better learn how to substantiate your edits with an argument based on reliable sources: You should probably start by reading our policy wp:rs and familiarize yourself with "Primary, secondary, and tertiary sources". If you don't want to learn how to discuss an issue based on reliable sources, I can only ask you to let us work on the article alone - there must be enough other articles that you can work on and which aren't that complicated. Zara1709 (talk) 12:25, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
Wdford, have you read the article "in vitro" once? In vitro results are quite different from in vivo results - you cannot simply add: "..., as well as in external wounds in living tissue" after "in vitro". And although we do have sufficient literature that discusses the use of silver in "medical applications", no one is disputing that and we also have sufficient literature that discusses and criticizes colloidal silver preparations. Now we need to discuss the weight that each of these points needs to be given in the introductory paragraph,and we don't need to emphasise that the "clinical exposure" to silver involves "minimal risk", it is fully sufficient to say that "Physicians use" wound dressing containing silver etc. - if the side-effects were too grave, physicians wouldn't use that stuff. Now stop making a mess of the lead paragraph and start with justifying why you want to use promotional articles as sources there, because one could question their reliability, but so far I simply was nice enough not to remove them. Zara1709 (talk) 13:13, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
Seems I edited in the middle of a dispute :-) Anyway, I've changed that first sentence which read poorly - we don't need to be hung-up on bolding a title such as this one. Also added a couple links. The lead is for summarizing the article content, not for reproducing all the arguments, keep it concise and save most of the refs for the body (ideally the refs belong in the body rather than the lead). Vsmith (talk) 13:42, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
Could we please ban Wdford from this topic?
I've had enough of this and created another thread at the ANI about it. Just look at Wdford's recent edits. His version says:
Take a short look at the abstracts of these two articles: Lansdown (2006) is only talking about silver used in "water purification, wound care, bone prostheses, reconstructive orthopaedic surgery, cardiac devices, catheters and surgical appliances." Fung & Bowden (1996), on the other hand, are only talking about "oral colloidal silver proteins as mineral supplements and for prevention and treatment of many diseases". Wdford is actually failing to see that these two sources are talking about two different things. Even someone who only spend 10 minutes reading the abstracts should realize this, but Wdford has actually been working on the article for about two weeks or so (with another two week break). I can only see two reasons for his failure to differentiate these two points. Either 1) he is utterly incompetent or 2) in his specific view of the topic his is unable to make this distinction, meaning in short: He is a POV-Warrior.
In any case, he has nothing left do to at this article. Since he previously never admitted that he was wrong, and only accepted criticism in the form of saying something like: "well, I still disagree, but since you are forcing me...", I think that any further discussion would be futile. If we don't want to give up on this article (and leave it to the tendentious editing of Wdford), sooner or later we will have to ban him from the topic. The sooner, the easier it will be for all involved. Zara1709 (talk) 16:11, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
Yet another full revert
Zara continues to commit full reverts of valid and reliably-sourced material, on paper-thin grounds. Her latest excuse was that a reference was mis-applied. However the abstract of the article quoted is most very certainly talking about colloidal silver. Lansdown actually mentions colloidal silver by name. In fact, to quote Lansdown exactly: "Silver exhibits low toxicity in the human body, and minimal risk is expected due to clinical exposure by inhalation, ingestion, dermal application or through the urological or haematogenous route. Chronic ingestion or inhalation of silver preparations (especially colloidal silver) can lead to deposition of silver metal/silver sulphide particles in the skin (argyria), eye (argyrosis) and other organs. These are not life-threatening conditions but cosmetically undesirable. " Without a doubt Lansdown was including colloidal silver in that abstract.
Zara claims that it is necessary to warn about the risk of argyria, yet the wording she keeps reverting to consistently hides the fact that the risk is minimal and that the safe daily dose is substantial. (per the EPA, 5 micrograms (µg) of silver per kilogram (kg) of body weight per day (5 µg/kg/day) - about 350 µg of silver per day for a 70 kg person, or 7 teaspoons at 10ppm per day every day for life, which is over a litre per month."
Since the Lansdown reference is clearly attributable to ALL forms of silver, and since the current wording omits to clarify that the risk of argyria is slight, I am undoing Zara's latest full revert.
In fact, Zara's repeated insistence on giving undue weight to the negative side in the face of many reliable sources is becoming Tendentious Editing as per WP:TE.
Wdford (talk) 00:59, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
Suggestion
I've taken a brief look through this following a 3RR report. I know nothing about the issue and have no suggestions to make in terms of direction, but in terms of policies, the best thing would be to stop relying on primary sources (individual studies) and rely only on secondary sources who have discussed the science. That would stop the arguments about what study X meant, or what weight should be given to it. See WP:NOR about the importance of relying on secondary sources, and not interpreting primary sources ourselves. SlimVirgin 18:33, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
Excellent. I am thoroughly happy with your summary in your last paragraph, and I'm sure all will agree that those details have long been included in the article, including in the lead, and that I have never tried to delete them. (Small point - I am not entirely comfortable with the phrase "more-or-less accepted uses", as these uses have been common practice for some time already, and in many cases are first-choice front line treatments. Some of the sources quoted in the article are a bit out of date.)
Our only difference - as I have been saying all along - is about balance, not content. Wikipolicy WP:YESPOV requires that editors do not take sides. Specifically: "The neutral point of view neither sympathizes with nor disparages its subject, nor does it endorse or oppose specific viewpoints. .... An article should clearly describe, represent, and characterize all the disputes within a topic, but should not endorse any particular point of view." In other words, it's not up to us to "warn" people away from colloidal silver. I feel therefore that we need to be a bit more objective than some have preferred so far.
I truly understand your concerns about colloidal silver, and I sympathize with your position, but I simply believe that some of the wording and weighting we have seen along the way leans too heavily against colloidal silver to be considered NPOV. For example, the FDA position does NOT say that "no safe limit exists", merely that "we the FDA have not yet done the huge amount of expensive homework required to establish what the safe limit is, but our colleagues at the EPA have, and here is their conclusion." It's relatively easy for an editor with a POV against silver to word that to read that the FDA condemns silver as a serious poison, which would be misleading to lay readers (i.e. almost all of them). We should also bear in mind that, although nobody has yet proved to the FDA's satisfaction that colloidal silver is a panacea, nobody has yet proved that it is NOT a panacea. Again, it's quite easy to create a false impression here. We need to state clearly the position of the authorities - and we have indeed done so - but we need to be neutral and balanced in the process.
Also, the fact that the EPA deals primarily with accidental exposure doesn't change anything - ingesting silver has the same effect whether you swallowed it unknowingly or on purpose, and the safe limits are the same in either case. Just about anything on earth will kill you if you swallow too much of it, so what we need is to know the safe limits - be it aspirin or silver or Vitamin A or morphine. Including the safe limits here is not the same as "prescribing" that people actually drink the stuff - I'm not trying to encourage people to ingest anything, and I'm not undermining the authorities' conclusions. I am however of the opinion that a balanced article should state the full position, and that the EPA "safe limit" is valuable information in an article about ingesting substances.
Finally, not many people know what a microgram is, especially in countries that are non-metric, so putting that info into accessible language is surely a good thing for the encyclopaedia? I didn't twist or synthesise anything, I merely clarified the EPA safe limit in language that average people can relate to. This is not an "abuse of sources".
I think the lead as it stands is pretty good, but I would like to spend the rest of our six days achieving a consensus that will stand when the protection is lifted. I am personally happy with the first paragraph, but I would like to propose that the second paragraph be reworded to read as follows:
Can we go hopefully forward from here?
Wdford (talk) 12:58, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
- I interpret WP:NPOV and WP:YESPOV a bit differently, I suppose. No, it is not our role to "warn people away" from colloidal silver. However, if NCCAM, the FDA, and every other expert body to comment on the subject has warned people away from colloidal silver, then we need to accurately reflect that, in the interest of basic honesty to the reader. That's not "taking a side"; we are obligated to present these expert viewpoints - which happen to be unanimous. We are taking a side when we as editors water down, "rebut", or undermine these clearly expressed viewpoints.
- Like I said, I recognize that argyria is a risk only with prolonged and/or excessive consumption of colloidal silver. I'm not out to portray it as a deadly poison. I think we will be able to come to some consensus on how to word the FDA/EPA sources.
- "Nobody has yet proved that colloidal silver is NOT a panacea": Sure. There are lots of things that people have not yet DISproven, which is why the scientific method doesn't work that way. Medical claims should be subjected to actual testing before they're made. Responsible people and companies do that. No one has proven that Prilosec doesn't whiten teeth and improve libido, but it would be pretty irresponsible to use the lack of negative evidence to advertise it as such. Right? We run the risk of dishonestly reflecting our scientific sources when we make those sorts of arguments.
- On EPA limits: it matters. The EPA sets limits on environmental exposure to lead and mercury. That doesn't mean that they recommend ingesting up to the "safe" limit. I'm fine with mentioning the EPA's exposure findings briefly - though they should really be a footnote, since this is an article about medical use of silver, and if there are no medical sources, then we shouldn't be spending a lot of time on it, right? Your analogy actually points this up - safe limits for vitamin A, morphine, aspirin, and even gold (see auranofin) are available from medical sources.
Finalising the lead section
Is it really necessary or appropriate to have a detailed discussion of argyria in the lead section of this article? Since argyria has its own article, (as well as a detailed discussion in the body of this article), would the lead section of this article not be improved by merely mentioning argyia as a potential side effect of silver ingestion, with a wikilink to its own article for those who want the full details? Wdford (talk) 19:53, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
I'd be fine with a mention of it, seeing as the rest of the article contains detailed information. Equally put with colloidal silver. If CS gets mention in the lead, every medical use of silver must also get equal mention in the lead, or this article is not NPOV. - ??o??ia? ? ¢ 20:46, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
This doesn't look fine to me. The reason clinicals are not available is because the FDA will not conduct or approve studies on colloidal silver for medical use. The statement that there is no clinical evidence that silver has microbial properties is very much substantiated. Unfortunately, these studies fall on deaf ears or are railroaded off public forums. There is a medical application used by Kaiser hospital called a Sponge VAC that is recognized for it's antimicrobial properties. Why isn't this allowed to remain on this page if it is true? Brionbee (talk) 00:20, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
Additional applications may be listed as discovered such as Silver Nano particles dispensed in the washing and rinsing cycles of washing machines so that the silver particles sanitize and disinfect fabrics throughout the life of the washing machine to protect your fabrics, and disinfects your drum and all its internal parts. For example see product made by Samsung here http://www.samsung.com/sg/consumer/learningresources/silvernano/silvernano/washingmachine.html. TxSun -- Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.145.158.75 (talk) 19:09, 29 May 2011 (UTC)
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