Selective Inaction of ASAP on Probiotics (Performed at Viridis BioPharma, Mumbai, India)

This study tested the product against a number of friendly bacteria, the type of bacteria that the body uses to aid in the digestion processes. It was found in the study that the product at both 10 ppm and 22 ppm would not even inhibit the growth of probiotic bacterium. In conclusion the report states, "The results bring forth ASAP as an 'antibiotic of choice' - natural antibiotic, with firstly no side effects such as diarrhea – and in fact will not disturb the body's natural host mechanism. It indeed compliments therapy by sparing essential host microflora, as well as concomitant lactobacilli therapy normally given as an adjunct."

In the American Biotech Labs address, presented to members of The House International Relations Committee Subcommittee on Africa, Global Human Rights and International Operations, and now part of the public record in the Library of Congress, it was stated:

"Once produced, ASAP has a shelf life estimated to be ten (10) years or more. This allows for the storage and stockpiling of ASAP on a large scale basis. [...]"

Following is the standard response that we send to email inquiries about shelf life:

"Although all American Biotech Labs products are expiry dated two years from the day of manufacture, no real time of degradation of efficacy has ever been established. There are archived batch samples at ABL that go back over 10 years. When tested, they demonstrate the same characteristics and properties that they possessed when first bottled. ABL claims at least 10 years of product viability. Employees have left samples locked in cars in scorching Utah summer heat and frozen solid winters. These samples also demonstrated no degradation.

According to the materials science laboratories at Penn State University, the patented process, and now the patented particles from that process, possess properties that set them far apart from conventional silver colloids. This is demonstrated in their extreme stability, among other things. (See link to research paper below)

"We have personally used trade show samples that were over 4 years old. We could not notice any difference in them from fresh batch lots. The packaging is capped with pressure compensating tops. All that you need to do is make sure the cap is on snug after use. The only caution that ABL lists on their bottles is that they not be stored in direct sunlight. Short term sunlight exposure presents no problems; you just do not want to store the bottle on a sunny window sill.

"The extreme stability of the ABL silver colloids has attracted the interest of the US military. Negotiations are currently ongoing to place variants of this product in every combat medical corpsman's field kit. As soon as the FDA completes the approvals for the new ASAP wound gel dressings, I feel certain that we will see the US military as a major consumer of these products."

Please read the very last appendix attachment (ASAP vs. ACT) to the Congressional testimony for the official comments on shelf life, which are now part of the public record in the Library of Congress.

Also, on this topic, a group of internationally recognized authorities in the field of medical material science research have just published a peer reviewed paper about their work with silver in suspension/solution in water. They chose 6 popular brands of colloidal silver, but spent most of their time (4+ years) concentrating on the ASAP Solutions, due to their unusual and unique molecular properties. The stability of ASAP is noted in this paper.

Introduction

A great deal of controversy has arisen in the market place on the question of whether it is better to store silver solutions in glass versus plastic containers. There is a misconception that has prevailed in the market place that glass is better. The idea that glass containers are better for storing products which contain silver has never been proven scientifically. In fact, it has been reported in other studies that glass may have a detrimental effect on silver products.

Test Work

I have been conducting biological studies for 3 years, in the laboratory of a major private institution, on the use of silver products to kill and inhibit the growth of bacteria. I have conducted thousands of tests on numerous strains of pathogenic bacteria. In the testing I have completed, I have used both glass (5 ml glass test tubes) and plastic (Falcon 5 ml polypropylene plastic test tubes). In some of the test work we found that there was a difference in the amount of silver that was needed to kill the bacteria when glass was used versus plastic test tubes. In order to make sure this was the case, it was decided that the MIC tests (Minimum Inhibitory Concentration) should be replicated by more than one person and a direct comparison was made. The MIC tests were performed in triplicate in both 5 ml 13X100mm glass test tubes and 5 ml Falcon polypropylene plastic test tubes. Results of the bacterial (MIC) tests showed that Staphylococcus aureus was inhibited at 2.5 ppm when the MIC test was performed in the plastic test tubes. S. aureus was inhibited at 5 ppm when the MIC test was performed in glass test tubes. This suggested that the material with which the test tubes were made, specifically glass or plastic, may have effected the results of the MIC test. Numerous other tests were also completed using larger concentrations of bacterium and in those tests it was found that there was no significant difference at all between using the glass test tubes versus plastic test tubes

Other Studies

The studies which I performed are not the only tests showing that glass, in some circumstances, may have a detrimental effect on silver products. It has been noted in another independent study which has been cited by other researchers that silver can adsorb to glass (Chambers 1960; Thurman 1989). With this in mind, it may have been possible that the silver could have adsorbed to the surface of the glass test tubes reducing the concentration of available silver interacting with the bacteria which resulted in having to use a higher amount of silver to kill the bacteria when the glass test tubes were used.

Conclusion

In the test work I have completed as well as in other available studies, it was found that glass may, in some cases, have a detrimental effect on silver products. While it can be said that glass did not always show the detrimental effect, it can also be stated that we found no problems at all with using the plastic instead of glass. Our tests, in conclusion with the other available independent study (1Chambers et al. and 2Thurman et al.), would suggest, by inference, that silver products should not be stored in glass containers which could reduce the available concentration of silver, but rather in a high quality plastic container.

Respectively,
David A. Revelli, MS

References

Chambers, C. a. C. P. (1960). The Bacteriological and Chemical Behavior of Silver in Low Concentration. Cincinnati, OH, Division of Water Supply and Pollution Control, U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.

Thurman, R. a. C. G. (1989). "The Molecular Mechanisms of Copper and Silver Ion Disinfection of Bacteria and Viruses." CRC Critical Reviews in Environmental Control 18(4): 295-314.

Bioavailability
In pharmacology, bioavailability is used to describe the fraction of an administered dose of medication that reaches the systemic circulation, one of the principal pharmacokinetic properties of drugs. By definition, when a medication is administered intravenously, its bioavailability is 100%. However, when a medication is administered via other routes (such as by mouth), its bioavailability decreases (due to incomplete absorption and first-pass metabolism). Bioavailability is one of the essential tools in pharmacokinetics, as bioavailability must be considered when calculating dosages for non-intravenous routes of administration. (Source: Wikipedia)

In essence, if a substance cannot reach the problem for which its ingestion was intended, it cannot affect a resolution of that problem. This information, coupled with all of the other clinical and medical evidence accumulated by American Biotech Labs over the years, made unanimous our decision to offer exclusively the American Biotech Labs line of colloidal silver products.

The Managing Director at American Biotech Labs responds to a series of questions that he is regularly asked:

Q. There are so many silver products on the market today how do I tell which ones are good and which ones are not.

A. Look and ask for real (independent) test data. This data should include such things as independent safety reports, efficacy reports, government approvals that prove efficacy, and endorsements from people of expertise that have no ownership in the company, etc. No family should ever use a product unless it has at least been proven safe to use, look for in-vivo (living) tests that prove non-toxicity. Just because some person says that a product is non-toxic or beneficial does not mean that it is.

Q. What do I watch out for? Some companies always tout particle size, what does particle size have to do with it all?

A. A company with little real scientific standing will try to confuse potential clients with useless data that is very general in nature and that in reality has nothing to do with the effectiveness of their product. Often this data sounds quite impressive. But this data is many times just copied or quoted from some past doctor or scientist who did work on old silver products in the early or middle 1900's. Big red flags should go up if a company just touts particle size and or whether or not the product is colloidal or ionic. The argument of particle size is just a useless theory that states that smaller is somehow better. The argument of particle size is just a smokescreen for the fact that these companies have no real or reliable data to talk about. Those companies who have real data talk about it, those who do not often just argue about particle size. Unless you can back it with real data, particle size means nothing.

The real question is not which product has the smallest particle size, but rather which company has been able to engineer their particle size to be optimal, the most effective or broad spectrum, while keeping in mind that the amount of silver used has to be low enough to be safe for everyday family consumption. It is true that if a particle is too large it is of little use. It is also true that if a particle is too small it becomes ionic and much less useful, because ionic silver can be influenced or bound up by too many other chemical relationships in the body.

The fact remains that particle size is only important if the product actually works and the only way to know if a product actually works is to have reliable independent test data that proves it. Any good company which has reliable independent test data should be able to show it to you upon request. The test data should have test time periods (how long it took to work), how much was used in the test (the quantity used to get the results) and how strong the silver content was (what ppm levels were used). It is also important to look for the name of the independent lab that did the work. Very few companies have any test data at all, not even in-vivo (living) safety data. The little information that is available from these companies and given out or shown to potential clients, is many times completed by their own in house laboratories where they can make up any data they want. Good test work will have the name of a quality or reputable lab associated with it, look for a signed copy.

Q. A number of companies have come out with some sort of claim that their products are better then yours, why don't you come out with comparison studies showing that your product is actually better?

A. There are many parts to this answer. The first part is that we believe that these comparisons are just more smoke and mirrors put out by low budget companies because they have no real data of their own. Because we have volumes of independent data, they think that if they can just claim that their product is better or more effective than ours, it gives them some credibility of some sort.

We have looked at a number of sites on the internet and we found them to be highly inaccurate. One even had supposed pictures of how our product stacked up against theirs. The pictures had no data, no test times, unknown silver concentrations, nor any indication that the work was completed at an independent lab. It was obvious that it had bee n created again, by their own in house laboratory in the back room, where they can skew the data any way they choose.

Another site that claimed to be an independent one, had comparisons of many different products and stated that our product was actually not metallic but something like 80% ionic. With a little more investigation we found that the site was not an independent one as it purported to be, but rather a misleading site to promote their own product. American Biotech Labs has data from the number one materials research institute in the world on our engineered silver nano particle product. We know all about our silver products and have filed hundreds of pages of patents to cover them so that they can not be duplicated by anyone else. We believe that small time companies will continue to take shots at American Biotech Labs because when your product stands out alone at the top of the heap, there will always be wishful people taking shots at you in an attempt to try and make themselves look better.

The second part of the answer is that there are thousands of silver products out there with more trying to get into the market every day. We could waste our time trying to identify each one and then prove that we are better than each and every one of them, but why do this? It seems to us that our time and money is better spent working on solving problems, finding new answers, and creating new products with our technology so that we can end more human suffering. Because we have human case studies that have been completed using our products, we have knowledge about how much of our product is needed, over what time periods, in order to boost the human immune system to solve certain problems. We will continue to work with international labs, joint venture partners, and government groups, etc. to increase that knowledge so that we can help more people worldwide.

Q. Where do you see American Biotech Labs going in the next few years?

A. We have several new products that will be introduced to the markets this year and even more next year. A number of doctors and scientists have already been using and testing these new products and we are very confident that these items will be widely accepted in many new markets worldwide. We have a number of major studies that will be released in the next two years, some of which will be released in peer reviewed journals. We have signed a number of joint ventures with specialized partners and formed several new companies. One of the new companies has been formed and organized to develop products for humanitarian aid worldwide. The human studies completed on ABL products have proven that we can make a difference in the lives of many of these people.

American Biotech Labs believes that by working with strong partners, the company can do a great deal of good for humanity and help end som e causes of suffering for third world children. Humanitarian work is very important to us and in connection with that we have already been active by donating product to doctors who are caring for Afghan refugees. We have also been working with doctors in Africa and also missionary and government groups in South America and Asia. We have also supported U.S. doctors by donating our extra strength product, which has been used right here in the U.S. to help hurricane victims. American Biotech Labs management believes that by doing good the company will continue to do exceedingly well. ABL intends to pursue a course which will offer major health benefits throughout the world and create a healthier life for mankind.