Dr. Robert O. Becker's Research

A patient was referred to him as a last resort with a broken right tibia and fibula, both of which refused to heal and continued to get worse after a year and a half of effort.  The patient was given no choice but amputation.  After a year and a half of treatment with every available antibiotic, he talked Dr. Becker into trying his new methods on his leg.  Dr. Becker describes the wound as being “...a veritable zoo (of microbes)...no single antibiotic could fight all of John’s germs.  Even a mixture would probably create a greater problem than it solved, for any bacteria resistant to the mix would spread like wildfire when the others competing against them were removed.” The unhealed bone was still receding.  Dr. Becker had proven in earlier experiments with stainless steel, platinum and titanium electrodes that a very small negative current helped bone growth.  However, he had recently found that positive silver electrodes killed off bacteria.  He felt he had to make a choice between killing the infections and healing the bone and was afraid if he treated the infections first he would destroy even more of the little bone that was left.

Still, if he treated the bone first the infections would continue to spread and prevent the bone growth, probably consuming some more of the bone.  He had to make a choice and decided the infection had to be taken care of first.  He “…told John that six months after we got the wound to heal over with skin, I would bring him back into the hospital and use the negative current to stimulate whatever is left.” A long slow and risky process.

“...I debrided the wound, removing the dead tissue and all grossly infected or dead bone.  There wasn’t much left afterward.  It was an enormous excavation running almost from his knee to his ankle.  In the operating room we soaked a big piece of silver nylon in saline solution and laid it over the wound...wrapped the leg, and connected the battery unit.  By the end of the week...all of our bacterial cultures were sterile (1)(2).”[4]  The battery attached to the silver nylon produced ionic silver, as Dr. Becker later explained.  In a few days the ionic silver quickly killed off every kind of bacteria all the antibiotics had failed to kill in a year and a half!

Dr. Becker continues: “The soft healing tissue, called granulation tissue, was spreading out and covering the bone.  In two weeks, the whole base of the wound, which had over eight square inches of raw bone, was covered by this friendly pink carpet.  The skin was beginning to grow in too, so we could forget about the grafts we thought we’d need to do (1)(2)(7)(10).”[4] All of this indicates an abundance of dedifferentiated cells (stem cells) as Dr. Becker then explained.

“I decided to take an X-ray to see how much bone he’d lost.” Dr. Becker was expecting the bone to be withdrawing due to the positive electrical current: “I could hardly believe the picture.  There was clearly some bone regrowth!  I removed the cast, felt the leg, and found that the pieces were all stuck together.  John watched, and when I was done he lifted his leg into the air triumphantly.  I’d never so much enjoyed being wrong (1)(7).”  That is, he was expecting the bone to recede and the process to take about a year to accomplish what he largely accomplished in two weeks. 

This led Dr. Becker to discover that the silver electrode was drastically different from any other electrode and would heal bone miraculously with either a negative or positive charge although the other metals only worked with a negative charge on bone growth and then much slower.  The same silver electrode proved dramatically effective in killing infections also.

Dr. Becker did experiments on the dedifferentiation of human cells produced by the presence of ionic silver.  He states: “...it’s obvious that in the aggregate they profoundly stimulate soft-tissue healing in a way that’s unlike any known natural process (1)(2)(7)(10).  We don’t know how the changed cells speed up healing or how the silver changes them.  We don’t know how electrically produced silver ions differ from ordinary dissolved ions, only that they do (1)(7)(10).”[4]

Dr. Becker also experimented with cancer cells in a Petri dish using his silver wires and a very small electrical current, obviously again producing ionic silver.  On page 178 of “The Body Electric”, Dr. Becker states: “...silver, which when negative had no effect on, and when positive suspended mitoses of cancer cells in our lab...(2).”[4]  It is the positive electrode that produces ionic silver.  In other words, Dr. Becker is saying that the cancer cells stopped growing in the presence of silver in a Petri dish.  He states he was unable to obtain the funds to continue his research on the effects of silver on cancer.  In other places Dr. Becker speaks of “the amazing silver ion”. He tried electrodes made from several other metals and only the silver gave this result on cancer cells, proving that it was the silver ion which produced the results.

Dr. Becker repeatedly mentions ionic silver’s quality of causing various cells to dedifferentiate (10) (become the equivalent of what is now so highly publicized as (STEM CELLS) when needed.  Dr. Becker was unable to obtain the funds to continue this promising research.

Dr. Bjorn Nordstrom of the Karolinsky Institute, Sweden reported that he used silver in his cancer treatment method for many years and says this brought rapid remission to patients given up by other doctors (1) (2).[8]  Although Dr. Nordstrom gives silver the primary credit for the remissions, he did improve their health by other means also.

Cancer research scientist Dr. Gary Smith reports that he has noticed a correlation between low silver levels and sickness in general. He reports he found people with low silver levels to be frequently sick and to have innumerable colds, flu, fevers and other illnesses (1).[9]. As to cancer, he states: “Success depends on silver in the person’s body. When silver is present, the cancer cells dedifferentiate (10) and the body is restored. When silver levels are non existent, the cancer growth rate…continues…because the cells cannot dedifferentiate. I suspect a silver deficiency is possibly one of the main reasons cancer exists and is increasing at such an alarming rate (10).”[9] This deficiency is probably caused by our food being raised on depleted soil.

Here we have two important medical research scientists making emphatic statements as to the silver ions ability to cause body cells to dedifferentiate when needed. Both suggest that silver is an aid to cancer treatment because of this ability.  Dr. Becker also relates this ability to ionic silver’s amazing ability to heal (1)(7).[4]

The importance of this cannot be over emphasized. Only recently we continually read about “stem cells” and the amazing abilities of these cells and what can be done with them in very high priced treatments. These are found in the cells of embryos and umbilical cords and also in bone marrow. Obtaining them from these sources raises serious questions, problems and much debate. Although such cells can convert to those needed for many things, they still have a foreign DNA if they are from another donor.

Dedifferentiated cells, undifferentiated cells and stem cells are virtually the same thing. The cells which come from an embryo are undifferentiated; the same thing as stem cells. That is to say they have never been differentiated.  They can form any organ the DNA instructs them to. On the other hand a dedifferentiated cell has been differentiated and as such it could only reproduce its own kind of tissue, but now, after dedifferentiating, it has lost its specific tissue signature and therefore it is capable of forming any kind of tissue needed and is now exactly the same thing as a stem cell. All three are exactly the same thing, except the dedifferentiated cell contains the DNA of the patient.

For the stem cells to produce the various organs and limbs of the body of the embryo, the cell must have DNA to direct it.  That DNA is very specific to the embryo it is from. Can it be used in a body with different DNA without problems? Doctors are doing this now. Are there rejection problems as with transplanted organs? It is much simpler to provide silver so that those cells needed can dedifferentiate when needed from the cells of the patient. It is probably much safer. The processes of using stem cells are very new and not much detail is available. Certainly silver is much cheaper and available to everyone.  If the dedifferentiated cells are produced with the help of silver from the patient’s own tissues, the DNA will be the same and there will be no problems of rejection.

Skin in wounds usually heals from the edges of the wound inwardly until the skin joins together. This is usually a slow process and often leaves heavy scarring. Likewise, muscle usually grows from the sides inwardly until the muscle meets muscle. Muscle will not normally grow from the bone outwardly without a large number of dedifferentiated cells being present and skin will not grow over muscle except from the skin at the side already present, without a large number of dedifferentiated cells.

A dedifferentiated cell will take the form of any cell needed (at least within the same body in which it is produced). By this general process, internal organs can heal back to normal in cases in which, without the dedifferentiated cells produced by the silver, the organ could not heal properly.

This is extremely important.  Many wounds will not heal in the complete absence of dedifferentiated cells and it is obvious that some dedifferentiated cells are commonly present when needed. Most of these are usually from the bone marrow and are rarely sufficient for any serious wound.  Thus scarring is common. This is undoubtedly one reason for the slow healing of the elderly.  The number of dedifferentiated cells drops with age. It seems obvious from Dr. Becker’s work that bones cannot heal without some dedifferentiated cells (stem cells).

Many reports of healing in the presence of silver such as Doctor Becker documents, plus so many that I have seen and have been reported to us leaves no doubt in my mind that silver consistently causes cells to dedifferentiate and greatly accelerates healing.

Although silver treats almost every kind of infection effectively, this does not explain the common rapid healing in the presence of silver. Is it possible that many cancers are nothing more than an organ not having the needed dedifferentiated cells for normal growth? While there is no scientific proof of this, it is an intriguing question that this research and that of Doctor Gary Smith seems to suggest. Do many parts of the body need dedifferentiated cells for normal growth? Although there is no real scientific proof of this, the evidence does point to the possibility that this could explain a number of questions in health and healing.

Surgery almost always leaves scar tissue, and, much of it is internal. It is the lack of dedifferentiated cells that results in scar tissue. And yet the evidence that any cell will become a dedifferentiated cell (stem cell) in the presence of extremely small amounts of silver is overwhelming.

When a wound first occurs blood flushes out of the wound and sterilizes the wound. Then it forms a scab consisting of coagulated dried blood. If silver is immediately present during this process, it will mix with the blood and will be mixed throughout the scab. The silver will then begin dedifferentiating the blood cells in the scab and from those dedifferentiated cells of the scab, the cells needed to heal the wound are formed.

Of course, the silver also helps the blood to sterilize the wound. The result is rapid, scar free, infection free healing. Of course, the scab has often formed before the silver is applied and experience has demonstrated that it is still very effective.

Note that Dr. Becker found that only the silver electrode healed in this manner and that he mentions the “amazing silver ion”. The silver ion is the same thing as ionic silver and ionic silver is produced by the same process he used of low voltage electrical current applied to a silver positive electrode.