Gold: The Real Value

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This post was written by: Carol Webb

Gold In The Cancer Wars

Scientists have found that Gold Dust could be a valuable weapon in fighting cancer. Gold nano-particles will be used to smuggle chemotherapy drugs past the immune system so that they go directly into the tumour. Great effort has gone into attaching chemotherapy drugs to gold no thicker than a human hair.

Cancer Affects 1 in 3

As cancer affects 1 in 3 people in the UK, this is being hailed as a wonderful breakthrough. It will, after all, diminish the terrible side-effects that anti-cancer drugs cause. No longer will the cancer sufferer need to endure:

• Hair Loss
• Nausea and vomiting
• Ulcerated mouth and throat
• Compromised immune system

as the drugs set about attacking healthy as well as cancerous tissue.

Gold As Medicine

Gold has been used as a medicine for many years. Since the 1930s it has been possible to receive direct injections into joints, to relieve the pain of Rheumatoid Arthritis. It is a natural anti-inflammatory, non-toxic and safe inside the body. This might suggest that Gold works with the body, not against it.

Gold Diagnoses Cancer

These properties are being taken advantage of by using Gold to diagnose cancer. Gold attaches itself to anti-body cells, that home in on cancer when they detect its presence in the body. The anti-body cells then transport the Gold to the tumour site. Under a scan the Gold particles shine brightly, revealing the exact location of the cancer. Again, this would suggest that the Gold was working with the body to reach the site of the cancer.

Is Gold The Way?

Gold never damages body organs, it passes through the liver and is excreted in the normal way. Is attaching this metal to cancer drugs the best way that we can think of in cancer treatment? The Gold itself costs only pennies, the chemotherapy drugs which are attached to it cost huge sums. Who would benefit from using Gold itself to treat cancer, without chemotherapy drugs? I think the cancer sufferer.

Headline: Daily Mail Sept.25th 2007

Peter Hambro mines a rich seam as price of gold soars. He predicts that the price of Gold will break it’s previous record in the early part of next year. That will see the cost of 1 ounce of Gold rise higher than $850. All this due, they say, because of the credit squeeze and resultant stock market fall, and yet we are led to believe that most of the Gold already mined is turned into Jewellery, not used in medical research.

Gold Mining Pollutes

If it could be proven that Gold is useful to treat illness, would this make a difference to the appalling pollution that mining Gold is causing? Gold could create revenue and create jobs, but is also causing lasting damage to the environment. For every gold ring made there are 18 tons of waste, the process uses huge quantities of water, which then contaminates the water table with either cyanide or mercury for other users.

The technique that is used in Venezuela, The Philippines and Ghana uses mercury to bond with Gold particles to create an amalgam. That is then smelted releasing the mercury, 2gms. of mercury are released into the atmosphere for every gram of Gold recovered. Children are panning for Gold and openly handling mercury. This is an obscene situation in the 21st century.

Gold: The Real Value

Perhaps Gold would be a useful tool in treating cancer, but before the Gold Rush, might we stop and devise more environmentally safe ways to get it out of the ground? Might we stop and think about the ruined lives of people, barely making a subsistence wage, although causing untold harm to their own health? Might we think of better ways to use the Gold that is mined already? It is useless locked away in vaults as someone’s hedge against monetary collapse, but it could save lives and create wealth if the will to do it existed.