Antioxidant
& Free Radical Scavenging Abilities
Shed Light On Real Willard Water's Benefits
How significant are the presence of free radicals in the body? How
concerned should we be about them? According to Dr. Hari Sharma,
a pathologist at Ohio State University, about 80 to 90 percent of
diseases we encounter are linked to excessive production of free
radicals in the body. (Dr. Sharma made that statement in the Oct.
30, 1993, broadcast of the television program Life Choices with
Erie Chapman.) And, according to Laurence Badgley, M.D., until recently,
the medical sciences lacked a unified theory of how disease occurs
in the body. Well, this has all changed. Now there is the ‘Free
Radical Theory of Disease’ and it has a lot of support from
many different branches of science and medicine. Whenever a group
of scientists from different fields can generally agree on a theory,
you may be tempted to consider that the theory is close to the truth.
Before explaining in detail how and why Willard Water is such an
exceptional scavenger of free radicals, let’s first try to
explain what free radicals are.
First of all, like all matter, the human body is made up of tiny
particles called molecules. Each molecule is composed of atoms,
and each of the atoms is made up of a nucleus (a center) and electrons
which spin around that center in orbits. If a molecule loses an
electron, or picks up an extra one, it becomes unbalanced and highly
reactive. Such an unbalanced, highly reactive molecule is called
a free radical.
Having free radicals is not a stable state for a molecule to be
in. Therefore such a molecule (a free radical) will do what it can
to return to a more stable state by taking an electron from some
other molecule in order to restore its own balance. It is this electron
grabbing by the free radical that causes the damage to the body,
because the electron the free radical steals may be from a molecule
contained in a normal (healthy) cell. In taking the electron from
the healthy cell, the free radical damages the healthy cell and
the body’s functioning is damaged as a result.
So, where does Willard Water fit into this scenario? It is a superior
antioxidant and scavenger of free radicals, because it is able to
replenish its supply of electrons, according to Roy Jacobsen in
his book Aqua Vitae. (Aqua Vitae means water of life.) In his book,
he quotes Dr. Willard as saying that when you have a reducing agent,
for example H2S, where the sulfur has two extra electrons, it will
give those up. But once this particle has been used up, it is used
up, said Doc. But with the Willard Water it is drawing from this
vast reservoir [of electrons]. . . and it isn’t used up. .
. it can perform over and over again as an antioxidant, unlike the
normal antioxidants, which can each only perform the task until
they run out of their limited supply of electrons.
**********************
"60
MINUTES"
Program On
WILLARD WATER
(LA WATER)
VOL.XIII, No. 10, FINAL CUT,
November 23, 1980
REASONER: What's your problem my friend? Dandruff? A calf with water
belly? Perhaps you want to grow a 32-pound squash? Do you have emphysema,
or a painful burn? Well, if I told you I had something right here
in this little bottle of Doc Willard's Wonder Water that would solve
all of those problems . . . you'd possibly say that's the same kind
of talk I heard from that snake oil salesman we ran out of town.
Well, if you went out to Rapid City, South Dakota, you'd find a
lot of folks who swear by something they say will do all these things
. . . the wondrous water of Doctor John Wesley Willard.
Too good to be true, you say?
We went out to take a look . . . with an open mind . . . but on
the alert for the first whiff of snake oil.
What we found was a vat of hot brew being stirred up out back in
a truck repair shop and watching over it was Doc Willard who is
not a wizard but a Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at the South
Dakota School of Mines. Here's what some folks say his Willard Water
can do:
Doc Lemley says it's good for his emphysema. Chauncey Taylor used
it on his second and third degree burn. Ranchers give to cattle
to keep them healthy. Farmers say it makes wheat grow better. A
quail breeder says it helps his birds grow faster and fatter.
DOC WILLARD: People can't comprehend that this is possible and they're
skeptics. And I suppose I would have been the same way if I hadn't
spent the past ten years of my life living and sleeping with this
water.
REASONER: So what's in it that could make so many things happen?
Well, a little liquid road salt, that's what melts snow and rots
your car, and sodium silicate and magnesium sulfate and sulfated
castor oil and then Doc Willard mixes some of it with powdered lignite.
What you have finally are various mixtures called by different names:
LA Water, (it has nothing to do with that town in California, it
means lignite activated water) or CAW water, catalyst activated
water. But it's all Willard Water, whatever it is.
DOC WILLARD: Well, it's the calcium magnesium, polysilicate polymer
with a castor oil...
REASONER: Now that's chemist talk. You've already lost me.
DOC WILLARD: All right. It's a catalyst that alters the structure
of the water making water behave in a manner that heretofore has
not been reported in the literature.
REASONER: Whatever Willard Water is, we set out to visit some folks
around Rapid City who talk about what it has done for them. On burns
for example, producer Paul Loewenwarter talked with Chauncey Taylor
who scorched his leg doing some welding on an old oil drum.
CHAUNCEY TAYLOR: The fumes in it, I guess, ignited and blowed out
a hole and melted my overalls. I had a pair of poly...polyester
overalls on and it melted them and melted my shirt and burnt my
leg.
PAUL LOEWENWARTER: So you looked down and just saw your leg charred?
TAYLOR: I looked down and the skin was just hanging all different
ways there.
LOEWENWARTER: Well what did you do to treat it?
TAYLOR: Oh, I had a bottle of this LA Water and I just started squirting
it on there and just kept pouring it on, a fine mist.
LOEWENWARTER: And what does it do?
TAYLOR: It heals it I guess.
DR. RAY LEMLEY: And I said now look, let's try this out.
REASONER: Dr. Ray Lemley is a prominent surgeon, now retired, but
still Chauncey Taylor's family doctor. He told Chauncey to keep
spraying the burn with Willard Water. We wondered what the normal
treatment would have been.
LEMLEY: Well you'd put different kinds of medicine on it. There's
all kinds of medicine for burns. Any housewife has a dozen and that
would kill off the new cells and damage the wound. It would be too
strong, usually, and burn it and interfere with the healing of it.
Thus, we did nothing to interfere with the healing of it.
REASONER: Would the normal procedure be to graft?
LEMLEY: Well, if you took him to the hospital they would have probably
grafted that by this time and by the time that he gets the scabs
off of this and its all healed up, your place you took your graft
off from it would still be raw. So we're way ahead.
REASONER: Chauncey's scab was all gone about three weeks after the
burn, and three months after that we dropped by to see the final
results.
CHAUNCEY TAYLOR: Well, it's all healed up.
REASONER: Dr. Lemley does not just recommend Willard Water for others.
Several times a day he guzzles the stuff which, incidentally, tastes
just like water.
LEMLEY: I have emphysema and I wanted to see if it would help that.
I mix up a jug of it, about three times as strong as it's supposed
to be. So if it's gonna hurt anybody, it would me.
REASONER: The surprising thing is that Dr. Lemley, at 78, with emphysema,
is nonetheless able to pursue his hobby of paleontology at which
he's a recognized expert, digging for fossils.
LEMLEY: I don't walk too far or anything on account of my emphysema
but I get around.
REASONER: And you would credit the water with part of that ability?
LEMLEY: Well I've seen a lot of emphysema in my long years of practice
and most of them get worse all the time. And mine, it's a little
worse than it was ten years ago, but it isn't anything like anybody
I've seen before.
REASONER: (MUSIC) And then there's Vern Sheppard a popular Rapid
City broadcaster who used to miss weeks on the air every winter
with a bad throat. Now Sheppard sprays the throat with Willard Water
every day and rarely misses a day on the air.
JOHNSON'S DAUGHTER: When I have pink eye in my eye I just squirt
some LA Water in it and then after a while it isn't so pink anymore.
RALPH WHITE: I spray it on my head for my dandruff and I put it
in my bath water and drink some of it some of the time.
REASONER: Because people are drinking Willard Water and pouring
it on burns and infections, we wondered whether this unlikely mixture
has anything in it that could do anybody any harm. We took samples
to Industrial Testing Laboratories in New York City. Their results
were the same as other tests. They found nothing harmful, either
in the way of bacteria or metals that could hurt you. But they didn't
find much else either. So, what it does, how it does it, if it does
it remains a mystery. It remains a mystery even to the Chief Medical
Officer of South Dakota's Department of Health, Dr. Robert Hayes.
DR. ROBERT HAYES: My professional opinion about it, of course, is,
has been that a lot of people use it. I've seen results of what
they said it did. I've never had occasion to use it on a patient.
Have had no more opinion than that, sir.
REASONER: You've never used it yourself?
HAYES: No, Sir. I haven't.
REASONER: On the other hand, you've had no reason to assume it would
hurt anybody?
HAYES: No I haven't as a matter of fact. Anything I've heard about
it has been nothing bad. It has always been on the positive side.
REASONER: Would you like to see it tested, Doctor?
HAYES: I sure would. I've in fact had a question in my mind why
it wasn't tested before and I, I think most doctors in this area
who have patients who have come in contact with it would like to
see it tested.
REASONER: Willard Water gets packed for sale at a kind of Willard
family bottling bee. It's not licensed in any way for sale as a
drug or a fertilizer and state agencies in South Dakota watch closely
to see that no false claims are made about what it can do. The little
bottle costs three dollars, to be mixed with a gallon of water the
way most people use it. The biggest commercial distributor of Willard
Water is Tom Callahan. How much of this stuff have you distributed?
TOM CALLAHAN: Well in the last four years, close to forty thousand
of those ounce bottles.
REASONER: Have you had any trouble with regulatory agencies?
TOM CALLAHAN: Yes. They've stopped the sale of it twice and I'm
sure that we'd have a lot more except that we have so much public
opinion around this area that when the first stop sale order came
out the Governor got hundreds of letters from people that were very
irate about stopping this product. And they've more or less kind
of let us live ever since.
REASONER: About the only laboratory work on what Willard Water does,
has been done at the South Dakota School of Mines by Sister Marmion
Howe, a Professor of Biology.
SISTER MARMION HOWE: I took some different species of micro-organisms
and tested them with CAW or with Doc Willard's Water and without
it and then I used different antibiotics on it to see if Willard's
Water enhanced the action of the antibiotic.
REASONER: Does it?
SISTER MARMION: Yes I found that it did with certain organisms,
not all.
REASONER: The water also seemed to sometimes speed up the growth
of bacteria, doesn't it?
SISTER MARMION: Yes, we found that out. Some of my students did
some work on that.
REASONER: Do you have any theories based on your tests as to why
it does what it does?
SISTER MARMION: Well no, we need about a million dollars to do some
studies on it but I think the fact that this is a surfactant - or
a detergent-like acting material might make it penetrate a little
bit more quickly and effectively.
REASONER: Doc Willard developed the water as a cleaner. But he learned
it could treat burns when he burned his own arm on a hot plate,
years ago, dowsed it with his water, the sting disappeared, the
burn healed. As a cleaner, he heats up some of the water and soaks
an engine piston in it that's coated with carbon and the burnt on
carbon comes off easily with a rag. Normally that's done only with
a lot of scrubbing that can damage the piston or with harsh solvents
that can be dangerous.
DOC WILLARD: This we can take and bathe in it or drink it, if it
wasn't so hot.
REASONER: (SOUND OF COWS) Ranchers and farmers of Rapid City aren't
waiting for scientific proof about Willard Water. They're using
it now because they say it puts money in their pockets. At roundup
time, Don Taylor uses it on his calves when they're branded, spraying
it on fresh burns. --
--The calves seem to quiet down right away. Taylor says it helps
the burns heal without infection, fewer veterinary bills. If there's
a sick calf, he'll get a stiff dose out of a pop bottle and ranchers
say that Willard Water can cure a calf that might otherwise die.
Ranchers put it in the wells, in drinking water, and cattle drink
it year around. And it's said to be particularly good as a kind
of tranquilizer when calves are weaned away from their mothers and
become nervous, even frantic.
TOM CALLAHAN: And we've seen this where you crowd these chickens
together or quail together how they quiet down and it definitely
has an effect on the nervous system and it isn't imagination with
a calf or a chicken or a quail.
REASONER: Quail that get the Willard Water don't bite and scratch
each other the way other quail do and Jim Dickey, who breeds quail
in Rapid City, says they gain more weight on less high cost feed.
JIM DICKEY: They're plumper. They're a little heavier on Willard
Water.
REASONER: Out in the wheat fields there has been a little testing
done by farmers like Paul Zelfer who has one field with normal,
untreated, wheat and another whose seed were soaked in the Willard
Water before planting.
PAUL ZELFER: From the start it was a better color and it came up
quicker and it was a thicker stand and it would yield more, would
be more bushels per acre and every bushel per acre means that many
more dollars per acre.
REASONER: Zelfer then took producer Loewenwarter into an untreated
wheat field to show him the difference.
ZELFER: This here is the treated wheat and this is the untreated
and you can just see the difference in the hair roots. That's what
feed the plant, that's what makes them grow is them little hair
roots. The proof is here, you can see it. But what makes the plant
do so much better with the water I, I just don't know.
REASONER: (NUNS SINGING) You wouldn't expect an order of nuns to
be a little hot bed of Willard Water boosters but at St. Martin's
Academy the Benedictine Sisters use it daily. And it's not just
because one of the members is Sister Marmion Howe, the Biology Professor
we met at the School of Mines. Many of the sisters bathe in it,
drink it, treat burns with it in the kitchen. And there's the garden
where we found Sister Jenna spraying and spraying with Willard Water
last spring, hoping for vegetables like the crops she had gotten
in '79. I understand you had some prodigious squash?
SISTER JENNA: Yes I did.
REASONER: What would be the size of a good, big squash?
SISTER JENNA: Well my largest one was 32 pounds and a 25 pounder
and from there on down to 18 and I believe 15 was the smallest.
REASONER: We couldn't resist going back this Fall to see whether
Willard Water had worked in spite of the drought that struck the
plains this summer. Sure enough monster squash, though not quite
the size of the year before. I'm no judge, but that's 20 pounds
I'd say anyhow, wouldn't you?
SISTER JENNA: I would say 20 at least.
REASONER: It would make a lot of meals (LAUGHTER).
REASONER: So here is Doc Willard, with a magic juice that people
say works on quail and squash and people and cattle-and no scientific
proof at all.
DOC WILLARD: I've worked with some top flight men at other universities
and they've made the statement, as I have myself, "I see it
but I still don't believe it."
REASONER: Well, where do we stand? We haven't proved anything and
we didn't expect to. But we've met a lot of nice people and we found
a product that, everyone agrees, can't hurt you. Maybe that's enough.
Besides, anything made with road salt and castor oil can't be all
bad. -END-
1998 Editor's Note: Willard Water
has been produced in an approved
lab for production of products for
human consumption since 1981.
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