ALPINE — Every workday, small, private, family-run businesses all over Utah open their doors and do what they do. Some make stuff. Some sell stuff. Some sell stuff they make.

And then there's American Biotech Labs here in Alpine.

They're out to eliminate disease.

Their product goes by the retail brand name SilverBiotics, a liquid silver supplement that, as the company literature puts it, "has consistently demonstrated the ability to destroy a wide range of microbes ... including some of the most harmful pathogens known to humanity."

In layman's terms: it can kill bacteria, viruses, molds and other harmful things you can't see before they can kill you.

In the 10 years American Biotech has been refining and expanding its product line, company officials say it has had positive feedback for the following: malaria, tuberculosis, AIDS, gonorrhea, syphilis, dengue fever, dysentery, leprosy, hepatitis, avian bird flu and inner ear infections.

And that's just for starters. The company has targeted at least 650 diseases it believes its liquid silver can help alleviate, if not eradicate.

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At the forefront of this unassuming company out to save the world is its unassuming founder, 71-year-old Bill Moeller.

In a nutshell, 11 years ago Moeller retired from his first career, financial planning, and bought a silver mine, only to discover that the price of silver had plunged lower than the Titanic.

Since selling the silver basically amounted to giving it away, Moeller hired a physicist to see what they could make with their silver if they just hung on to it.

That's when he learned that down through the centuries, even though they didn't know why it worked, people have used silver to combat infection.

There is evidence, for instance, that 5,000 years ago in India they used to eat small slivers of silver for medicinal purposes. There is also evidence that the Romans shaved silver filings into their wounds to aid healing. During the plagues in Europe, they discovered that putting silver spoons in the mouths of babies kept them from getting the plague — giving rise to the cliche "born with a silver spoon in his/her mouth."

And as little as 50 or 60 years ago, before widespread refrigeration, dairy farmers used silver buckets when milking their cows, a process that kept the milk clean and fresh.

Through trial and error, Moeller's researchers were able to come up with a highly effective blend of water and colloidal (electrified) silver that has since been patented. In 1998, Bill and sons Keith, Scott, Mark and Nathan, along with Robert Holliday, founded American Biotech Labs in Alpine, their hometown.