Authorities in Ireland are questioning parents of autistic children as part of an investigation into a “controversial” treatment.
The substance, known as Miracle Mineral Solution (MMS), is an industrial-strength bleach which its advocates claim acts as a miracle cure for a number of medical conditions, including autism, asthma, Aids, malaria and ebola.
Also Crohn’s, I think – if I remember correctly that’s what got Rhys Morgan involved in skepticism.
Fiona O’Leary, an Irish woman who has single-handedly mounted a campaign against a group led by Jim Humble — a former Scientologist and self-styled archbishop of the Genesis II Church of Health and Healing — said there is need for urgent legislation in Ireland to deter parents from subjecting their children to treatment with MMS.
Bleach. The mind totters and sways; it collapses.
Ms O’Leary believes it is unlikely that any parents will face criminal prosecution as a result of the Garda investigation, but says some sanction needs to be put in place to prevent vulnerable children being forced to take bleach, either orally or as an enema.
…
The need for such legislation, argues Ms O’Leary, is because MMS promoters have been able to circumvent regulations governing the sale and supply of medicines by describing the product, whose constituent ingredients are perfectly legal, as a water purifier.
The mother of five, who lives in West Cork, said she was shocked by the results of laboratory tests on MMS conducted as part of an RTÉ PrimeTime documentary broadcast last week. They showed the main ingredient of MMS — sodium chlorite — had concentrations up to 520 times over the daily limit recommended by the World Health Organisation.
Hey, no more than you would get from swimming in a chlorinated pool for…oh, a thousand years or so.
Industrial bleach? Orally? In an enema? There is no punishment bad enough. . .
Words fail . . . . .
If you don’t know enough to know that autism, asthma, and AIDS are very different things and that it is virtually impossible for a single substance to be a medicine for all three, let alone all the other claims, then you are not qualified to make medical decisions even for yourself, and certainly not for another human being.
Orac’s been commenting on MMS and its use as an autism ‘cure’ for a while now:
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/tag/mms/
One disturbing comment that was made at one point:
When the evidence of the damage being done is being treated as the evidence of the horrible treatment ‘working’…
… Jim Humble — a former Scientologist …
– who might have remained in the fold had the Miscavige mob left a little more of their loot at whatever middle-level Archbishop Humble then occupied.
Thanks for the Orac suggestion, I was planning to look for more on this “treatment”…
I had the miss fortune to encounter one of these nutters on an unrelated discussion forum, where they were advocating their homemade magic water as both a panacea and an effective cleaning agent.
Their description of using a small electric current to change a saline solution into “magic water” reminded me of one of the first experiment I had ever been shown in chemistry at around the age of 11 (did these people sleep through school) so I did some research and replied with “so your advocating people drink bleach then!?”
It took a while to get the person to accept that Sodium chloride+water+electricity = bleach, but they were so invested emotionally and financially that they just wouldn’t accept that their bleach was the same as the nasty chemical bleach available at 1000th of the cost. After all, their bleach contained 100% natural ingredients made by loving fairies not evil chemicals.
The exchange finally ended when they got banned for sending me some very nasty behind the scenes PMs threatening physical violence.
Funny thing with hippies, they are all sweetness and light until you disagree with them.
The RTE Prime Time report on tv last week included an interview with one of Humble’s business partners (Kerri Rivera). The presenter in the RTE studio tried to grill her, but he was utterly awful, and if social media is anything to go by she actually came across quite well and convincing to a lot of people. She was quite well spoken and probably sounded knowledgeable to many without a science background. She easily dismissed some of his questions – her answers were usually complete horsecrap, but the presenter was clueless enough to not recognise the crapola and to let the responses stick. For example, one of the questions he read from the paper in his hands was whether she would submit any of her results from using MMS (which she said cured autism and other stuff) to peer review. She said it was unnecessary and in any case she did not have the millions of dollars necessary to perform peer-review (missing the point that peer-review is done by others and is actually free, except for the time it takes to write up a manuscript and the costs which some journals may charge for publication).
Its impossible for tv journalists to be experts in everything, but I would expect some modicum of scientific literacy in a journalist grilling someone on pseudo-science.