Was Donald Trump influenced in any way by direct or indirect communications from the promoters of a health frauduct known as MMS, which in effect is industrial bleach? Despite the speculation of multiple skeptics and Trump critics, we may never know for sure, but two points are salient: (1) Trump's stream-of-consciousness musings about disinfectant during his April 23, 2020 COVID-19 "briefing" were irresponsible and deeply inappropriate; and (2) the MMS peddlers are very much a part of the phony-cures problem as the world struggles to deal with this health crisis. And there's no doubt that Trump's comments have breathed new life into a fringe "health" movement that has been a problem for years.
You know what they say: "Life's a bleach and then you die." Well, maybe they don't say that, exactly, but it's what the vast majority of sane people would say in response to the proposition that a person ingest bleach or bleach products to combat or prevent illness. But there are scads of other folks who swear by the (imaginary) health benefits of what amounts to an industrial bleach -- chlorine dioxide -- marketed as MMS, which, depending upon the source that's pushing it, stands for Miracle Mineral Solution, Miracle Mineral Supplement, or Master Mineral Solution. And ever since the coronavirus disease currently known as COVID-19 became a thing, some of these folks have been promoting their potentially deadly cure-nothing as a remedy for the viral plague. Of course MMS is far from the first or only phony coronacure that is being touted, as recently discussed on this very blog.
I've written a few times about MMS -- in this October 2016 post, for instance, ahead of the airing of an ABC News 20/20 segment about the matter. A lone anonymous commenter on my post wrote, "This is Garbage Journalism. Goodbye!" He or she wasn't wrong, I suppose; I was journalizing, to the extent that I do that on this blog, about a garbage "cure."
Both my post and the ABC report gave more than a passing mention to the elderly frauduct peddler who pretty much started the bleach ball rolling, Jim Humble. Humble has been whining for years because his "information" on MMS is constantly being "censored." Lately, and not at all surprisingly, Humble and his cohorts, under the umbrella of a phony religious institution called The Genesis II Church of Health & Healing, have been strongly insinuating or outright claiming that their favorite frauduct can effectively fight COVID-19.
The purpose of the phony church, which was founded years ago and is currently based in Florida, has always been to skirt US law by exploiting the separation of church and state. Their claim is that the consumption of MMS, and any other snake oil they might be selling, is nothing more nor less than an official sacrament of the church, and therefore not subject to US governmental interference. While the "Church" and some of its principals are in the US, Humble himself is hiding out who-knows-where; when ABC News tracked him down for their 2016 exposé he was "in a small town outside Guadalajara, Mexico, outside the reach of American law."
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has never bought into the sacrament excuse, and was clearly not amused by the ersatz church's COVID claims. Accordingly the agency issued a warning letter to the "Church" and its principals on April 8, 2020. The letter provided numerous examples of the spurious corona-claims, such as...
You get the drift. There's much more in the letter.On your page titled, “Coronavirus Update (COVID-19),” from your website https://jimhumble.co/blog/coronavirus-update-covid-19:
- "14 people who were confirmed cases of COVID-19 (in Europe), took MMS and have recovered their health. All of these tested positive and when re-tested after taking MMS, they came out negative for COVID-19.”
- “Those of us who have used chlorine dioxide (MMS) over the years certainly expected it to also work with this virus, but we wanted to be sure and now with this data we are confident that the proper mixture of chlorine dioxide (MMS) has every hope of eradicating COVID-19.”
- "If you have COVID-19: --Take Protocol 6 and 6 to start. This is one 6-drop dose of MMS, then one hour later take another 6-drop dose of MMS. --After two 6-drop doses of MMS, go on hourly doses of 3 activated drops in 4 ounces of water hourly . . . --For children, follow the same instructions as above and cut the amounts in half.”
- “Here is the testimony of a man who was experiencing very serious symptoms of Coronavirus: The man is 85 years old and was confirmed to have coronavirus. He was quarantined at home, all of his relatives at home were also infected, but the elderly man was in very serious condition and on oxygen—by far he was the most worst off. He was given a 1 liter bottle of water which had 20 activated drops of MMS added to it. He was instructed to take a sip from the bottle every five minutes, but not to let it go past 10 minutes. So every 5 to 10 minutes the man took a sip (not a big gulp, just a sip) from the bottle—that’s all, but he did this faithfully, every 5 to 10 minutes throughout the day until the bottle was finished, just a sip each time. After three days he was noticeably improved and off of the oxygen, so his dose was reduced to 12 activated drops in the 1 liter bottle of water and he drank from it, just sipping it, every half hour. He is recovering quickly—90% improved, has just a slight remnant of cough occasionally. The rest of the family who also took MMS are now fully recovered.”
* * * * *
Jim Humble initially captured my attention because among the many hats he wears (figuratively speaking, that is; in a literal sense he only wears one hat, which he apparently hasn't taken off since the Reagan administration), Humble is the vanity publisher of the German-language books of this blog's least favorite phony doctor/cancer quack/right-wing nutcake/chronic conspiranoid, Leonard Coldwell. (Coldwell has been busily engaged in his own covidiocy for months now.)
But in the past few days, Humble and gang have garnered renewed attention, not only from this Whirled but from the world at large, because of a possible, though not yet proven, connection with a few bumbling comments made by #NotMyPresident Donald J. Trump at his daily coronavirus briefing/surrogate campaign rally on Thursday, April 23, 2020. From Vanity Fair, one of hundreds of media outlets to report the incident:
...After a White House science official presented research Thursday that suggested light and disinfectants like isopropyl alcohol and bleach could effectively kill the coronavirus on surfaces, Trump chimed in with his own helpful medical advice: Why not just get those things inside the body and kill off the coronavirus that way?
The president of the United States seriously suggested that Americans “clean” their bodies with disinfectant to treat the coronavirus, in response to Bill Bryan, who heads the Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology division, touting cleaning agents’ ability to kill coronavirus on surfaces. “I see disinfectant, where it knocks [coronavirus] out in a minute—one minute—and is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning,” Trump said at Thursday’s press briefing. “Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that. So you're going to have to use medical doctors, but it sounds interesting to me.” (When Bryan said that his lab was not doing any research to look into that, the president responded, “Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t work.”)
...The president later asked public health expert Dr. Deborah Birx if there were any current treatments using light or heat to cure the novel coronavirus. “I say maybe you can, maybe you can’t. I'm not a doctor, but I'm like a person that has a good you-know-what,” Trump said, pointing at his head...
Oh, good lord. Of course,
social media have been absolutely on fire with jeers about the
unhinged remarks. (See, for example, the Randy Rainbow vid above.) Trump,
apparently embarrassed, subsequently offered the believable-only-to-Trumpanzees
defense that he was just being "sarcastic" and was merely trying to own the reporters who have
treated him so unfairly.
The aforementioned Dr. Deborah Birx offered the backhanded defense that Trump was probably just "digesting" or "talking through [new information] out loud" rather than seriously suggesting that folks imbibe or inject bleach. The expressions on her face in real time while her boss was "digesting" would suggest that Dr. Birx doesn't really believe her own rationalization, but even if she does believe it, and even if Trump really was just thinking out loud, those are certainly the types of thoughts that should remain inside a president's "good you-know-what" instead of spewing out of the oversized you-know-what on his other end. Stream-of-consciousness babble is not a good look on someone who is supposed to be leading a country through a multifaceted crisis (and for whom the very concept of "consciousness" is a stretch anyway).
So what's the possible Trumpian connection with MMS and Humble et al.? Well, as The Guardian reported on April 24, Mark Grenon, one of the phony MMS Church's self-described "archbishops" (and the first-named recipient of the FDA's April 8 warning letter), had written to Trump earlier in the week saying that chlorine dioxide can rid the body of COVID-19.
The aforementioned Dr. Deborah Birx offered the backhanded defense that Trump was probably just "digesting" or "talking through [new information] out loud" rather than seriously suggesting that folks imbibe or inject bleach. The expressions on her face in real time while her boss was "digesting" would suggest that Dr. Birx doesn't really believe her own rationalization, but even if she does believe it, and even if Trump really was just thinking out loud, those are certainly the types of thoughts that should remain inside a president's "good you-know-what" instead of spewing out of the oversized you-know-what on his other end. Stream-of-consciousness babble is not a good look on someone who is supposed to be leading a country through a multifaceted crisis (and for whom the very concept of "consciousness" is a stretch anyway).
So what's the possible Trumpian connection with MMS and Humble et al.? Well, as The Guardian reported on April 24, Mark Grenon, one of the phony MMS Church's self-described "archbishops" (and the first-named recipient of the FDA's April 8 warning letter), had written to Trump earlier in the week saying that chlorine dioxide can rid the body of COVID-19.
In his letter, Mark Grenon told Trump that chlorine dioxide – a powerful bleach used in industrial processes such as textile manufacturing that can have fatal side-effects when drunk – is “a wonderful detox that can kill 99% of the pathogens in the body”. He added that it “can rid the body of Covid-19”...
...A few days after Grenon dispatched his letter, Trump went on national TV at his daily coronavirus briefing at the White House on Thursday and promoted the idea that disinfectant could be used as a treatment for the virus. To the astonishment of medical experts, the US president said that disinfectant “knocks it out in a minute. One minute!”
Trump did not specify where the idea of using disinfectant as a possible remedy for Covid-19 came from, and the source for his notion remains obscure. But the Guardian has learned that peddlers of chlorine dioxide – industrial bleach – have been making direct approaches to the White House in recent days....
...In his weekly televised radio show, posted online on Sunday, Grenon read out the letter he wrote to Trump. He said it began: “Dear Mr President, I am praying you read this letter and intervene.”
Grenon said that 30 of his supporters have also written in the past few days to Trump at the White House urging him to take action to protect Genesis II in its bleach-peddling activities which they claim can cure coronavirus.
On Friday, hours after Trump talked about disinfectant on live TV, Grenon went further in a post on his Facebook page. He claimed that MMS had actually been sent to the White House. He wrote: “Trump has got the MMS and all the info!!! Things are happening folks! Lord help others to see the Truth!”
The Guardian also reported
that other conspiranoids and nutcakes have advocated MMS as a
miracle cure, e.g., former ambassador and advisor to Ronald
Reagan, Alan Keyes, who has featured Genesis II bleach products
on his conservative TV show, Let's Talk, America.
Some of Trump's defenders have rather gleefully pointed to recent and ongoing research studies involving viruses and UV light exposure, mega-doses of intravenous Vitamin C (which in the body breaks down into hydrogen peroxide, a known disinfectant), and other possibilities that would seem to validate Trump's ramblings at the briefing. This is their way of attempting to prove that Trump did indeed know exactly what he was talking about and was simply commenting on research that could possibly lead to more effective treatments for, or even prevention of, coronavirus disease.
However (and putting aside the fact that some of this research is not very promising at this point), had this been the case, Trump would not have responded to media jeers in the childishly defensive way he did, claiming that he was just being "sarcastic" in order to bait the news media. Instead he would have specifically cited some of those research areas, or at the very least he would have reiterated some of the research points that had been made by his own committee member, Bill Bryan, who as mentioned above is acting secretary of science and tech at the Department of Homeland Security. In any case, regardless of whether Trump was in any way influenced by the MMS quacksters, and regardless of the viability of ongoing research studies, it seems clear that he was embarrassed by the blowback from his original remarks.
At the time that The Guardian article was published, the outlet had not yet received a White House response to its inquiry of whether "Archbishop" Grenon's letter had influenced Trump's comments on April 23. And, especially since Trump didn't directly mention MMS or bleach in his own comments (though he was responding in part to previous comments by Bill Bryan, who did mention bleach in his comments), we may never know for sure if Trump was influenced by the concerted efforts of Grenon and his cadre of MMS proponents. After all, transparency isn't exactly Trump's thing, nor is it a characteristic of his administration in general, and he has a tight circle of defenders who, like their boss, are willing to gaslight the hell out of the country in order to keep their jobs and their power. [Update: According to a New York Times piece published on April 24, a "person familiar with the situation" told the Times that "senior administration officials were not familiar with Mr. Grenon or his letter."]
Even so, MMS critics are pretty riled up (and I don't blame 'em), and, of course, MMS fans are celebrating what they see as an endorsement of their magical potion by the Oaf of Office.
And as The Guardian also reported (April 21, 2020), even though the FDA followed up their warning letter by setting in motion legal action to keep the Church from selling its frauducts, other groups have begun to repackage the bleach as a cure not only for COVID-19 but also for autism, cancer, AIDS, and a host of other diseases and ailments. As we (well, I) like to say on this blog, in Scamworld there are no neat and tidy endings.
Some of Trump's defenders have rather gleefully pointed to recent and ongoing research studies involving viruses and UV light exposure, mega-doses of intravenous Vitamin C (which in the body breaks down into hydrogen peroxide, a known disinfectant), and other possibilities that would seem to validate Trump's ramblings at the briefing. This is their way of attempting to prove that Trump did indeed know exactly what he was talking about and was simply commenting on research that could possibly lead to more effective treatments for, or even prevention of, coronavirus disease.
However (and putting aside the fact that some of this research is not very promising at this point), had this been the case, Trump would not have responded to media jeers in the childishly defensive way he did, claiming that he was just being "sarcastic" in order to bait the news media. Instead he would have specifically cited some of those research areas, or at the very least he would have reiterated some of the research points that had been made by his own committee member, Bill Bryan, who as mentioned above is acting secretary of science and tech at the Department of Homeland Security. In any case, regardless of whether Trump was in any way influenced by the MMS quacksters, and regardless of the viability of ongoing research studies, it seems clear that he was embarrassed by the blowback from his original remarks.
At the time that The Guardian article was published, the outlet had not yet received a White House response to its inquiry of whether "Archbishop" Grenon's letter had influenced Trump's comments on April 23. And, especially since Trump didn't directly mention MMS or bleach in his own comments (though he was responding in part to previous comments by Bill Bryan, who did mention bleach in his comments), we may never know for sure if Trump was influenced by the concerted efforts of Grenon and his cadre of MMS proponents. After all, transparency isn't exactly Trump's thing, nor is it a characteristic of his administration in general, and he has a tight circle of defenders who, like their boss, are willing to gaslight the hell out of the country in order to keep their jobs and their power. [Update: According to a New York Times piece published on April 24, a "person familiar with the situation" told the Times that "senior administration officials were not familiar with Mr. Grenon or his letter."]
Even so, MMS critics are pretty riled up (and I don't blame 'em), and, of course, MMS fans are celebrating what they see as an endorsement of their magical potion by the Oaf of Office.
And as The Guardian also reported (April 21, 2020), even though the FDA followed up their warning letter by setting in motion legal action to keep the Church from selling its frauducts, other groups have begun to repackage the bleach as a cure not only for COVID-19 but also for autism, cancer, AIDS, and a host of other diseases and ailments. As we (well, I) like to say on this blog, in Scamworld there are no neat and tidy endings.
Related on this
Whirled:
- March 2020 ~ Coronacrazy: COVID-19 virus brings out the
conspiranoids & fraudsters
A look at some of the most popular coronaconspiracy theories, as well as some of the other phony remedies besides MMS. - October 2016 ~ ABC v MMS: from Humble beginnings to 20/20
investigation
The 2016 ABC News investigation, as well as the larger alt-health/Scamworld connections (familiar territory for this blog), and a few thoughts on phony churches. - November 2014 ~ Black Friday blowout: I'm back (and the scammers
never left)
In a series of May 2015 updates at the end of this long post, I discuss some of Jim Humble's shenanigans in Europe. - August 2014 ~ Leonard Coldwell: the facts don't matter if the
story is good (Part 4 of 5)
This is part of an entirely-too-long series about the aforementioned fake doctor/cancer quack/conspiracy peddler, whom most of the world has still never even heard of and who has never been more than a C-list player in either the alt-health industry or the larger selfish-help/motivational field, but it's not only about him. It's also about phony alt-health hero/martyrs (sometimes known as "Brave Maverick Doctors") in general, with a few specific examples besides Coldwell. And it's all framed in a larger discussion of persecution complexes and the myth of the alt-health hero --- a myth that is so passionately embraced because of people's fears and their disillusionment with science-based medicine. As well, I attempt to put to rest the years of accusations that I am some sort of shill for Big Pharma/the medical profession/big government.
Related
off-Whirled:
- April 2020 ~ President Trump and "just asking questions"
about disinfectants and UV light to treat COVID-19
From the Respectful Insolence blog. My favorite doctor blogger, Orac (David Gorski, M.D.), has written volumes about quackery over the years, and he doesn't disappoint here. He too suspects an MMS connection to some of Trump's unhinged remarks at the April 23, 2020 briefing. - March 2020 ~ COVID-19 pandemic: A golden opportunity for
quackery
Another Respectful Insolence offering from Orac/Gorski. By sheer coincidence he posted this on the same day (March 13, 2020) that I published my own corona-quackery post. I would say "great minds think alike," but I am not even remotely in his league. - April 2020 ~ On the Bleach
From the conservative National Review web site. Contributing editor Andrew Stuttaford attempts to put the bleachy remarks in perspective; he's one who tends not to be convinced that Trump was inspired by the MMS fanatics, and he also argues that you really can't blame Trump's comments if some people are actually dimwitted enough to ingest products that are clearly labeled poisonous.
