PATIENT SAFETY
strong evidence for smoking is that it presents a high risk of cancer. All that aside, the article hit a misstep from the start by suggesting the WHO made this claim, which it did not.
Misinformation: MMS/chlorine dioxide
While on a gold mining expedition in South America in 1996, Jim Humble claimed to have discovered that a substance he calls MMS ‘eradicates malaria’. He claimed on his own website6
that since then, the substance
has brought health to people with a wide range of afflictions, listing off thirty-nine diseases and ailments ranging from aches and pains, autism, Parkinson’s, HIV/AIDS, and cancer.
Humble went so far as to say it ‘has the potential to overcome most diseases known to mankind’, claiming that MMS does not cure disease, but instead, ‘kills pathogens and destroys poisons’ so that the body can ‘function properly and thereby heal’. By his account, MMS, which stands for ‘miracle mineral supplement’, sounds like the easy fix-it of humanity’s dreams. What’s in this purported cure-all, you may ask. Well, the key ingredient in MMS is ClO2
,
also known as chlorine dioxide. It’s used in various concentrations for everything from water purification to sterilising medical equipment.7 However, its main alias is bleach. Not surprisingly, bleach has not been scientifically found to cure any one of the diseases in Humble’s claim.
More surprisingly is that, in 2017 a mother was under investigation8
after using
this bleach to ‘treat’ her autistic son, who she believed had autism as a result of a parasite. Once again, misinterpretation led to misinformation that was shared by people searching for validation of their beliefs under the guise of evidence-seeking as people with the same beliefs used bleach on their autistic children and shared photographs of the ‘parasite’ leaving the body.
The ‘parasite’ leaving the body was,
however, burned-away bowl lining. In one case, a six-year-old child had to have his bowel removed and a colostomy bag fitted due to bleach damage.
The issue has reared up again in 2019,9 with videos promoting this utterly unfounded and potentially lethal practice found on YouTube. While these videos were removed by YouTube, they were discovered by people simply searching broad terms such as ‘autism’ and ‘malaria’, thereby spreading this misinformation to a potentially new audience who had not heard of, nor considered, the idea.
Medical misinformation is not a new phenomenon. But gone are the days of bizarre tales of women birthing rabbits or cockroach pills to fight menstrual cramps;10 with rapid-fire sharing and information- spreading in everyone’s pockets, the
NOVEMBER 2019
WWW.CLINICALSERVICESJOURNAL.COM I 31
The flu vaccination has recently come under similar scrutiny as the MMR vaccine, with one utterly fabricated story claiming that the flu shot caused a deadly flu outbreak.
damage that can be done by medical misinformation is on a truly global scale. Plus, once incorrect information is out,
it is nigh-on impossible to fix it entirely. Even debunked information will continue to ripple year after year, and it will only begin to change if people begin to look at the information presented to them by non-experts of the field with a more critical eye.
References
1
https://sharechecklist.gov.uk/ 2
https://www.sunderland.ac.uk/more/news/ story/the-vaccine-myth-fears-over-social-
media-misinformation-rise-977
3
http://protomag.com/articles/rise-fake-medical-news 4
https://healthfeedback.org/the-most-popular- health-articles-of-2018-a-scientific-credibility- review/#Review5
CSJ
5
https://www.who.int/features/qa/cancer-red-meat/en/ 6
https://jimhumble.co/ 7
https://www.chemicalsafetyfacts.org/ chlorine-dioxide/
8
https://metro.co.uk/2017/08/07/mother- investigated-for-giving-son-bleach-enema-to-cure- his-autism-6834610/
9
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-48355681 10
http://hoaxes.org/archive/display/category/medical
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