For years, Sen. Ron Johnson has been spreading conspiracy theories and misinformation about COVID-19 and the protection of vaccines.
He’s promoted disproven therapies for COVID-19 and claimed, with out proof, that athletes are “dropping useless on the sector” after getting the COVID-19 vaccination. Now the Wisconsin politician is endorsing a ebook by a discredited physician selling an unproven and harmful remedy for autism and a bunch of illnesses: chlorine dioxide, a chemical used for disinfecting and bleaching.
The ebook is “The Conflict on Chlorine Dioxide: The Medication that May Finish Medication” by Dr. Pierre Kory, a crucial care specialist who practiced in Wisconsin hospitals earlier than shedding his medical certification for statements advocating utilizing an antiparasite treatment to deal with COVID-19. The motion, he’s mentioned, makes him unemployable, regardless that he nonetheless has a license.
Kory has mentioned there’s a globally coordinated marketing campaign by public well being companies, the drug business and the media to suppress proof of the medicinal wonders of chlorine dioxide. His ebook, in line with its web site, contends that the “exceptional molecule” works “to deal with all the things from most cancers and malaria to autism and COVID.”
The ebook jacket contains a distinguished blurb from Johnson calling the physician’s treatise: “A gripping story of corruption and braveness that may open eyes and immediate severe questions.”
Chlorine dioxide is a chemical compound that has a variety of purposes, together with as a disinfectant and deodorizer. Meals processing vegetation apply it to sanitize surfaces and tools. Hospitals use it to sterilize medical gadgets, and a few municipalities use low ranges to deal with public water provides. Paper mills depend on it to whiten wooden pulp. Security specialists advise those that deal with it to work in well-ventilated areas and to put on protecting gloves.
Concentrations in consuming water techniques greater than 0.8 milligrams per liter could be dangerous, particularly to infants, younger youngsters and fetuses, in line with the Environmental Safety Company.
Nonetheless, for a few years individuals in on-line dialogue teams have been selling the usage of chlorine dioxide in a mix that they name a “miracle mineral answer,” ingested to rid individuals of a bunch of maladies. The Meals and Drug Administration has warned that consuming these chlorine dioxide mixtures can trigger harm and even demise.
It isn’t medicinal, regardless of Kory’s competition. “It’s all lunacy. Completely, it’s 100% nonsense,” mentioned Joe Schwarcz, director of McGill College’s Workplace for Science and Society in Montreal and an knowledgeable on the risk of pseudoscience. Schwarcz has written articles concerning the so-called miracle mineral answer, calling it “a poison” when it’s in excessive concentrations.
Kory’s ebook, set to be launched to the general public in January, argues that phrase of chlorine dioxide’s effectiveness has been suppressed by authorities and medical forces that want individuals to stay perpetually sick to generate giant income. The usage of the phrase “battle” within the title is becoming, Kory mentioned in a latest on-line video on his co-author’s Substack. “Within the ebook I element many, many assassination makes an attempt of medical doctors who attempt to deliver out data round chlorine dioxide,” he mentioned.
Johnson confirmed to ProPublica in an electronic mail that he licensed the assertion on the duvet. “After studying your entire ebook, sure I supplied and authorised that blurb,” he mentioned. “Have you ever learn the ebook?”
ProPublica requested Kory and his co-author, Jenna McCarthy, to supply an advance copy, an interview and responses to written questions. Kory didn’t reply. McCarthy wrote in an electronic mail to ProPublica that she was addressing a number of the questions on her Substack. (She didn’t ship a ebook or conform to an interview.)
The ebook “is a complete examination of the present proof and a plea for open-minded inquiry and rigorous analysis,” she wrote on Substack. She dismissed warnings about chlorine dioxide’s toxicity in excessive concentrations, writing: “The whole lot has a poisonous dose — together with nutmeg, spinach, and faucet water.”
She mentioned that chlorine dioxide is being studied in managed settings by researchers in the USA and Latin America and that “the true debate is the way it must be used, at what dose, and through which scientific contexts.”
Her Substack submit was signed “Jenna (& Pierre).”
Johnson didn’t conform to an interview and didn’t reply questions emailed to his workplace by ProPublica, together with whether or not he views chlorine dioxide as a world-changing medical remedy and whether or not he believes the FDA warnings are false.
“It’s Referred to as Snake Oil”
Johnson has been an advocate of Kory’s for years, calling the physician as an knowledgeable witness in two 2020 Senate hearings. In a single, Kory championed taking the drug ivermectin, an antiparasite drugs, to deal with COVID-19.
In 2021, an evaluation of knowledge from scientific trials concluded that ivermectin may scale back deaths from COVID-19 and should produce different constructive results. McCarthy cited that evaluation in her Substack response.
In 2022, nevertheless, the American Journal of Therapeutics, which had printed the examine, warned that suspicious knowledge “seems to invalidate the findings” relating to ivermectin’s potential to lower deaths.
Later scientific trials have discovered no helpful impact of ivermectin for COVID-19, and the FDA has warned that taking giant doses could be harmful. The drug’s producer has mentioned it hadn’t discovered any scientific foundation for the concept that ivermectin can successfully deal with COVID-19. Kory, although, continued advocating for ivermectin.
In 2024 the American Board of Inner Medication, which credentials physicians in sure specialties, revoked Kory’s certifications in inside drugs, pulmonary illness and important look after making false and deceptive public statements concerning the potential of ivermectin to deal with COVID-19. Hospitals and plenty of insurance coverage networks usually require medical doctors to be board licensed.
Kory vigorously fought the disciplinary motion, arguing to the ABIM that he supplied substantial medical and scientific proof to help his suggestions for addressing COVID-19, although not the “consensus-driven” method. He additionally sued the board in federal courtroom, citing his free speech rights in a case that’s nonetheless progressing within the fifth U.S. Circuit Court docket of Appeals. On Substack, McCarthy excoriated the ABIM, saying it “bullies physicians” and “enforces ideological conformity.”
In 2022, Johnson and Kory penned a Fox Information op-ed opposing a California invoice that might strip medical doctors’ licenses for espousing misinformation about COVID-19. The invoice turned regulation however was repealed after a courtroom battle. A federal decide discovered the statute’s definition of misinformation to be too obscure, which may infringe on medical doctors’ proper to free speech.
Johnson, who has been in Congress since 2011, has a historical past of advocating for experimental therapies and viewing the federal government as an obstacle. Dr. Peter Lurie, president and govt director of the Middle for Science within the Public Curiosity, a public well being advocacy group, mentioned that amongst members of Congress, Johnson was “an early adopter of anti-science concepts.”
Lurie mentioned that Johnson is not an outlier in Washington, which now has many extra elected lawmakers whom he considers anti-science. “What might have began off because the chopping fringe of an anti-science motion has now become a way more broader-based motion that’s supported by thousands and thousands of individuals,” he mentioned.
Earlier this yr, Johnson held a listening to highlighting a flawed examine claiming that vaccinated youngsters had an elevated price of great power ailments when in comparison with youngsters who weren’t vaccinated. The conclusion questions the scientific consensus that vaccines are secure. The examine’s researchers selected to not publish it due to issues they discovered of their knowledge and methodology.
In November, Johnson and Kory had been listed among the many audio system at a convention of the Youngsters’s Well being Protection, a nonprofit that stirs anti-vaccine sentiment. It was launched in 2018 by Well being and Human Companies Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose FDA is contemplating new methods to extra carefully scrutinize vaccine security.
HHS didn’t reply to requests from ProPublica about Kennedy’s views on chlorine dioxide. At his affirmation listening to, Kennedy praised President Donald Trump for his broad seek for a COVID-19 treatment in his first time period, which Kennedy mentioned included vaccines, varied medication, “even chlorine dioxide.”
Kory’s writer is listed as Bella Luna Press, which has issued at the very least two different titles by McCarthy. “Because of the Censorship Industrial Advanced, you gained’t discover The Conflict on Chlorine Dioxide on Amazon or at Barnes & Noble. We needed to design and construct this web site, determine formatting and printing and delivery, and handle each facet of order processing ourselves,” the ebook’s web site states. (A consultant for Bella Luna couldn’t be reached for remark.)
As this new ebook is launched, the autism group can also be grappling with one other controversy: the unsubstantiated assertion by Kennedy that Tylenol use by pregnant ladies poses an elevated danger of autism. As well as, below Kennedy, the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention revised its web site in November to forged doubt on the long-held scientific conclusion that childhood vaccines don’t trigger autism.
Some dad and mom of kids with autism, determined for a treatment, have lengthy reached for doubtful and at occasions harmful panaceas, together with hyperbaric oxygen chambers and chelation remedy, used for the remedy of heavy steel poisoning. Neither methodology has been confirmed efficient.
Helen Tager-Flusberg, director of the Middle for Autism Analysis Excellence at Boston College, mentioned Johnson has “acted extraordinarily irresponsibly” in lending his identify to a ebook making claims about chlorine dioxide treating autism.
“Wisconsin is full of specialists — scientific specialists, medical specialists, scientists — who perceive and have studied autism and coverings for autism for a lot of a few years,” she mentioned. “He’s chosen to fully ignore the scientific and the scientific group.”
Individuals with autism might take treatment to scale back nervousness, deal with consideration issues, or scale back extreme irritability. Many profit from behavioral interventions and particular schooling providers to assist with studying and purposeful talents. However there isn’t a remedy, mentioned Tager-Flusberg.
Referring to chlorine dioxide, she mentioned: “We now have had examples of this in all probability all through the historical past of medication. There’s a phrase for this, it’s referred to as snake oil.”
In her response on Substack to ProPublica, McCarthy wrote that “chlorine dioxide is getting used to deal with (no one mentioned ‘remedy’) autism with life-changing outcomes.”
The Seek for Miracle Cures
The mom of an autistic son, Melissa Eaton of North Carolina, heard Kory reference his ebook in early November on The HighWire, an web discuss present hosted by Del Bigtree, a distinguished vaccine skeptic and former communications director for Kennedy’s 2024 presidential marketing campaign. She then regarded up the ebook on-line and seen Johnson’s endorsement.
Eaton for a few years has labored to show individuals who peddle chlorine dioxide and to report obvious accidents to authorities. She screens social media boards the place dad and mom focus on giving it to their youngsters orally or by way of enemas. Typically the households reveal that their youngsters are sick. “They’re throwing up and vomiting and having diarrhea and rashes,” Eaton mentioned.
Some adherents advise dad and mom that the disturbing results point out that the remedy is working, ridding the physique of impurities, or that the dad and mom ought to alter the dosage.
“Most of those children are nonverbal,” Eaton mentioned. “They’re not capable of say what’s hurting them or what’s taking place to them. The dad and mom really feel they’re doing the appropriate factor. That’s how they view this: They’re serving to to remedy autism.”
The concept chlorine dioxide could be a miracle remedy started to unfold about 20 years in the past when a gold prospector, Jim Humble, wrote a ebook claiming his group in Guyana fell sick with malaria and recovered after consuming secure quantities of chlorine dioxide.
Humble later co-founded a “well being and therapeutic” church in Florida with a person named Mark Grenon, who referred to as himself an archbishop and offered a chlorine dioxide answer as a remedy for COVID-19. They described it as a “miracle mineral answer,” or MMS.
Grenon went to jail in 2023 for conspiring to defraud the USA by distributing an unapproved and misbranded drug. The scheme took in additional than $1 million, in line with prosecutors.
An affidavit within the case filed by a particular agent with the FDA Workplace of Felony Investigations famous: “FDA has obtained quite a few studies of adversarial reactions to MMS. These adversarial reactions embrace hospitalizations, life-threatening situations, and demise.”
Grenon, who’s now out of jail, advised ProPublica that he too is writing a ebook about chlorine dioxide. “My ebook will inform the reality.” He declined additional remark.
Chlorine dioxide is at present utilized in some ways that aren’t dangerous. It’s present in some shopper merchandise like mouthwashes, however it’s not meant to be swallowed in these situations. (One common mouthwash warns to “maintain out of attain of kids.”) It’s additionally accessible to shoppers in do-it-yourself packages the place they mix drops from two bottles of various compounds — generally sodium chlorite and hydrochloric acid — and add it to water. Hikers usually carry the drops, or tablets, utilizing small quantities to make quarts of contemporary water potable.
However quite a few web shoppers submit product opinions that go additional, referring to it as a tonic. Numerous on-line guides, some geared toward dad and mom of autistic youngsters, suggest a shot-glass-size dose, typically given a number of occasions a day and even hourly. That may far exceed the brink the EPA considers secure.
McCarthy, addressing ProPublica on Substack, wrote: “You level to varied on-line guides that provide what could possibly be thought-about harmful dosing directions. We agree, the web is a terrifying wasteland of misinformation and disinformation.”
Within the Substack video, Kory mentioned he felt compelled to unfold the phrase about chlorine dioxide a lot as he did about ivermectin, regardless that it value him professionally.
He not has a sound medical license in Wisconsin or California, the place he didn’t renew them, in line with the Substack submit. His medical licenses in New York and Michigan are energetic.
“I wish to say I used to be excommunicated from the church of the medical institution,” he mentioned within the Substack video. In consequence, he mentioned, he turned to telehealth and began a apply.
Within the Nov. 6 HighWire episode hosted by Bigtree, the dialogue included discuss not simply of chlorine dioxide’s medicinal potential but in addition of how low cost and simple it’s to acquire.
“On Amazon, it’s actually, you get two bottles, nicely, it is available in two,” Kory began to clarify, earlier than stopping that practice of thought.
“I wouldn’t know the right way to make it,” he mentioned.
