For years, Sen. Ron Johnson has been spreading conspiracy theories and misinformation about COVID-19 and the protection of vaccines.
He’s promoted disproven treatments for COVID-19 and claimed, with out proof, that athletes are “dropping lifeless on the sector” after getting the COVID-19 vaccination. Now the Wisconsin politician is endorsing a e book by a discredited physician selling an unproven and harmful therapy for autism and a bunch of illnesses: chlorine dioxide, a chemical used for disinfecting and bleaching.
The e book is “The War on Chlorine Dioxide: The Medicine that Could End Medicine” by Dr. Pierre Kory, a vital care specialist who practiced in Wisconsin hospitals earlier than losing his medical certification for statements advocating utilizing an antiparasite remedy to deal with COVID-19. The motion, he’s stated, makes him unemployable, despite the fact that he nonetheless has a license.
Kory has stated there’s a globally coordinated marketing campaign by public well being businesses, the drug trade and the media to suppress proof of the medicinal wonders of chlorine dioxide. His e book, in keeping 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 e book jacket contains a outstanding 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 gear. 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 ingesting water programs increased than 0.8 milligrams per liter might be dangerous, particularly to infants, younger kids and fetuses, in keeping 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 resolution,” ingested to rid individuals of a bunch of maladies. The Meals and Drug Administration has warned that ingesting these chlorine dioxide mixtures can cause injury and even death.
It isn’t medicinal, regardless of Kory’s rivalry. “It’s all lunacy. Completely, it’s 100% nonsense,” stated Joe Schwarcz, director of McGill College’s Workplace for Science and Society in Montreal and an knowledgeable on the threat of pseudoscience. Schwarcz has written articles in regards to the so-called miracle mineral resolution, calling it “a poison” when it’s in excessive concentrations.
Kory’s e book, 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 ailing to generate massive income. The usage of the phrase “warfare” within the title is becoming, Kory said in a recent online video on his co-author’s Substack. “Within the e book I element many, many assassination makes an attempt of medical doctors who attempt to carry out information round chlorine dioxide,” he stated.
Johnson confirmed to ProPublica in an electronic mail that he licensed the assertion on the quilt. “After studying your complete e book, sure I offered and authorized that blurb,” he stated. “Have you ever learn the e book?”
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 few of the questions on her Substack. (She didn’t ship a e book or comply with an interview.)
The e book “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: “Every thing has a poisonous dose — together with nutmeg, spinach, and faucet water.”
She stated that chlorine dioxide is being studied in managed settings by researchers in america and Latin America and that “the true debate is the way it needs to be used, at what dose, and through which medical contexts.”
Her Substack post was signed “Jenna (& Pierre).”
Johnson didn’t comply with 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 therapy 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 medication, to deal with COVID-19.
In 2021, an analysis of data from medical trials concluded that ivermectin might scale back deaths from COVID-19 and should produce different optimistic results. McCarthy cited that evaluation in her Substack response.
In 2022, nevertheless, the American Journal of Therapeutics, which had revealed the examine, warned that suspicious data “seems to invalidate the findings” relating to ivermectin’s potential to lower deaths.
Later clinical trials have found no helpful impact of ivermectin for COVID-19, and the FDA has warned that taking massive doses might be harmful. The drug’s producer has stated it hadn’t found any scientific basis 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 inner medication, pulmonary illness and significant look after making false and deceptive public statements in regards to the capacity 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 offered substantial medical and scientific proof to help his recommendations for addressing COVID-19, although not the “consensus-driven” strategy. He additionally sued the board in federal court docket, 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 News op-ed opposing a California bill that might strip medical doctors’ licenses for espousing misinformation about COVID-19. The invoice grew to become legislation however was repealed after a court docket struggle. A federal decide discovered the statute’s definition of misinformation to be too vague, which might infringe on medical doctors’ proper to free speech.
Johnson, who has been in Congress since 2011, has a historical past of advocating for experimental remedies 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, stated that amongst members of Congress, Johnson was “an early adopter of anti-science concepts.”
Lurie stated 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 slicing fringe of an anti-science motion has now became a way more broader-based motion that’s supported by hundreds of thousands of individuals,” he stated.
Earlier this yr, Johnson held a listening to highlighting a flawed examine claiming that vaccinated children had an elevated fee of significant power illnesses when in comparison with kids who weren’t vaccinated. The conclusion questions the scientific consensus that vaccines are secure. The study’s researchers selected to not publish it due to issues they discovered of their information and methodology.
In November, Johnson and Kory have been listed among the speakers 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 Providers Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose FDA is contemplating new methods to more closely scrutinize vaccine safety.
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 huge seek for a COVID-19 treatment in his first time period, which Kennedy stated included vaccines, numerous medicine, “even chlorine dioxide.”
Kory’s writer is listed as Bella Luna Press, which has issued no less than two different titles by McCarthy. “Because of the Censorship Industrial Advanced, you gained’t discover The Battle on Chlorine Dioxide on Amazon or at Barnes & Noble. We needed to design and construct this web site, work out formatting and printing and transport, and handle each facet of order processing ourselves,” the e book’s web site states. (A consultant for Bella Luna couldn’t be reached for remark.)
As this new e book is launched, the autism neighborhood can also be grappling with one other controversy: the unsubstantiated assertion by Kennedy that Tylenol use by pregnant ladies poses an elevated threat of autism. As well as, underneath 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 mother and father of youngsters with autism, determined for a treatment, have lengthy reached for dubious and at times dangerous panaceas, together with hyperbaric oxygen chambers and chelation remedy, used for the therapy of heavy steel poisoning. Neither technique has been confirmed efficient.
Helen Tager-Flusberg, director of the Middle for Autism Analysis Excellence at Boston College, stated Johnson has “acted extraordinarily irresponsibly” in lending his identify to a e book making claims about chlorine dioxide treating autism.
“Wisconsin is stuffed with specialists — medical specialists, medical specialists, scientists — who perceive and have studied autism and coverings for autism for a lot of a few years,” she stated. “He’s chosen to fully ignore the medical and the scientific neighborhood.”
Individuals with autism might take remedy to scale back nervousness, handle consideration issues, or scale back extreme irritability. Many profit from behavioral interventions and particular schooling providers to assist with studying and practical skills. However there is no such thing as a treatment, stated Tager-Flusberg.
Referring to chlorine dioxide, she stated: “We’ve had examples of this in all probability all through the historical past of drugs. There’s a phrase for this, it’s known as snake oil.”
In her response on Substack to ProPublica, McCarthy wrote that “chlorine dioxide is getting used to deal with (no person stated ‘treatment’) 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 e book in early November on The HighWire, an web speak present hosted by Del Bigtree, a outstanding vaccine skeptic and former communications director for Kennedy’s 2024 presidential marketing campaign. She then appeared up the e book on-line and observed 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 displays social media boards the place mother and father talk about giving it to their kids orally or through enemas. Typically the households reveal that their kids are sick. “They’re throwing up and vomiting and having diarrhea and rashes,” Eaton stated.
Some adherents advise mother and father that the disturbing results point out that the therapy is working, ridding the physique of impurities, or that the mother and father ought to alter the dosage.
“Most of those youngsters are nonverbal,” Eaton stated. “They’re not in a position to say what’s hurting them or what’s occurring to them. The mother and father really feel they’re doing the fitting factor. That’s how they view this: They’re serving to to treatment autism.”
The concept that chlorine dioxide generally is a miracle treatment started to unfold about 20 years in the past when a gold prospector, Jim Humble, wrote a e book claiming his staff in Guyana fell ailing with malaria and recovered after ingesting secure quantities of chlorine dioxide.
Humble later co-founded a “well being and therapeutic” church in Florida with a person named Mark Grenon, who known as himself an archbishop and bought a chlorine dioxide resolution as a treatment for COVID-19. They described it as a “miracle mineral resolution,” or MMS.
Grenon went to prison in 2023 for conspiring to defraud america by distributing an unapproved and misbranded drug. The scheme took in additional than $1 million, in keeping 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 hostile reactions to MMS. These hostile reactions embrace hospitalizations, life-threatening situations, and loss of life.”
Grenon, who’s now out of jail, advised ProPublica that he too is writing a e book about chlorine dioxide. “My e book will inform the reality.” He declined additional remark.
Chlorine dioxide is at the moment 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 standard mouthwash warns to “preserve out of attain of youngsters.”) It’s additionally obtainable 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 typically carry the drops, or tablets, utilizing small quantities to make quarts of recent water potable.
However quite a few internet buyers publish product critiques that go additional, referring to it as a tonic. Numerous on-line guides, some geared toward mother and father of autistic kids, advocate 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 may very well be thought of harmful dosing directions. We agree, the web is a terrifying wasteland of misinformation and disinformation.”
Within the Substack video, Kory stated he felt compelled to unfold the phrase about chlorine dioxide a lot as he did about ivermectin, despite the fact that it value him professionally.
He not has a sound medical license in Wisconsin or California, the place he didn’t renew them, in keeping with the Substack publish. His medical licenses in New York and Michigan are lively.
“I wish to say I used to be excommunicated from the church of the medical institution,” he stated within the Substack video. Consequently, he stated, he turned to telehealth and began a observe.
Within the Nov. 6 HighWire episode hosted by Bigtree, the dialogue included speak not simply of chlorine dioxide’s medicinal potential but in addition of how low cost and straightforward it’s to acquire.
“On Amazon, it’s actually, you get two bottles, effectively, it is available in two,” Kory began to elucidate, earlier than stopping that prepare of thought.
“I wouldn’t know the right way to make it,” he stated.
