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NY Times Op-Ed, April 26, 2020
Trump Suggested ‘Injecting’ Disinfectant to Cure Coronavirus? We’re Not
Surprised
By Melissa Eaton, Anne Borden King, Emma Dalmayne and Amanda Seigler
(The authors are mothers of autistic children who have been working to
prevent medical misinformation)
President Trump at the White House coronavirus briefing on Thursday.
President Trump at the White House coronavirus briefing on
Thursday.Credit...Al Drago for The New York Times
At a news conference on Thursday, President Trump surprised nearly
everyone when he suggested using powerful cleaning agents, through an
injection, as a possible Covid-19 cure.
As advocates against pseudoscience, we weren’t surprised at all. While
Mr. Trump now claims his comment about injecting disinfectants was “very
satirical,” there has been speculation that he was influenced by the
leader of a group peddling such cures, even as the Food and Drug
Administration moved to block the group from distributing its product.
In the social media groups we monitor, President Trump’s words were
taken as a beacon of hope. As one promoter wrote: “Mr. President Donald
Trump I totally agree with you. Chlorine Dioxide is a very noble product
that has been used for many years throughout the world to cure people.”
For the past five years, as concerned parents of autistic kids, we’ve
been documenting, following and reporting the “bleach cures” movement.
The Genesis II Church and Kerri Rivera, among others, have been selling
products like chlorine dioxide, marketed as “Miracle Mineral Solution,”
or M.M.S., stating that the substances will cure autism, acne, cancer,
diabetes, Covid-19 and so much more. This is a crucial red flag for
pseudoscience: When a product claims it can cure anything, it’s a fake.
It has taken a pandemic to expose this movement and the ways that
pseudoscience scammers use social media and fear to sell their products.
It’s crucial, now more than ever, to look at the consequences of
misinformation and why we need a more responsible approach to content
management from big tech companies such as Facebook and our regulating
authorities.
We have been infiltrating pseudoscience groups on social media in order
to report these companies to regulators, with mixed results. We’ve
gotten a close look at the psychology that draws people toward such
products — and in our view, it is akin to the psychology that drives
some of the Trumpist worldview. It is a siege mentality, rooted in the
ideology of the anti-vaccine movement, based on anecdotes, conspiracy
theories and a fear-mongering distrust of so-called Big Government.
From monitoring these groups, we’ve watched as the marketing of the
“biomedical cure” industry has become increasingly linked with a
distrust of social institutions in general. Much of it is based around
the autism-vaccine myth, first made popular by Andrew Wakefield and
later perpetuated by Jenny McCarthy, Robert Kennedy Jr. and others.
President Trump himself has lent support to the autism-vaccine myth,
tweeting in March 2014:
Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
Healthy young child goes to doctor, gets pumped with massive shot of
many vaccines, doesn't feel good and changes - AUTISM. Many such cases!
23.4K
8:35 AM - Mar 28, 2014
The belief that there is a link between vaccines and autism has been
disproved by many studies, but some parents still decline to vaccinate
their children. As a result of lower vaccination rates, communities
around the world have experienced outbreaks of measles, mumps, rubella
and other serious illnesses.
What do the “cures” being touted look like? Unfortunately, parents of
autistic children have been advised by M.M.S. sellers to feed their
children a protocol of 16 doses of bleach orally, in addition to a
bleach enema to “cure” their condition. In the last five years, poison
control centers have managed more than 16,000 chlorine dioxide cases,
including a 6-year-old autistic girl hospitalized with liver failure.
Thousands of parents have been swayed into the dark world of autism
“biomedicine” and their children have become 24-hour test subjects for
dangerous protocols such as M.M.S., chelation and other products that
have no evidence of benefit and clear evidence of harm. We think of the
case of Abubakar Tariq Nadama, who died following a “chelation for
autism” treatment.
One reason it is so difficult to combat M.M.S. is that it’s more than
just a product: It’s a belief system. With Genesis II, for example,
bleach products are made by an organization calling itself a “church”
and touting its products as “sacraments.” We have seen the sellers
create online “parent support communities” where the ideology around the
product is continually reinforced. Group administrators, who work
directly for the seller, cajole parents to “stay the course” and keep
using the product.
Think about the message this sends to children with autism. To know your
parents want to “cure” your neurological differences to the extent that
they would feed you bleach multiple times a day is devastating.
The lack of regulatory protection is a big part of the problem.
Pseudoscience thrives when there is cultural complacency. We reach out
regularly to Facebook and other platforms asking for them M.M.S.
“support group” pages to be shut down, but often Facebook’s response is
that the groups do not “go against one of our specific Community
Standards.” Kerri Rivera’s bleach-cure Facebook groups had thousands of
followers before they were shut down — only after pressure from the media.
YouTube was also initially slow to respond in our view; however, it is
responding now. To their credit, Amazon and eBay have removed M.M.S.
products for sale.
While Health Canada has been cracking down on M.M.S., and one seller was
convicted under Canada’s Food and Drug Act, the F.D.A. has been much
slower to take action. Although we’ve contacted the F.D.A. for years, it
wasn’t until this month that it issued temporary injunctions against the
bleach-cure sellers based on the groups’ Covid-19 marketing. In our
view, this should have happened long before the pandemic, to protect
children with autism and others.
This week, scientists, doctors and public health authorities are
themselves taking to social media in an attempt to reverse the harm of
the bleach-cure myth. We hope this will bring more attention and action
against all pseudoscience. For years, we have watched parents become so
engulfed in misinformation that they have turned from hopeful parents to
abusers, recruiting others into their deluded, fear-based ideology.
We have a message for America: When you see such fear-based ideology
coming from our country’s leadership, don’t be surprised. Instead, take
action. And please: Don’t take bleach.
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