Chlorine dioxide at Mar-a-Lago

A headline from The Guardian: “Trump golf club to host speaker who claims bleach can cure cancer and Covid.” An excerpt from the article:

Donald Trump’s private golf resort in South Florida will next week host one of the world’s leading purveyors of chlorine dioxide, a potentially life-threatening form of industrial bleach that is claimed without evidence to be a cure for cancer, Covid and autism.

Andreas Kalcker is among 50 listed speakers at the “Truth Seekers Conference,” a two-day event opening on Thursday at the US president’s resort, Trump National Doral Miami. The event features several anti-vaxxers and other conspiracy theorists who have been brought together by the far-right commentator Charlie Ward.

I knew I’d read something about chlorine dioxide before. It was in the March 2024 Harper’s: “Miracle Cure,” Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling’s commentary on Miracle Mineral Solution (MMS), a mixture with which the user can create chlorine dioxide, which Hongoltz-Hetling describes as “a bleaching agent so powerful that mills use it to transform brown wood pulp into sheets of lily-white paper.” Vomiting, diarrhea, liver failure, and death are among its effects on the human body. And the purveyors of this lunacy seem to have had the presidential ear:

The former presidential candidate and Reagan Administration appointee Alan Keyes displayed MMS on his desk during a 2019 broadcast of his talk show, and in April 2020, [MMS purveyor Mark] Grenon and his supporters wrote letters to Donald Trump promoting the solution. Just days later, the president publicly suggested that consuming disinfectant could rid the body of COVID-19.

You can buy the materials to make chlorine dioxide at Amazon. Says one review, “Take your health into your own hands.”

[The Harper’s article is for subscribers only. Sorry.]