Recent comments

Over the years I have also had many encounters with MMS (the active chemical is supposed to be ClO2, is activated with acid, which is then supposed to release Cl02) - I have a friend and relative (not a scientist) who pationately advocates it. I've also diagonally read "Jim Humble"'s book, and was pointed a number of websites with stuff written by and about Humble - forgive me if I can't remember where exactly. After initally only writing about his MMS wonder drug, Humble went on to found the "Genesis II" church a few years ago, which makes it now totally obvious that we're dealing with some sort of sect. In his book Humble makes many ridiculous claims of curing everything, including HIV. The only interesting thing I read about MMS is that during Humble's self-experiments for dosage finding, he managed to produce an anaphylactic shock when overdosing and needed to be hospitalised. I somehow can't help believing that Humble himself believes in MMS, but maybe those sect-leaders who believe in their own things are most successful.. From personal communication I know that MMS has been tested in a drug-discovery lab, probably in an in-vitro assay, and it didn't have any effect at all on malaria. Technically, somebody who desperately wants to believe might still argue that MMS has only an effect in vivo. Perhaps with Cl02 as some citokine-like immune stimulant.. Is it not true that our way of finding drugs - from in-vitro assays to in vivo tests - would systematically miss drugs that are only effective in vivo? Perhaps the reason for this way of proceeding in drug discovery is that there are no such drugs known to man - I don't know enough about drug discovery.
It is clear that the prospects for a positive finding when e.g. testing MMS in mice are minimal, as well as the career benefit for a scientist who would take on the burden and write a short paper about the negative results and publish it in a peer-reviewed journal. But it would be the ammunition that is needed in the battle of science against desinformation, which maybe become more and more important in this age where everybody can easily produce his own video messages and distribute them via the internet..

The fact that sick people who expected treatment were used as guinea-pigs is disgusting, and should have legal consequences for those who conducted them. Treating non-febrile malaria-positive individuals with a substance that's allowed for human consumption (I guess the ingredients of MMS are used for water desinfection etc) may be a different story - still not beyond doubt - but the people in the video might have been acutely ill and are at risk of serious complications if denied the proper medication.