People who very mistakenly believe that industrial bleach is a “miracle cure” for COVID-19 have been buying the product from Amazon despite health warnings from the US Food and Drug Administration that drinking bleach can kill.

The chlorine dioxide solutions sold under brands names CD Kit and NatriChlor on the Amazon platform come with legal disclaimer warnings that the fluid is “not marketed for internal use.” Despite this, however, the review sections are filled with comments from customers who have been drinking what they call MMS (Miracle Mineral Solution) in an effort to “disinfect” themselves. 

“My mom who is 77 got Corona, Covid, and had a whole body-ache stomach upset, very extreme headache, fatigue,” wrote one Amazon customer, the Guardian reported. “Well, she started taking MMS and NOT KIDDING you, she was practically half better the NEXT day and the day after she was totally good!!”

Another shared that his family had started taking bleach soon after the coronavirus pandemic hit the US. “Many people still don’t believe in it, but I am sure that it has helped us a lot,” he wrote in Spanish.

Medical experts have long warned that MMS can make people very sick

The term MMS was coined by former Scientologist Jim Humble in 2006 and has been promoted by the fringe church he founded in Los Angeles, the secretive Genesis II Church, under false claims that it could cure almost everything including HIV, malaria, Lyme disease, cancer, and autism. Although Humble has since backtracked his claims saying “MMS cures nothing”, proponents of the “cure” maintain its effectiveness and are now touting it as a COVID-19 remedy. 

Medical experts, however, have long warned that MMS can make people very sick. Last August the FDA issued a strong statement saying that ingesting MMS “is the same as drinking bleach” and has “serious and potentially life-threatening side effects” including severe vomiting, severe diarrhea, life-threatening low blood pressure caused by dehydration, and acute liver failure. The American Association of Poison Control Centers has recorded over 16,000 cases of chlorine dioxide poisoning, including 2,500 cases of children under 12. 

Those who believe in the effectiveness of MMS have no doubt been buoyed by President Trump’s dangerous remarks in April that injections of disinfectant could cure COVID-19. The comments were in outward defiance of science and have been strongly condemned by experts across the board who denounced them as “jaw-dropping,” “incomprehensible,” and “actively endangering the public’s health.” 

In the past, Amazon has removed several pro-MMS books from its platform including the self-published books by Humble in which he claimed to have discovered that chlorine dioxide cures malaria while on a gold mining expedition in the Guyana jungle in 1996. Back in March, Amazon promised to crack down on false remedies for COVID-19, vowing to remove product listings that claim to prevent the virus.