Senator endorses discredited book that claims chemical treats autism, cancer
20 comments
·December 12, 2025taylodl
They always say "more research is needed", overlooking the extensive research already done. At concentrations required for antimicrobial effects, chlorine dioxide poses serious toxicity risks - endangering the patient rather than helping them. You’d think these same people would have been dismissed after pushing ivermectin during COVID, but here we are.
QuercusMax
It "treats cancer and autism" in the same way a bullet does - by killing the host.
jqpabc123
The USA has contracted a bad case of stupidity.
tclancy
Are we sure his coauthor is Jenna McCarthy? Also, the article was impressive in how it kept getting worse. A good reminder I need to donate to ProPublica.
tclancy
> “They’re throwing up and vomiting and having diarrhea and rashes,” Eaton said … Some adherents advise parents that the disturbing effects indicate that the treatment is working, ridding the body of impurities
A time traveler from the 17th Century would be familiar with this sort of quackery. I guess not everyone can sell alchemy, so some make do with other branches of “science”.
wnevets
I know its an over used cliche but we are living through Idiocracy.
martythemaniak
I'm sorry to be a pedantic about this, but we are absolutely not living through Idiocracy. In the movie, the President wants to better the material conditions of his people, then seeks and listens to the advice of the smartest person in the world, who successfully delivers.
If you want a movie, we are actually living in Sacha Baron Cohen's The Dictator.
0xbadcafebee
“Now, there's one thing you might have noticed I don't complain about: politicians. Everybody complains about politicians.
Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don't fall out of the sky.
They don't pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families,
American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities,
and they are elected by American citizens.
This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It's what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out.
If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain't going to do any good;
you're just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans.
So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it's not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here... like, the public.
Yeah, the public sucks. There's a nice campaign slogan for somebody: 'The Public Sucks. Fuck Hope.'”
- George Carlinlenerdenator
This will continue to happen so long as two things continue to exist:
1) diseases and conditions refractory to treatment or cure by modern medicine
2) expenses related to medical care being born by Americans at a personal level
If you look at other countries, there are absolutely people in positions of power who still push quack medicine because of 1), but 2) creates an extra incentive for desperate or overeager people to try quack medicine.
jmclnx
> The action, he’s said, makes him unemployable, even though he still has a license
Well I guess you cannot be too stupid to be in Congress. The place were unemployable people end up.
SilverElfin
> He’s promoted disproven treatments for COVID-19 and claimed, without evidence, that athletes are “dropping dead on the field” after getting the COVID-19 vaccination.
It’s interesting how prevalent lies and claims without evidence have become. And one lie gives another one the space to be accepted. At risk of making a claim without evidence myself, I feel like there is some link between claiming Haitians are eating dogs and claiming that athletes are dying after vaccination.
Another aspect is some lies have a small truth. Like maybe the claim that an athlete died after vaccination has one example. But that doesn’t mean it is true in general or that the athlete didn’t have some special situation. I see a lot of generalizations casually tossed around these days, especially in American politics.
SoftTalker
Yes, there was an athlete or small number of athletes who died. It happens sometimes, it happened before COVID also. A seemingly very healthy person just drops dead. But it was seized upon and made big news, at least where it suited the agenda being pushed.
idle_zealot
What's happening is that politicians are slowly realizing that they no longer get punished for lying. At some point people got so worn down by more sophisticated half-truths that a large portion of the voter base just don't care about how true rhetoric is anymore. That plus the veil of civility that seems to prevent effective counter messaging mean lying blatantly is actually an effective strategy.
owlninja
"The irony of the Information Age is that it has given new respectability to uninformed opinion."
boothby
I don't see the irony. The industrial age brought industrial warfare.
null
stuffn
[dead]
QuercusMax
In case you wanted more information than the headline, here's the subhead:
Wisconsin's Ron Johnson has a history of spreading vaccine misinformation. Now he's giving credence to assertions about the therapeutic powers of chlorine dioxide, a disinfectant and deodorizer.
RobotToaster
Trying to ban these people always seems like a terrible idea, it just leads to the inevitable claims that they must be right because the government is after them.
In the case of ivermectin, because it's relatively safe (In human doses, not horse doses) it would have been interesting to see how conspiracy theorists reacted if the government just gave it to anyone that requested it.
The undermining of science has given people like this more of a voice. US leadership has got to the point where science is largely disregarded and leaders just impose whatever they think is true regardless of facts.