In a deeply worrying sign, an Australian church has been fined $151,200 by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) for promoting and selling a coronavirus bleach cure.
The Genesis II Church of Health and Healing has been selling bottles of Miracle Mineral Solution (MMS), basically chlorine dioxide, as a “miracle cure” for CV-19.
It has been promoting MMS for many years now as a cure for a number of ailments including acne, diabetes and even cancer and HIV.
The Church sells it via its website and labels it as a “church sacrament” and not a therapeutic good.
Following an investigation by the ABC’s 7.30 last week, yesterday the TGA announced it had issued the Genesis II Church of Health and Healing a total of 12 infringements for false advertising and fines totalling $151,200.
The TGA has also posted an updated safety advisory to warn the public about claims the Church has made about consuming MMS.
A TGA spokesperson telling the ABC: “MMS Australia refers consumers who visit its website to a ‘Testimonials’ page, which includes representations that MMS is capable of treating, among other things, COVID-19.
“The TGA considered both the claims found directly on the website along with content found through links, including videos and testimonials in its assessment.”
It has been revealed that Genesis II Church’s leader in the US, Mark Grenon, wrote to Donald Trump just days before the US president claimed disinfectant could be a coronavirus cure.
The letter reportedly claimed that chlorine dioxide – a powerful bleach used in industrial processes such as textile manufacturing that can have fatal side-effects when drunk – is “a wonderful detox that can kill 99 per cent of the pathogens in the body”. Grenon added that it “can rid the body of Covid-19”.
However, Associate Professor Ken Harvey, an expert in public health from Monash University, has apparently been lobbying the TGA for a decade to have MMS banned.
“It is dangerous,” Associate Professor Harvey told the ABC’s 7.30. “Deaths have occurred, serious admissions to hospital from this particular substance.”
Since the story became public and the subsequent fines, the Church has updated its website to read: “Due to the current media lies that our site promotes the drinking of dangerous industrial bleach, and the attendant, if ignorant and reprehensible, harassment and attacks on our church, we are largely unable to take phone calls any more.”
