{"id":2843,"date":"2023-03-14T17:02:44","date_gmt":"2023-03-14T22:02:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=2843"},"modified":"2023-03-14T17:10:43","modified_gmt":"2023-03-14T22:10:43","slug":"why-one-womans-family-began-drinking-bleach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2023\/03\/14\/why-one-womans-family-began-drinking-bleach\/","title":{"rendered":"Why One Woman\u2019s Family Began Drinking Bleach"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Bloomberg Prognosis<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anna was just home from her first year of college when her parents introduced her to a new health fad that they had learned about at church. It was called Miracle Mineral Solution. And taking it was a lot like taking your vitamins. It could prevent (and cure) a host of illnesses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In reality, when Anna began taking it, she was slowly poisoning herself. MMS is comprised of sodium chlorite and an acid, which when mixed together basically make bleach. And ingesting bleach is not only toxic but potentially deadly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anna, who wanted to only use her first name to protect herself and her parents, found this out the hard way one day when shortly after her daily dose of MMS she began vomiting violently. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI remember texting my mom at some point, I was like, \u2018You need to come home right now and get me and take me to the ER because I think I’m dying,\u201d she told me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She didn\u2019t call an ambulance, which would’ve cost a fortune by the time it reached her in a remote part of rural Texas. She\u00a0didn\u2019t have insurance, and neither did her parents. In fact, she thinks this is one of the things that drove them to MMS in the first place.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you’re someone who doesn’t have health insurance, it’s a lot easier to just go online and buy something like MMS,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lack of trust is the main reason people seek out quack cures. When you don\u2019t trust the medical establishment, it\u2019s only natural to go looking for something else. Not having medical care also contributes to distrust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat opens the floodgates for a lot of this misinformation and a lot of this kind of pseudoscientific stuff that’s peddled on the extremes,\u201d says Dominik Stecula<\/a>, a political scientist at Colorado State University who studies health misinformation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sellers of quack cures prey on those sentiments. \u201cSmoke Screen: Deadly Cure<\/a>,\u201d a new podcast by Bloomberg, Neon Hum Media and Sony Music Entertainment hosted by me, is all about one such group. The last episode is out today. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the end, Anna was fine. But her MMS health scare didn\u2019t dissuade her parents. They took it for several more years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m not sure they would be honest with me about it if they were still taking MMS,\u201d she told me. <\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bloomberg Prognosis Anna was just home from her first year of college when her parents introduced her to a new health fad that they had learned about at church. It was called Miracle Mineral Solution. And taking it was a lot like taking your vitamins. It could prevent (and cure) a host of illnesses. In […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":2844,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"The Miracle Mineral Solution #dontdrinkbleach #misinformation #disinformation #propaganda @bloomberg @decustecu","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-misinformation-disinformation-and-conspiracy-theories"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/Screenshot-2023-03-14-at-17.57.57.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2843"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2843\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2845,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2843\/revisions\/2845"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}