‘Miracle’ elixir linked to death, illness

 

THE suppliers of a ‘‘miracle’’ water additive linked to one death in Vanuatu and at least 10 hospitalisations in Australia have come under fire from authorities for endangering the public by  claiming the bleach-based substance can cure everything from AIDS to cancer.

The Therapeutic Goods Administration investigated the online company that sells  Miracle Mineral Solution water purification drops after a complaint from a senior public health expert, who warned that consuming the liquid could lead to fatal health complications.

His warning followed the hospitalisation of three people in Melbourne and the death in August last year of American sailor Silvia Fink, who suffered vomiting and extreme abdominal pain before lapsing into a coma and dying 12 hours after drinking the ‘‘miracle’’ solution mixed with lime juice to ward off malaria.
Ms Fink’s husband, Doug Nash, said he had no doubt that his wife’s death was caused by the product, but he was still awaiting the autopsy results.
‘‘It went bad from the beginning ... from almost the moment she drank the mixture of MMS,’’ he wrote to friends in the days after Ms Fink’s death in Vanuatu.

Online supplier   mmsbuyaustralia.com.au, one of seven online companies selling the solution,   was found to have breached the Therapeutic Goods Advertising Code and was ordered to withdraw its claims about the liquid’s health benefits. It has issued a retraction on its website.

The TGA said the advertisements were ‘‘likely to lead to consumers self-diagnosing or inappropriately treating potentially serious diseases’’.Miracle Mineral Solution, known as MMS,  is chlorine dioxide, a bleach used in safe amounts as a cleaning agent for drinking water and swimming pools, and used to prepare some foods, such as flour. It is mixed by adding citric acid to sodium chlorite before being consumed.
Sodium chlorite can cause kidney failure and methemoglobinemia, a condition in which red blood cells do not bind with oxygen. Both can be fatal.

Dr Ken Harvey, senior research fellow at La Trobe University’s School of Public Health, who made an official complaint to the TGA after seeing the solution advertised on the internet, said MMS should be banned but the authority did not have the power to stop sales.  He said the US Food and Drug Administration had warned consumers in July not to use MMS because it reportedly caused vomiting, diarrhoea and severe dehydration.

Victorian Health Services Commissioner Beth Wilson said ‘‘if a product is harming people then it should be withdrawn from sale ...  Many of these ‘miracle’ products are without any evidence base whatsoever and their marketers are no better than snake-oil salesmen.’’

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