5 days ago
An Inventor Is Injecting Bleach Into Cancerous Tumors—and Wants to Bring the Treatment to the US
Xuewu Liu, a Chinese inventor who has no medical training or credentials of any kind, is charging cancer patients $20,000 for access to an AI-driven but entirely unproven treatment that includes injecting a highly concentrated dose of chlorine dioxide, a toxic bleach solution, directly into cancerous tumors.
One patient tells WIRED her tumor has grown faster since the procedure and that she suspects it may have caused her cancer to spread—a claim Liu disputes—while experts allege his marketing of the treatment has likely put him on the wrong side of US regulations. Nonetheless, while Liu currently only offers the treatment informally in China and at a German clinic, he is now working with a Texas-based former pharmaceutical executive to bring his treatment to America. They believe that the appointment of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health secretary will help 'open doors' to get the untested treatment—in which at least one clinic in California appears to have interest—approved in the US.
Kennedy's Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement is embracing alternative medicines and the idea of giving patients the freedom to try unproven treatments. While the health secretary did not respond to a request for comment about Liu's treatment, he did mention chlorine dioxide when questioned about President Donald Trump's Operation Warp Speed during his Senate confirmation hearing in February, and the Food and Drug Administration recently removed a warning about substance from its website. The agency says the removal was part of a routine process of archiving old pages on its site, but it has had the effect of emboldening the bleacher community.
'Without the FDA's heavy-handed warnings, it's likely my therapy would have been accepted for trials years earlier, with institutional partnerships and investor support,' Liu tells WIRED. He says he wrote to Kennedy earlier this year urging him to conduct more research on chlorine dioxide. 'This quiet removal won't immediately change everything, but it opens a door. If mainstream media reports on this shift, I believe it will unlock a new wave of serious [chlorine dioxide] research.'
For decades, pseudoscience grifters have peddled chlorine dioxide solutions—sold under a variety of names, such as Miracle Mineral Solution—and despite warnings and prosecutions, have continued to claim the toxic substance is a 'cure' for everything from HIV to Covid-19 to autism. There is no credible evidence to back up any of these claims, which critics have long labeled as nothing more than a grift.
The treatments typically involve drinking liquid chlorine dioxide on a regular basis, using solutions with concentrations of chlorine dioxide of around 3,000 parts per million (ppm), which is diluted further in water.
Liu's treatment, however, involves a much higher concentration of chlorine dioxide—injections of several milliliters of 20,000ppm—and, rather than drinking it, patients have it injected directly into their tumors.
Liu claims he has injected himself with the solution over 50 times and suffered no side effects. 'This personal data point encouraged me to continue research,' he says.
