The Snake Oil Bulletin: Bleach Enemas 'n Cream

Howdy-doo, folks! Welcome back to your weekly round-up of the internet's best in nonsensical nonsense, The Snake Oil Bulletin. This week's selection will be injected straight up your keister by none other than your favorite salesman, Fare la Volpe, Chakra Wizard and "Doctor" of Chiropractic Surgery. Let's dive right in to it, or right up it as the case may be.

The dangerous nonsense that is bleach enemas

If you followed last week's column , you'll notice that the woo-prone take issue with putting harmless preservatives like BHT in their mouths, but have no problem shooting substances like boiling hot coffee up their rectums. Research into coffee enemas took your Volpe down the very strange rabbit-hole of "things people medicinally shoot up their butts" and what was even more surprising is that very, very little of it was porn!

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It seems that enemas are a big honking deal in the naturalist world, and that's not necessarily bad, except when the thing people are injecting up their colons is chlorine dioxide, a rad substance that happens to go by the groovy street name " industrial strength bleach ."

Your Wonkette has covered these bleach concoctions before , because users of them have a shared knack for getting their children taken away by Child Protective Services. The bleach solution is the brainfart of "Archbishop" Jim Humble, creator of the Miracle Mineral Solution , which Humble himself touts as such:

This breakthrough can save your life, or the life of a loved one.

The answer to AIDS, hepatitis A,B and C, malaria, herpes, TB, most cancer and many more of mankind's worse diseases has been found. Many diseases are now easily controlled.

When asked to back up these lofty claims, Humble quite literally uses the excuse that if he did show his research (gleaned from giving bleach to people in disaster areas like Haiti) the FDA would try to have him killed, which is how science works, right? You work hard to conduct rigorous ethical studies on destitute populations with very little police or scientific oversight, then hide your research findings away in a secretive underground compound because the FDA hit squads are marching through your town, testing meat for salmonella like some sort of meat-testing gestapo.

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Humble does not actually sell the bleach himself (of course he doesn't; that would make him criminally liable), but rather he sells books (a LOT of books) about how great MMS is and how evil the FDA is for refusing to approve it for use by humans, all because of a few minor side effects :

Workers acutely exposed to chlorine dioxide developed both reactive airways dysfunction syndrom (RADS), a form of occupational asthma, and an upper airways reactive disorder that they called reactive upper airways disfunction syndrom (RUDS). Pathological examination of biopsy specimens from the workers who developed RUDS demonstrated changes in the nasal epithelium that the investigators believed to provide a basis for the ongoing syndrome of upper airway distress, rhinitis, sinusitis, and conjunctivitis that was observed in these patients.

Humble's organization actually advises people to breathe in the chlorine dioxide gas as a treatment for asthma. Our best guess is that the corrosive elements of the bleach mix with the airway constricting inflammation of the asthma to cancel each other out, kind of like multiplying two negative numbers together. The double negative created eliminates the harmful effects of the asthma, probably because your lungs have now disintegrated.

One of the most despicable parts of this treatment (other than ALL OF IT) is that MMS is touted as a cure for autism, whether given orally, in an enema, or bathed in it. Nothing cures a child of his uniquely wired neurology quite like a bath in bleach.

Humble is right about one thing: MMS is probably very effective at eliminating many incredibly dangerous conditions from your body. Lord knows HIV or autism will be the very least of your problems when you're dead.

Food Babe still selling shit she thinks is poisonous

Is it a day ending in Y? It is? Oh goodie. That means Vani Hari, aka the Food Babe , is being a hypocrite again. My how the time flies!

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Last week, we informed you of how Ms. Babe was attacking major food companies for using the chemical preservative BHT in their products, all while simultaneously scoring some sweet, sweet bucks hawking the same stuff in her skin creams. Apparently BHT's toxicity is inversely related to the size of Hari's piggy bank (grass-fed and cruelty-free, natch).

This time Ms. Babe tried to make waves by attacking Kraft (the macaroni people), for using chemical dyes in their products that she thinks sound icky. Why are companies using dyes to make our food look like food? That sounds gross, you guys. Dyes are for t-shirts, not our bodies. Are you a t-shirt? I didn't think so.

The only problem with Vani Hari's continued use of the "appeal to yuckiness" fallacy, especially when it comes to food dyes, is that her argument is seriously undercut when her own store hawks products using those same dyes .

You can check out Hari's store yourself, and follow the links to just about anything from Tarte Cosmetics. As Bad Science Debunked has demonstrated, blue dye #1, yellow #5, and yellow #6 all crop up in Tarte Cosmetics, and Hari herself has expressly written that she loves to use Tarte daily in her personal make-up routine.

When asked about the dyes' safety, Tarte Cosmetics pointed to several scientific studies demonstrating that the dyes in question are completely safe, even when combined with aluminum (another of Hari's boogeyman chemicals). Man, Hari, you and your publicist have really got to coordinate your media team better if you're hoping to roll out your new book with fewer hiccups. It's bad enough that you openly drink wine , a Group 1 carcinogen, while sounding the alarm bells about Pumpkin Spice Lattes for using a Group 2B carcinogen. Now not even yourmeal ticketsaffiliates can toe the party line. It's a good thing your followers are too busy worrying about the Doritos in their sperm to focus on much else or this scam would have been over months ago.

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Is your house chock full of demons? Expert answer: Probably

To calm down the bile that has no doubt risen in your throat, might I suggest a spoonful of Jesus? We'll bring our round-up to a close with a story from the self-proclaimed only REAL exorcist, Bob Larson. In his most recent edition of Ask the Exorcist, Bob has been contacted by a poor fellow in Australia who is bewitched by demons doing interior decorating in the middle of the night. We knew there would be consequences to more gay marriage.

Bob starts out the session by relating the story of Brian, a gentlemen perplexed by the noise of demons moving their furniture in the middle of the night -- not his furniture, theirs! Our guess is that this is Brian's explanation for why he can hear the furniture moving but there is no physical evidence of it actually happening -- the connection between earth and hell has notoriously bad reception.

At first Bob replies with what to most people is a perfectly reasonable explanation: Brian is crazy. Your Volpe's first guess was that Brian had rented out his upstairs room to a nice goateed and cloven-hooved gay couple (Brian and his life partner Bryan) and just forgot about it, but that does make much more sense. We had high hopes for Bob giving Brian legitimate psychiatric advice right up until he said the phrase "But for a moment let's set that aside," and that's when things took a turn.

Bob launches into an involved lecture of the intricacies of demonic residential property law, which in all our years of writing is a phrase we never thought we'd type. Y'see, demons can only enter a home or a person if they have a legal right to be there. It makes sense that Satan would be a stickler for the law, what with his previous career in heaven of being a prosecuting attorney.

Bob tells Brian that the only way to cleanse his house is to go through every single room in the house chanting and cleansing (not with enemas, we hope). He then reminds his audience that he writes books ( a metric ton of books ) and that if you want to know all the steps of demon cleansing your house, ya better pick up that book lickety split, plus his CDs, DVDs, and instructional videos. And while you're at it, pay Bob to call you on the telephone, or over Skype, where he can apparently exorcise you and your home through the magic of a webcam and a desktop mic. We would kill for a racket that good.

Flotsum, Jetsum, and Hokum

Now a recap of the best in crappola and poppycock as brought to you by your beloved Proletariat Pinterest board, Wonkette!

• Georgia Republicans are taking a brave stand against the scourge of radiated man-jellyfish hybrids.

• Warning: the Surgeon General advises you that beating your child has not been demonstrated to remove The Gay.

• South Dakota will put a stop to ISIS-style abortions , even if there's no evidence those things even happen in South Dakota.

• Loud faced teevee person Pat Robertson has figured out the reason why new parents should quit posting pictures of their fetuses on the Face Book:  witches are cursing the babbies . Hey, if it helps to stop people flooding our newsfeed with more pics of their spawn, we are not opposed to this sage advice. Protect the babbies!

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That's all for this week! Tune in next time when we'll be testing out communion enemas so's we won't have to sip from the same cup as all the other riff-raff. That cup's just gross.

[ Science Based Medicine / Miracle Mineral Solution / Toxicology Data Network / Grounded Parents / Bad Science Debunked / Food Babe / Insufferable Intolerance / BobLarson.org ]