The Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration has started court proceedings against a “healing church” that promoted a solution containing industrial bleach as a cure for COVID-19 after the church failed to remove advertisements promoting the product from its Web site.
The drugs regulator last month fined the Australian chapter of the Genesis II Church of Health and Healing for selling and promoting the solution containing sodium chlorite, a chemical used as a textile bleaching agent and disinfectant. The product is named Miracle Mineral Supplement and Miracle Mineral Solution on the church’s MMS Australia Web site, which claimed it could prevent and treat a range of diseases, including COVID-19.
The regulator said that the firm had breached advertising laws.
At the time, the regulator also informed MMS Australia that it must also immediately remove all advertisements in breach of the Australian Therapeutic Goods Act 1989 and warned that court action might be started if the advertisements were not removed within two days.
MMS Australia did not remove the ads. Instead, it updated the Web site to say that those seeking miracle cures should also “pray to the Lord for healing and guidance.”
The use of the solution “presents serious health risks, and can result in nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and severe dehydration, which in some cases can result in hospitalization,” the regulator said.
In April the church’s US leader, Mark Grenon, called the product “a wonderful detox that can kill 99 percent of the pathogens in the body” and added that it “can rid the body of COVID-19.”
The regulator has begun federal court proceedings to obtain an injunction restraining MMS Australia and its director, Charles Barton, from advertising or supplying the goods.
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