We can always use more case studies of insanity that aren't religion, right?
Well, Miracle Mineral Supplement is my new go-to example for Bad Things happening to people with low epistemic standards. "MMS" is a supposed cure for everything ranging from the common cold to HIV to cancer. I just saw it recommended in another Facebook thread to someone who was worried about malaria symptoms.
It's industrial-strength bleach. Literally just bleach. Usually drunk, sometimes injected, and yes, it often kills you. It is every bit as bad as it sounds if not worse.
This is beyond Poe's Law. Medieval blood draining via leeches was far more of an excusable error than this, they had far less evidence it was a bad idea. I think if I was trying to guess what was the dumbest alternative medicine on the planet, I still would not have guessed this low. My brain is still not pessimistic enough about human stupidity.
If it were so (intentionally or accidentally), users would be instructed to put MMS in any water they drink. But in fact they are instructed to take few droplets of MMS once a day; they can drink whatever water they wish after that. I doubt a disinfecting agent works several hours after being ingested.
Almost any chemical is used for something; couldn't you just write "seems like a huge coincidence for him to happen upon something used in dish washing" if MMS was instead a saponate? (Note that water treatment and dish washing are of approximately same relevance to human health.)
Also trying different chemicals and finally choosing sodium chlorite due it's observed beneficial effects seems to me a less likely way to "discovery" in this case than knowing that bleach kills bacteria, concluding that it could work even internally and then using confirmation bias upon experimental data. Provided Jim Humble is not an ordinary quack.
I agree with your first point; I was surprised that EY used the "MMS is bleach, bleach is poison, MMS is poison" syllogism, given what he has written explicitly about poisons. It was perhaps a shorthand for a more valid argument, but surely sounded like very hasty reasoning.
I don't get your points on water treatment. Maybe you don't get mine. Selling a water treatment solution as a miracle health cure has the benefit of being safe and possibly having some marginal benefit. Such a sales plan doesn't require that every bit of water be treated.
And it doesn't seem like you read the directions. The directions are to put it into water, as I quoted earlier, and as can be seen in the included link.
But not every chemical has been so widely ingested to human benefit.
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