Jim Humble (or someone impersonating him but who advocates for MMS) has been emailing me rather furiously lately. I’ve been a bit busy but I’ve finally had time to respond to Humble’s email. Below you’ll find my response.

Since this conversation has gotten a little bit out of hand, I’m going to summarize what I see as the main points of contention between us. Please feel free to correct me if I am misrepresenting you in any way.

The Burden of Proof

It seems that the primary point of contention between us is the burden of proof. Your statement (emphasis added):

…you then think it is your job to prove me wrong.  No, no, it is your job to prove me right.  It is your duty to humanity to prove me right. It is everyone’s job to help, it is not your job to hinder unless you have proof, but government declarations are not proof.  If you can’t prove me right after real research, then you can publish that.  But your duty to humanity is to help, not to hinder.  So far you have only proved you are on the side of those who would kill us.  

This is shifting the burden of proof, a formal fallacy. Not just in science, but in logic in general, the burden of proof is in the one making the claim. Any claim, whether it be benign or extraordinary, requires evidence. And all claims must be rejected until such time as sufficient evidence is provided to meet the burden of proof.

To ask skeptics to either prove you right or wrong is simply shifting the burden of proof to us. You make the claim: you must provide evidence.

Appeal to Emotion

In the above quote, as well as elsewhere, you make several appeals to emotion. Statements such as:

It is your duty to humanity to prove me right. It is everyone’s job to help, it is not your job to hinder unless you have proof…

and

You theory that it is OK to allow people to go on suffering because it wasn’t proven by science is simply evil.  

are problematic for several reasons. First, by invoking “humanity” or the “suffering of people on Africa” you attempt to add an emotional context to a skeptic’s decision making. This is irrelevant to the matter at hand. The question is the efficacy and safety of MMS, not the good it could do should it be proven to work. By introducing this appeal to emotion you are trying to make skeptic’s bypass an important step: that of determining efficacy.

Suppose that I have magic potion that can cure all diseases. Diseases from which people are suffering. Do we then, because of the suffering, skip the necessary step of proving that it works before administering it to patients? Do we skip the necessary step on demonstrating it’s safety before administering it to the public?

“MMS Works”

Although our previous matters of contention are arguments over form, this one is about substance. Again, you are making clear errors in logic that cannot be ignored.

In this instance you are making a claim, specifically that MMS effectively cures Malaria. Let us put this in the form of a logical argument:

P1: These individuals had Malaria.

P2: MMS was administered to these individuals.

P3: These individuals no longer have Malaria.

C: MSS cured these individuals of Malaria.

There are several flaws in this argument. First, this entire argument is a False Cause fallacy, as you have no way of determining whether it was MMS or some other factor that “cured” these patients’ Malaria.

This is why scientific tests require rigorous controls, including randomization, in order to infer causation.  

The standard practice would be a Randomized Controlled Study which utilizes a Double-Blind design. In this method, you would collect a pool of patients (or more appropriately lab animals) who have Malaria. Using lab animals allows you to have more control as you can take healthy animals and intentionally infect them which would remove such confounds as selection bias.

The next step would be to randomly assign your subjects into two groups: the experimental group and the control group. In this instance, because there already is an established protocol for treating Malaria, the control group would receive the standard treatment rather than a placebo as is commonly misunderstood.

To prevent experimenter bias, the MMS treatment and standard treatment would have to be administered in such a way as to be indistinguishable from each other. In a Double-Blind study either the participants nor the experimenters know which they are receiving, MMS or the standard treatment.

After the study is completed several statistical tests would need to be performed. I won’t bore you with the details but multiple indices would be considered including the survivability rate, length of disease, and various other health outcomes would be compared between the two groups.

Without getting too much into statistical techno-babble, you would have to see if the health outcomes of the subjects in the MMS group fared better than those in the control group. If yes, then there would be some support for your hypothesis. If not, then you will not have met your burden of proof and I shall continue to reject your claims about MMS until you provide me with such data.

Any good researcher or skeptic would do the same.

The Red Cross “Study”

This brings me to all of the examples you’ve provided to show that MMS works. Setting aside the Red Cross video for a moment, you state that:

My first trip in Africa in Uganda and Kenya I helped more than 4000 malaria cases overcome malaria.

Where is your evidence? Where are the RCT studies that show this? Where is the peer-reviewed article that shows your results?

The only thing close to evidence I’ve seen is the Red Cross video. Let us ignore the possibility that it has been edited in a deceptive manner and take the video at face value.

Aside from the obvious flaw that this study does not have a RCT Study Design, there are potential confounds in this study.

First, the use of the Rapid Diagnostic Test for Malaria is highly prone to false positives. Your statement:

You did not watch the video very well. The rapid tests were used, but the normal scientific microscope method was used to verify the rapid tests.​

indicates that you did not fully read my article, or the video mis-states the case. In short, the RDT only tests for the presence of antigens for the plasmodium parasite, not the presence of the parasite itself. As with all infections, antigens can remain in a human’s system for quite some time after the infection has been cleared. Therefore, the risk of false positives with the RDT is very high.

But the real issue behind the Red Cross “Study” is we have only your word that what’s shown is accurate. Where are the lab results? Where are the diagnostic reports of the patients’ progression?

Simply put, there is no actual data to support your claims. The video is the claim – where is your evidence?

The Chemistry Behind MMS

Several of your statements regarding the chemistry behind MMS defy logic.

MMS chlodrine dioxide has a oxidation potential of .95Volts. Oxygen has an oxidation potential of 1.29 volts. Oxygen is very acceptable to the body and chorine dioxide has less power to hurt the body than oxygen. ​Bring on any of your scientific chemists and I will discuss it with him and when I am done, he will agree with me and that has happened dozens of times around the world so far.

This is a nonsensical statement. We’re not talking about the oxidation potential of two disparate compounds.

However, since you’ve brought it up, I have several questions:

1. What is the mechanism by which the reduced oxidation potential of chlorine dioxide has a greater effect on the cell walls of a parasite in the human body than oxygen which is far more abundant in the body?
2. Please provide documentation of this effect, from a peer reviewed source involving both detailed descriptions of the chemical reactions and laboratory tests backing up these claims.

It is weaker than oxygen but each molecule has twice the capacity or can destroy by oxidation twice the number of other molecules.

Again, how does MMS work in such a manner. What are the specific mechanisms? Where is this published? In what journal? At what laboratory did you do your primary research?

MMS’ Safety Concerns

We only know of one recorded death (an industrial accident) caused by chlorine dioxide gas many years before MMS was discovered.

This is demonstrably false. In 2009 a woman died while using MMS. In 2008 an elderly man was hospitalized after using MMS.

As far as your statements:

the MMS dose is more than 1000 time less than the toxic dose, and again no deaths world wide have been recorded. The FDA can show none. Again compare to thousands of death caused each year by aspirine and now a little over 1 million deaths by pharmaceutical drugs after a doctor has prescribed them.

is contradicted by multiple sources, including the Canadian Health Department (since you seem to have an aversion to FDA statements) who said:

Miracle Mineral Solution provides approximately 200 times more sodium chlorite than the tolerable daily intake of sodium chlorite in water established by Health Canada.

In addition, the latter part of your quote is simply a false equivalency. Deaths due to the use of pharmaceutical drugs are due to individuals using drugs in a way that is not intended. The deaths by MMS are a result of use of a drug that has not been determined to be safe by any health industry.

Simply put, your claims that no one has died or been injured by MMS are demonstrably false, albeit the incidence rate is rather low.

A Government Conspiracy

Which brings us to the crux of the issue, the “Government Conspiracy”. It is easy to dismiss the concerns of the FDA as being invalid or part of a nefarious cabal but I’ll ask you, whom am I to believe? The FDA hires scientists who are experts in their field, who spend nearly a decade in school studying chemistry and medicine and whose job is to protect the American people from dangerous and untested drugs.

You list your credentials as:

I spent 10 years in research laboratories in Aero-space as a non-degreed engineer. Check it out, most laboratories prefer non-degreed engineers as they knew we had to have much experience before we were allowed that title.​

First off, nowhere in that do you claim to be a researcher in human medicine. And yes, it is true that one does not need to have a degree in order to have knowledge in a field, But the degree itself denotes the amount of time studying the subject. As far as I can tell you have none.

So who are we to believe? You have no evidence of corruption or a conspiracy other than your word and the fact that MMS has not been approved. But if the FDA is correct in their assessment of its danger then they are right to not approve it.

The burden is on you to prove there is a conspiracy. The burden is on you to prove MMS works.