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Freeman [soylentnews.org] writes:

https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/07/inventor-claims-bleach-injections-will-destroy-cancer-tumors/ [arstechnica.com]

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.
[...]
Food and Drug Administration recently removed a warning about the substance from its website [wired.com]. 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 [wired.com].

“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.
[...]
For decades, pseudoscience grifters have peddled chlorine dioxide solutions [bloomberg.com]—sold under a variety of names, such as Miracle Mineral Solution—and despite warnings [empr.com] and prosecutions [justice.gov] have continued to claim the toxic substance is a “cure” for everything from HIV to COVID-19 to autism.
[...]
Liu claims he has injected himself with the solution more than 50 times and suffered no side effects. “This personal data point encouraged me to continue research,” he says.

Liu has been making the solution in his rented apartment in Beijing by mixing citric acid with sodium chlorite
[...]
“The blast blacked out my vision,” Liu wrote. “Dense clouds of chlorine dioxide burst into my face, filling my eyes, nose, and mouth. I stumbled back into the apartment, rushing to the bathroom to wash out the gas from my eyes and respiratory tract. My lungs were burning. Later, I would find 4–5 cuts on my upper thigh—shards of glass had pierced through my pants.” Liu also revealed that his 3-year-old daughter was nearby when the explosion happened.
[...]
WIRED spoke to a patient of Liu’s, whose descriptions of the treatment appear to undermine his claims of efficacy and raise serious questions about its safety.

“I bought the needles online and made the chlorine dioxide by myself [then] I injected it into the tumor and lymph nodes by myself,” says the patient, a Chinese national living in the UK. WIRED granted her anonymity to protect her privacy.
[...]
Despite the pain, she says, she injected herself again two months later, and a month after that she traveled to China, where Liu, despite having no medical training, injected her, using an anesthetic cream to numb the skin.

“While this act technically fell outside legal boundaries, in China, if the patient is competent and gives informed consent, such compassionate-use interventions rarely attract regulatory attention unless harm is done,” Liu tells WIRED.
[...]
Despite having injected a patient in China last August, Liu tells WIRED, he is not a licensed physician—he calls himself “an independent inventor and medical researcher.” The treatment, which he says is “designed to be administered by licensed physicians in clinical settings,” is so painful that it needs to be given under general anesthetic.
[...]
Liu now appears laser-focused on making his treatment available in the US. Despite the lack of clinical data to back up his claims, Liu claims to have signed up over 100 US patients to take part in a proposed clinical research program. Liu shared a screenshot with WIRED including what appeared to be patients’ full names, zip codes, and the type of cancer they are suffering from. It’s unclear if any of the patients had agreed to have their information shared with a journalist.
[...]
When the patient said they didn’t have the money to travel to Europe for the treatment and asked about getting it in the US, referencing the Williams Cancer Institute in Beverly Hills, California, Liu suggested contacting the clinic directly.

The clinic has indicated its interest in Liu’s unproven procedure by writing about Liu’s chlorine dioxide injection protocol on its own website [williamscancerinstitute.com] and mentioned it on a post on its Facebook page.
[...]
The Chinese inventor did, however, appear on a livestream with two US-based doctors, Curtis Anderson, a Florida-based physician, and Mark Rosenberg, who works at the Institute for Healthy Aging. The discussion, hosted on Liu’s YouTube channel, saw the two doctors ask about which cancers to treat with the injections, how to buy chlorine dioxide, or even whether it’s possible to make it themselves.

Rosenberg and Anderson did not respond to requests for comment.
[...]
While he has no approval from US government agencies or support of a state or national lawmaker, Liu does have the full backing of Scott Hagerman, an entrepreneur and former executive with 30 years experience in the pharmaceutical industry, including a decade working at Pfizer.

“It’s an unbelievable breakthrough,” Hagerman tells WIRED
[...]
Hagerman’s time in the pharmaceutical industry included over a decade running a company called Chemi Nutra, which has in the past received a US patent [nutritionaloutlook.com] for a soy-based supplement that addresses testosterone decline in men.
[...]
Hagerman retired from Chemi Nutra in 2021, and in the intervening years his comments indicate that he appears to have become entirely disillusioned with the modern pharmaceutical industry
[...]
he sees Liu’s lack of experience as a positive.

“I would welcome the fact that he's not a doctor, that he's not an MD, because he's not clouded, jaded, and biased with all kinds of misguidance that would push them the wrong way,”
[...]
When asked about a timeline to have this procedure legally available in the US, Hagerman said he hopes it could be achieved before the end of 2025. Liu, however, thinks it could take slightly longer, saying that he believes clinical trials will begin in 2026.

Relevant Sources: https://xkcd.com/1217/ [xkcd.com]

Original Submission