Coronavirus Florida: Bradenton ‘church’ ordered to stop selling bleach as COVID-19 miracle cure
The Bradenton-based organization falsely claims that the treatment is effective for a number of conditions, including Alzheimer’s disease, brain disease, cancer, HIV and AIDS, according to the Food and Drug Administration.
A Bradenton-based “church” has been ordered to stop selling a bleaching agent as a “miracle cure” for the coronavirus and other maladies.
Genesis II Church of Health and Healing is an organization based in the 2000 block of Garden Lane in Bradenton that describes itself as a “most unusual church” against “vaccinations, unwanted x-rays, scans, or health insurance mandated by human authority.” It charges churchgoers $35 per adult for a membership card aimed to prevent and protect against vaccinations. Memberships cost $20 each year thereafter.
It’s also been selling and distributing “Miracle Mineral Solution” for years, which the organization claims is a treatment for countless conditions, diseases and disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease, brain cancer, HIV and AIDS, multiple sclerosis and autism, despite the fact that there is no credible scientific evidence that the concoction is medically effective.
In fact, most medical experts consider it to be quite the opposite, labeling the “sacramental kits” as dangerous. The four-ounce bottles of sodium chlorite are sold along with with instructions on how to mix it with citric acid in order to make chlorine dioxide, an industrial-grade bleaching agent that experts agree is not safe for human consumption.
But that didn’t stop Genesis II Church of Health and Healing from from marketing the dangerous solution as an effective treatment for COVID-19 beginning in late March, according to prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in South Florida, who filed a temporary injunction on April 7 with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida that names Genesis as well as its leaders, Mark Grenon, Joseph Grenon, Jordan Grenon and Jonathan Grenon, as defendants.
Prosecutors, in filing the injunction, cited their unsafe products and argued that Genesis is a “secular organization” and not a church. On its website, Genesis describes itself as a “non-religious” church and a “very loose-knit organization.”
“In the midst of a viral pandemic and national emergency like nothing seen for more than a century, the above-captioned defendants are exploiting the crisis by marketing a powerful industrial bleach to consumers as a remedy for coronavirus, which includes COVID-19, the novel disease that, in its four months of existence, has infected more than 2 million people worldwide and has claimed the lives of nearly 30,000 Americans,” prosecutors wrote in court documents. “When warned by authorities that their conduct was unlawful, Defendants responded with open defiance, explicitly avowing that they need not — and will ‘never’ — obey the law.”
The Food and Drug Administration requested the injunction after previous warnings and requests to stop sales of the product went unheeded by the organization, which has remained adamant about the product not being bleach and has refused to comply, according to a news release issued by the FDA. That release called the product “an unproven and potentially harmful treatment offered for sale to treat Coronavirus” and other ailments.
The Department of Justice confirmed this in a release of its own that was issued on April 17, the day the temporary injunction was entered to halt the sale of the “unapproved, unproven and potentially dangerous” product marketed as a COVID-19 treatment.
“On April 8, 2020, FDA, jointly with the Federal Trade Commission, issued a Warning Letter to Defendants notifying them that they are violating federal law (both the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act as well as the Federal Trade Commission Act) by, among other things, distributing unapproved new drugs and misbranded drugs in interstate commerce. Despite this warning, the complaint alleges, the defendants not only continue to sell MMS with claims that it cures, mitigates, treats, or prevents Coronavirus, which includes COVID-19, but they have also expressly stated that they will not take corrective action,” the Department of Justice said in a press release.
Genesis did not respond to the Herald-Tribune’s requests for comments Wednesday, but Mark Grenon has pushed back against the injunction with multiple response videos and a letter voicing criticisms of the FDA, which Grenon said is violating his organization’s first amendment rights.
“Who are they? They’re nobody. They’re a freaking agency that doesn’t even do their job. They’re paid off,” Grenon said in one of the videos.
Grenon went on to say that he also wrote a letter promoting the “cure” to President Donald Trump, who faced backlash after his own controversial remarks the other week regarding injecting disinfectant to kill COVID-19, a statement that he later said was sarcastic.
The medical community has maintained that drinking or injecting disinfectant or bleach is not an effective treatment and should be considered highly dangerous.
Since the temporary injunction, which is set to expire on May 1 with a hearing scheduled to take place the same day in order to extend it, sales on the organization’s website have been suspended.
