Liu has been making the answer in his rented residence in Beijing by mixing citric acid with sodium chlorite, in accordance with an account he shared earlier this month on his Substack that exposed {that a} “violent explosion” occurred when he made a mistake.
“The blast blacked out my imaginative and prescient,” Liu wrote. “Dense clouds of chlorine dioxide burst into my face, filling my eyes, nostril, and mouth. I stumbled again into the residence, dashing to the lavatory to clean out the gasoline from my eyes and respiratory tract. My lungs have been burning. Later, I might discover 4–5 cuts on my higher thigh—shards of glass had pierced by means of my pants.” Liu additionally revealed that his 3-year-old daughter was close by when the explosion occurred.
Liu started a preclinical examine on animals in 2016, earlier than starting to make use of the extremely concentrated answer to deal with human sufferers in more moderen years. He claims that between China and Germany, he has handled 20 sufferers thus far.
When requested for proof to again up his claims of efficacy, Liu shared hyperlinks to quite a lot of preprints, which haven’t been peer-reviewed, with WIRED. He additionally shared a pitch deck for a $5 million seed spherical in a US-focused startup that would supply the chlorine dioxide injections.
The presentation incorporates quite a lot of “case research” of sufferers he has handled—together with a canine—however slightly than that includes detailed scientific information, the deck incorporates disturbing photos of the sufferers’ tumors. The deck additionally incorporates, as proof of the therapy’s efficacy, a screenshot of a WhatsApp dialog with a affected person who was apparently treating a liver tumor with chlorine dioxide.
“Screenshots of WhatsApp chats with sufferers or their medical doctors shouldn’t be proof of efficacy, but that’s the solely proof he gives,” says Alex Morozov, an oncologist who has overseen a whole bunch of drug trials at a number of corporations together with Pfizer. “For sure, till applicable research are achieved and printed in peer-reviewed journals, or introduced at a good convention, no sufferers must be handled besides within the context of scientific trials.”
WIRED spoke to a affected person of Liu’s, whose descriptions of the therapy seem to undermine his claims of efficacy and lift critical questions on its security.
“I purchased the needles on-line and made the chlorine dioxide on my own [then] I injected it into the tumor and lymph nodes on my own,” says the affected person, a Chinese language nationwide dwelling within the UK. WIRED granted her anonymity to guard her privateness.
The affected person had beforehand been taking oral options of chlorine dioxide instead therapy for most cancers, however, unhappy with the outcomes, she contacted Liu by way of WhatsApp. On a spring night final yr, she took her first injection of chlorine dioxide and, she says, virtually instantly suffered damaging unwanted effects.
“It was effective after the injection, however I used to be woken up by extreme ache [like] I had by no means skilled in my life,” she says. “The ache lasted for 3 to 4 days.”
Regardless of the ache, she says, she injected herself once more two months later, and a month after that she traveled to China, the place Liu, regardless of having no medical coaching, injected her, utilizing an anesthetic cream to numb the pores and skin.
