There is no scientific study showing that chlorine dioxide is effective for the treatment of covid-19

A study published last March in the “Journal of Molecular and Genetic Medicine”, claims to have found conclusive proof that “chlorine dioxide is effective in the treatment of COVID19”. This study is FALSE: chlorine dioxide is not effective and has not been shown to be effective in the treatment of covid-19. Moreover, it can be dangerous for health. The paper you have sent to us has not been published in an authorised scientific journal, it contains errors of content and form which call into question its validity.

"Chlorine dioxide is effective in the treatment of COVID19"

The alleged journal in which the text has been published is Molecular and Genetic Medicine, and has been also translated to Spanish as well. In its original version, a group of supposed scientists affirm that “chlorine dioxide is effective in the treatment of Covid-19” and ask “further investigations” concerning it.

Several organisms such as the FDA or the WHO (through the Pan American Health Organisation) have already insisted on many occasions that when this compound is ingested, in reality, it is like you were drinking “bleach”, as it is one of the “active ingredients of certain disinfectants” and “are not made to be ingested by the people”. Moreover, they strongly remark that “the ingestion or inhalation of these products could cause serious adverse effects”.

On the other hand, the text has been published in what is known as a predatory journal, that is, a journal that does not belong to the official list of valid scientific journals recognised in the world. What makes a journal to be able to enter into this list is that it guarantees that they can carry out a peer-to-peer revision or peer-review, which is a previous analysis by independent scientists who validate the results. In other words, there is no guarantee of reliability of the alleged results described in the document because they have not been first revised. 

Errors of content and form 

The lack of revision also explains the errors in form, as in the case of bibliographic references. The first of all is simply a web which does not appear in the list of scientific publications validated by the community. It is about a webpage called Naturalnews, in which it is also affirmed that chlorine dioxide has shown a “100% of efficacy” as treatment for covid-19, but it does not link an original source. The second reference is another link that is not even named —there are more of this type in the document— which leads to a statement published in 2004 by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in which, precisely, it is warned that chlorine dioxide is a toxic substance. In reliable scientific studies, the references are always other scientific publications and research, not digital portals or unvalidated documents. 

The authors of the alleged study certify their scientific trajectory. The one saying to be the leader of the project, according to what the document indicates, is a person called Eduardo Insignares-Carrione, member of the center LVWG, Liechtensteiner Verein für Wissenschaft und Gesundheit, in Liechtenstein. It is an organisation whose specialisation, according to its own website, is "holistic natural medicine", an approach to natural medicine that treats "the whole person, not just the ailment or disease" and which, being natural (holistic medicine in general can be included in conventional medicine as well) falls under the so-called alternative medicines, that is, not proven by the scientific method. Furthermore, the researcher lacks further scientific publications concerning chlorine dioxide or any other compound or area of medicine.