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Amazon is selling books that teach parents how to subject their autistic children to harmful “treatment” regimes that include drinking, bathing in and making enemas out of a toxic, bleach-like substance. Other pseudoscientific books available on the website instruct parents to force their children to undergo chelation – a treatment intended for arsenic and lead poisoning that caused the death of an autistic boy in 2005.

A search for “autism cure” on Amazon brings up dozens of books positing pseudoscientific solutions for autism spectrum disorder – a complex and lifelong developmental disability that has no known cure. But Amazon’s virtual bookshelves are stacked high with titles that recommend a long list of unproven and dangerous autism cures, including sex, yoga, camel milk, electroconvulsive therapy and veganism.


One book, Healing the Symptoms Known As Autism, instructs parents in how to make chlorine dioxide – a bleach-like substance that is sometimes marketed as “Miracle Mineral Solution”. Although the substance has never been scientifically verified as a treatment for any condition, an Amazon search for “Miracle Mineral Solution” turns up more than 25 books extolling its supposed benefits.

In 2010, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warned that chlorine dioxide, used in this manner, “can cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, and symptoms of severe dehydration” and that it “poses a significant health risk to consumers who may choose to use this product for self-treatment”. On its product page, Amazon’s recommendation system suggests that people interested in the book might also like to purchase chlorine dioxide drops intended for water purification.

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The author of the book, Kerri Rivera, is a prominent backer of autism pseudoscience who in 2015 signed an agreement with the Illinois attorney general’s office preventing her from promoting chlorine dioxide in the state. But the reviews under Healing the Symptoms Known As Autism suggest that parents are still discovering Rivera’s dangerous treatments. “I bought all the stuff I needed (including enema) and used it for few months, not only its very hard but really not effective [...] This is a very nasty stuff and even [an] adult will find it hard to drink, the smell is horrible.” wrote one reviewer. The book has 631 reviews on Amazon. At the time of writing the book was rated 3.5 stars out of five and is ranked 94 in the subcategory “Autism & Asperger’s Syndrome”.

On her Facebook page Rivera, who now lives in Mexico, regularly posts testimonials purporting to be from parents using chlorine dioxide on their autistic children. “I triple dosed [my child] 8 times yesterday! 8! You were right. Parasites,” reads one from March 3, 2019. Underneath that post – and others like it – concerned parents advise each other on where to buy chlorine dioxide and how many doses to give their children. Rivera did not respond to a request for comment for this story.


“There’s a tremendous emotional appeal to just having a solution, and if you’re not a very critical thinker or you’re so exhausted and desperate that you’ll try anything, you’ll go down the road of trying these various options,” says Isabel Smith, a professor of autism research at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada. “Families are desperate and they're looking for the best for their kids and they’re being taken advantage of.”

An Amazon spokesperson refused to confirm that it had any system in place to prevent medically dangerous information from being sold on its website. To test the system, we uploaded a fake Kindle book titled How To Cure Autism: A guide to using chlorine dioxide to cure autism. The listing was approved within two hours. When creating the book, Amazon’s Kindle publishing service suggested a stock cover image that made it appear as though the book had been approved by the FDA.

This fabricated book on chlorine dioxide and autism "cures" was approved for sale and then advertised by Amazon Getty Images

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The book – which featured a prominent disclaimer declaring its real nature – consisted of seven pages cribbed from the Wikipedia entry on autism plus a brief fabricated paragraph about chlorine dioxide. We were also able to launch an advertising campaign for the book. With no prompting, Amazon’s automated service suggested we targeted our book against the keywords “autism cure” and “chlorine dioxide”. Amazon’s advertising service also autocompletes keywords as you start typing them. After typing the word “miracle”, Amazon’s system suggested we target our book against the terms “Miracle Mineral Solution chlorine dioxide” and “Miracle Mineral Solution supplement”. When we typed in “DMSA”, Amazon’s system suggested “DMSA for chelation” – a reference to a drug intended for use only as an antidote in cases of heavy metal poisoning.


The advertising campaign for our fake book, which was targeted against these terms, was approved four hours after it was submitted. None of these terms were removed by Amazon on review. After the advertising campaign had been approved, we removed the book from Amazon. Nobody – aside from the author – purchased the book during the day it was on sale.

Amazon refused to put a spokesperson forward to talk about pseudoscientific books on its platform, instead pointing us towards its public guidelines for book publishers. These state books aren’t allowed on Amazon if they contain illegal content, provide a poor customer experience, or contain “other prohibited content”.

“As a bookseller, we provide our customers with access to a variety of viewpoints, including books that some customers may find objectionable,” the guidelines say. “That said, we reserve the right not to sell certain content, such as pornography or other inappropriate content.” Amazon’s guidelines do not elaborate on what it considers other inappropriate content to be.

Jane Harris, director of external affairs and social change at the National Autistic Society, a British charity for people with autism, says that Amazon must do more to prevent harmful information from being spread online. “No responsible retailer should be giving a platform to people who promote dangerous products to vulnerable families,” she says. “We must do everything we can to protect people from charlatans and quacks,” Harris adds.

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Rivera’s book is only one example of a number of titles sold by Amazon that are at best medically misinformed and at worst advocate “treatments” known to cause injury and death. Chlorine dioxide caught on in pseudoscientific circles after Jim Humble, a former scientologist, gold prospector, and founder of the Genesis II Church of Health & Healing self-published a book (which is still available on Amazon) claiming that the substance – which he called “Miracle Mineral Solution” – could cure malaria, HIV, cancer and diabetes.

One of Humble’s books – The Miracle Mineral Supplement of the 21st Century is ranked 58 in the Kindle Store category “Healing” – a subsection of a wider category called “Medical eBooks”. Humble did not respond to our emailed questions. Another book, How to End the Autism Epidemic by J.B. Handley, is ranked top of Amazon’s “Immunology” category and promotes the debunked conspiracy theory that autism is linked to vaccines.

Other books sold on Amazon advocate treating autism using chelation. This method, which is only used therapeutically as an antidote in cases of mercury, arsenic and lead poisoning, is rooted in the misinformed belief that autism is linked to vaccines containing mercury. No scientific study has ever established a link between vaccines and autism, and most present-day vaccines do not contain mercury. Those that do contain a form of mercury – called ethylmercury – that is easily broken down by the body.

In Fight Autism and Win, which has 54 reviews on Amazon, the authors direct parents to give autistic children doses of a medicine called DMSA – a drug used to treat lead poisoning. The book advises parents to put their children on a schedule where they must drink a DMSA solution every fours hours, day and night, for three days straight – repeating the 72-hour cycle once a week. In 2014, the FDA specifically warned against any non-medically supervised use of the drugs. “Procedures involving chelation agents carry significant risks and should be performed only under medical supervision,” the warning read.

In 2005, a five-year-old autistic boy died after he was subjected to his third round of intravenous chelation at the Advanced Integrative Medicine Center in Portersville, Pennsylvania. No study has established a link between heavy metal exposure and autism. A search for chelation on Amazon brings up dozens of books advocating chelation as a cure for cancer, autism and cardiovascular disease, as well as numerous supplements marketed as chelation agents. In the US, chelation is only licensed as a treatment for metal poisoning, yet an estimated 100,000 Americans are chelated each year – less than one per cent of them under the supervision of a medical toxicologist.

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Despite Amazon’s unwillingness to remove harmful autism content, the firm does appear to have pulled anti-vaccination documentaries from its Prime Video platform. As noted in a previous WIRED report – the streaming service hosted a number of pseudoscientific documentaries including Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe, Injecting Aluminum and Man Made Epidemic that are no-longer available on Prime Video, although DVDs of the titles are still for sale on Amazon.

Despite its lenient content guidelines, Amazon has removed books from sale before. Earlier this month, it stopped selling a book by the far-right agitator Tommy Robinson. The book, titled Mohammed’s Koran: Why Muslims Kill For Islam had been available for 18 months before the firm pulled it from its listings shortly after Robinson, real name Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon, was banned from Facebook and Instagram for promoting hate speech. “If [Amazon] is drawing some lines, why aren't they drawing other lines? Because this is dangerous,” says Smith.

Amazon’s guidelines preventing the sale of “offensive and controversial materials” do not apply to the sale of books, music, videos and DVDs on its platform. Its book-specific content guidelines only prevent the sale of books that violate “laws or copyright, trademark, privacy [and] publicity”. On the Kindle store, Amazon prohibits the sale of puzzle books, blank journals, pattern books, colouring books and facing-page translations.

“If you think cold-bloodedly about it, [Amazon] is a business and it wants to sell books – so if someone's got a book they'll sell it,” Smith says. Physical bookstores have a limit – both physically and curatorially – on the titles they sell, but Amazon does not. While it sells scores of scientifically-verified medical books as well as a wide range of over-the-counter medicines, its long tail is plagued by books promoting potentially fatal alternative remedies to incurable conditions. And with no clear policies on what can or cannot be published, Amazon’s platform is open to abuse. “It’s a lack of corporate responsibility,” Smith says. “It’s preying on this vulnerability and scientific illiteracy that seems to have taken over a frightening proportion of the population.”

If you are concerned about claims of autism cures or need advice and support relating to the disability the National Autistic Society’s website contains information that can help.

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