The phrase, “snake-oil salesmen”, conjures up images of seedy moustache-twirling profiteers, exploiting an unsuspecting public with their cure-all elixirs. A relic of the past, when modern medicine was still in its infancy, and there was very little in the way of regulations to stop them. The truth, however, is that these con artists are still here to this day peddling the same bogus quackery to the same vulnerable people. The only difference now is that instead of spouting their dubious claims on-top of a soap box free of legal consequences, they do it online, hidden behind disclaimers. One such person is “candida and parasite elimination specialist”, Danny Glass, who, at the moment, is making a comfortable living producing YouTube videos, in which he tries to convince his audience to drink turpentine.

Danny is a British YouTuber currently living in Thailand who offers “health coaching” services under the name Sun Fruit Dan. He first came to my attention earlier in the year after publishing the video, “Debunking Misinformation That MMS Is Bleach! – Miracle Mineral Solution”. In the video, which was sent to me multiple times by my subscribers, Danny attempts to correct “uneducated” people, like myself, who say that Miracle Mineral Solution (MMS) is a bleach.

MMS is a 28% sodium chlorite solution that, once mixed with a weak acid, generates chlorine dioxide – a powerful disinfectant that has been used in the past as a water purifier. Chlorine dioxide has the ability to whiten materials such as cloth, paper, or hair, making it a bleach. Danny, however, believes it is not a bleach, simply because it’s not sodium hypochlorite (the bleach you find in your bathroom). In the video, Danny also promotes the book ‘Breakthrough: The Miracle Mineral Solution of the 21st Century’, which, among other things, chronicles some of the unethical human experiments performed by the man who coined the name, ‘MMS’, Jim Humble.

Jim believes he stumbled upon the cure to all of man’s ailments whilst prospecting for gold in South America. In his book, he goes into detail about how he came to discover sodium chlorite’s magical abilities. Turns out, whilst prospecting for gold miles away from civilisation in a South American jungle, two of Jim’s colleagues became ill. Jim, despite having no medical background, diagnosed them with malaria, and decided that the best course of action would be to feed them a chemical they had previously used to purify water, because if it can purify water it can……well, to be honest, I am not really sure about his line of thinking here – It’s worth mentioning that, at this point in time, Jim did not know what chemical was in the water purifier, and would not know for several more years. The men apparently made a full recovery, and Jim went on to peddle his new panacea to anyone desperate enough to listen.

Chlorine dioxide, or any other of the chemicals found or generated whilst using MMS, have no magical medical abilities. They will simply react with whatever they come into contact with, which can lead to some very unpleasant side effects. Jim found this out first-hand, according to his book, when he decided to put concentrated sodium chlorite solution directly into his eye. Despite having zero evidence that his bleach is a panacea, Jim continues to perform unethical experiments which, over the years, have become more and more dangerous. Towards the end of his book, Jim recommends intravenous injections of a relatively high concentration of MMS. He talks about his own experiences experimenting with using MMS intravenously, and how it would “burn like the devil”, but this did not stop him from using this method on a woman suffering from Lyme disease. According to Jim, the day after the woman was administered the MMS (at four times the concentration Jim used to experiment on himself), she became very ill and her face “which had become very old and wrinkled looking, completely peeled off”. Unbelievably, Jim tries to spin this rather horrific effect of injecting bleach into ones body as a positive. He says that the “Lyme had apparently infiltrated her skin, and when the MMS killed the Lyme, it killed the skin as well”, but goes on to say that “Lyme was not gone” and that she required extra treatments.

Unfortunately, Jim, who is the self-styled Archbishop of his own church, and his cohorts, which refer to themselves as bishops, have not been stopped or brought to justice. They continue to promote their dangerous quackery online and perform unethical human experiments in the developing world. In 2012, a pseudo-clinical trial took place in Uganda in cooperation with the Ugandan Red Cross, that apparently showed 154 people being cured of malaria using MMS. In reality, they designed an experiment to get the results they wanted.

So when “candida and parasite elimination specialist”, Danny Glass, says that Jim’s book is “amazing”, you have a good understanding of the level of person we are dealing with. Later, in his ‘Debunking Misinformation That MMS Is Bleach!’ video, Danny starts to talk about people, like Jim, who promote alternative medicine, but who have been forced to flee their home countries out of fear of prosecution. He mentions a Dr Jennifer Daniels who, rather than proscribing pharmaceuticals for her patients, would recommend that they consume the paint stripper, turpentine. According to Danny, this is okay – because turpentine comes from the pine tree, it is natural and, therefore, safe.

Turpentine is a clear, oily liquid obtained by the distillation of resin from pine trees. It is comprised of a mixture of aromatic organic compounds known as terpenes, and is primarily used as a solvent or paint stripper. Turpentine and its related products have a long history of medical use, mainly as topical counterirritants for the treatment of muscle pain. In the past, it has also been used as a main ingredient in snake oil cure-alls. One such example is Hamlin’s Wizard Oil, which was first produced in Chicago in 1861 by magician, John Austen Hamlin, and his brother, Lysander Butler Hamlin. The brothers marketed the oil as a cure-all under the slogan, “There is no Sore it will Not Heal, No Pain it will not Subdue.” and sold off the back of horse-drawn wagons. It was primarily made from alcohol, but also contained ammonia, chloroform, and turpentine.

I decided to look into Dr Jennifer Daniels’ credentials because I found it hard to believe that someone who is medically trained in this day and age would recommend genuine snake oil. To my surprise, I discovered that she obtained her medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania, and that she had practised medicine for several years. According to her magnus opus, ‘The Candida Cleaner’, which you have to subscribe to her website to get a copy of, it was during this time that she stumbled upon turpentine’s miracle properties. Apparently, whilst studying American history with her children, she read that African slaves and farmers in the 19th century would consume a mysterious substance twice a year to keep them healthy. Daniels took it upon herself to identify this substance, and began to ask her black patients if they knew of any such elixir because “many of them were descended from slaves”. One of her patients mentioned their grandmother, who was 96 years old, and who would consume turpentine on sugar cubes twice a year. Daniels immediately went to her local hardware store and bought a can of turpentine, and began to experiment on herself. She reported that she felt “Wonderful” and “filled with energy” within 30-seconds of consuming turpentine which, to me, shows that any positive effect she had was likely to be the placebo effect. Soon after, she began prescribing the paint stripper to her patients without ever putting her belief, that turpentine is effective against anything, to any kind of test. As you can imagine, this did not go down well with the authorities, who began to investigate Daniels. According to the New York medical board, she surrendered her license in 1989, less than 6 years after it was granted, to avoid any further investigation into her questionable treatment methods (like when she fed an incredibly sick woman a glass of kerosene) or board actions. No longer able to practice medicine, Daniels moved to Panama, where she is making a comfortable living producing books, radio shows, CDs, and videos selling supplements and health coaching.

In the video above, Daniels goes into a little more detail about the quantity of turpentine she believes is required to have any effect. The problem is that this dose she recommends is based on the amount she was able to consume before becoming ill and, presumably, this concentration will have the same effect in anyone. In ‘The Candida Cleaner’, she states that people who weigh between 40-240 pounds can consume up to 1 teaspoon (5mL) a day, which is incredibly dangerous because, in the past, we have seen that as little as 15mL of turpentine is fatal to a child. Turpentine is not a benign substance, and exposure to the paint stripper can have some very serious negative effects. It is a central nervous system depressant, a pulmonary aspiration hazard, a skin irritant, and may cause abortions. Many adverse reactions have been reported from ingesting turpentine, including headache, insomnia, coughing, vomiting, haematuria, albuminuria, urinary tract inflammation, coma, and death. Inhalation can cause inflammation and brachial spasms, and applying it directly to the skin can lead to kidney and central nervous system damage.

This is why warning labels are found on the side of turpentine bottles, however, according to Danny, you should simply ignore them, because “Any company that sells it out there have to put it on there for legal reasons to cover their own back. Because they cannot state that they are selling it for people to use for health”.

As I previously mentioned, Daniels’ book, if you can call it that, is called ‘The Candida Cleaner’, so it should come as no surprise that these people also subscribe to the idea that Candida is responsible for all of man’s ailments. In many ways, turpentine therapy is very similar to Jilly Juice – both have you ingest potentially life-threatening substances, both promote the idea that pain is healing, both have the goal of eradicating this opportunistic pathogenic yeast from your body, and both are obsessed with human waste. Those who promote turpentine therapy say that you must have at least three bowel movements a day, and recommend various laxatives if you are not achieving that number. They also recommend sifting through your waste to look for anomalies, which they always say are parasites.

Although Daniels recommends consuming a maximum dose of one teaspoon a day of turpentine, her method of injection is prone to overdoses. She recommends that you stack up 3 sugar cubes and, using a pipette, drop turpentine onto the sugar until the bottom cube is saturated. Luckily for us, Danny has made multiple videos on how to consume turpentine in this fashion.

You are probably asking yourself why the need to place the turpentine on the sugar cubes? The answer is that the sugar is used as bait for the parasites, who will then be lured towards the stomach, where they will come into contact with turpentine. I am not making this up!

Like with Jilly Juice, “pain is healing”, and the discomfort you feel when consuming turpentine is not a direct result of your body interacting with this toxic substance, but from the toxins released from the parasites after it kills them. The more turpentine you inject, the more parasites will be killed, and the more pain you will feel.

As I said, those who promote turpentine therapy are also obsessed with human waste, and demand that you have at least three bowel movements a day. This is to give the surviving parasites a way of exiting the body when threatened by turpentine. This is why they recommend sifting through your own faeces, to try and find evidence of these evacuating parasites. They also recommend that you should drink plenty of water to help remove some of the toxins released from the dead paracites/candida, but they also recommend urine therapy at the same time.

This guy also promotes urine enemas, so perhaps he is not the best person to get health advice from.

Although Candida exists, it is not responsible for any of the plethora of illnesses these charlatans claim it to be. In many ways, Candida is a fake disease perpetuated by those looking to make a quick buck, and those too stupid to realise that they have been deceived. There is no evidence to suggest that consuming turpentine will have any health benefits, but there is a mountain of data to prove its toxicity.

It’s only a matter of time before these morons kill someone. Like with Jilly Juice, they must be stopped!