"Rope worms" - new to me, but not to 'science'

Edit: 3 Jan 2019 - I've now created a new 'stub' page on Wikipedia for Rope worms.

I have been reading about ropeworms or rope worms which are in reality parts of the gut lining that have sloughed off and been pooed out. They can be quite large and arise because people are taking fake treatments (such as MMS* bleach enemas) to remove these 'gut parasites' in the hope of curing diseases or conditions (such as autism).

In fact the enemas would appear to be simply creating the rope worms by stripping parts of the gut lining away.

There are two papers that have been published on uploaded to ArXiv which argue that these ropeworms might be a new species of human gut parasite, a notion which has been strongly refuted (and laughed at) by Science Based Medicine and also several people answering a question about rope worms on Quora.

It's absolute nonsense and not an "anaerobic helminth". For an added bonus the 'worms' have also been given the name "funis vermis" in one of the papers. This would be funny if people weren't giving bleach enemas to children with autism with the intention of 'removing' these 'parasites' from the gut. People are awful.

For lots of revolting pictures of gut linings relabelled as worms have a look at this PDF.

*MMS = Miracle Mineral Solution / Supplement aka Master Mineral Solution (aka sodium chlorite, chlorine dioxide solution, aerobic oxygen) is a form of bleach which is sold as a claimed cure-all for all sorts of things, including autism. More info from the UK's Food Standards Agency. As of 2016 MMS is also been banned (by HPRA) for sale in Ireland.

MMS - Miracle Mineral Solution - dangerous nonsense

Someone with what I can only describe as a messiah complex* is travelling the world parting the unwell from their money, and on some occasions from this world (a terribly sad tale which I read on @alicebell's blog).

*According to Wikipedia this term isn't in the DSM - perhaps they'll make an exception ;-)

Miracle Mineral Solution (MMS) is a form of industrial bleach which is being sold as a preparation that is drunk in order to restore or maintain health. After considerable effort by skeptics and scientists no-one has found any evidence that suggests that this is a good idea, and plenty that suggests that it isn't.

There is literally nothing that I can think of that could be said in favour of drinking (swallowing) bleach. It's vastly wrong to conclude that just because one can use bleach to wipe down and disinfect surfaces then drinking it will have a similar effect in the body.

MMS appeared on my radar after I saw a tweet from @rhysmorgan highlighting his suspicions about the product.

He's a young man who sought advice and support from a Crohn's forum and noted with concern that MMS was being touted as something that might help. His investigations and swathes of evidence showing it was dangerous bunk ultimately led to his suspension from the forum for pointing this out. It was pretty startling.

Within about half an hour of seeing his tweet and watching his video I'd half-jokingly named it #bleachgate and was delighted to see the topic trending on Twitter. More recently it got a mention in the Guardian thanks to @mjrobbins writing about it.

Alice's post has reminded me of @paulbradshaw's cunning suggestion that we all write blog posts and link to the Guardian piece with the word's Miracle Mineral Solution. I am only too happy to help. For good measure I'm linking to the words Miracle Mineral SolutionS and MMS too.

@noodlemaz has also written a series of posts on the topic: Link roundup: Bleachgate Bleachgate link roundup: 2nd and last #Bleachgate: the plot thickens

@penguingalaxy wrote a post unpicking the chemistry of bleach and chlorine