Trump Golf Club to Host Speaker Who Markets Bleach as Health Treatment

Donald Trump's private golf resort in south Florida will next week host one of the world's leading purveyors of chlorine dioxide, a potentially life-threatening form of industrial bleach that is claimed, without evidence, to be a cure for cancer, Covid-19 and autism.

- Ed Pilkington

Andreas Kalcker is among 50 listed speakers at the Truth Seekers Conference, a two-day event opening on Thursday at the US president's resort, Trump National Doral Miami. The event features several anti-vaxxers and other conspiracy theorists.

Kalcker, a German national thought to be living in Switzerland, markets the bleach under the brand name CDS, for chlorine dioxide solution. His online brochures claim that the toxic chemical, which he admits is a disinfectant, can "eliminate pathogens" that cause disease.

Health authorities in the US and Spain have denounced the remedy as fraudulent, saying it is no different from drinking bleach. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has warned that it can cause serious and even life-threatening side-effects, including dehydration, diarrhoea and kidney injury.

Kalcker's scheduled appearance at the conference on Thursday is the latest indication that potentially dangerous alternative health approaches are proliferating during Trump's second term in the White House.