Lyme and Autism Cross Paths in Two Healing Journeys
How Chlorine Dioxide brought a doctor and young boy back to health.
This is Part 3 of a series on chlorine dioxide by Mary Beth Pfeiffer. Here are Parts 1 and 2.
“What if I told you that people have been needlessly suffering and dying from diseases like cancer, AIDS, Lyme disease and a virtually endless list of viral and bacterial infections?”
So begins The Universal Antidote, a documentary on the untapped healing potential of a substance called chlorine dioxide. Among the illnesses on that opening list, it was the word Lyme that stopped me. I wrote a book on Lyme, a disease which, when advanced, is a devious and unforgiving infection that can destroy lives.
For one doctor, who prided herself on ferreting out effective off-grid treatments, the curative claims of chlorine dioxide, she thought, seemed to her to be “too good to be true.” Her quest to learn more about it began with a book on a theory.
Autism was sometimes driven, the book posited, by pathogens and toxins—bacteria, viruses, fungi, metals, mold, and yeast, to name a few. Far from a life sentence, autism symptoms could be alleviated, the theory held, with a protocol led by a substance that eliminated pathogens and possibly more—chlorine dioxide. So the theory went.
This physician did not know then that her research would change her thinking, her medical practice, and her own health. Soon into her CD journey, when she had learned enough to believe it was safe to try, she was bitten by a tick on her shoulder. It triggered her previously treated, ferocious, latent Lyme disease.
I will call this physician Dr. M, not because she insisted on anonymity but chose it on the advice of others. Chlorine dioxide, an all-around laboratory, industry, and water-supply sterilizer, is not accepted as a medical treatment. It is derisively called “bleach” based on government warnings that, as I reported previously, are based on a handful of reports to the FDA and in the medical literature that have been sensationalized by government and media. Openly discussing chlorine dioxide as a human treatment can cost a doctor hard-earned credibility or, worse, prompt a letter from a licensing board.
Dr. M was her own first chlorine dioxide patient, and she bought it like many thousands do in scores of countries worldwide—without a prescription (none is needed) and online. Following the book’s protocol, she gradually increased her dose from a single drop diluted in water to thirty-three drops daily, sipped over the course of the day. After three months, “I felt amazing,” she said. “I felt, like, as good as I’d felt in ten years.” And she still does.
This is not your everyday relapsed Lyme experience.
Zero studies
Dr. M’s inspiration was a book by certified homeopath Kerri Rivera, Healing the Symptoms Known as Autism. Rivera’s mission began when her vibrant son Patrick changed in his second year of life. He lost his burgeoning vocabulary and turned inward, refusing eye contact or soothing. He slept little, cried a lot, and developed digestive issues. He was diagnosed, at age four in 2004, with autism. It was not until 2010—after a spate of doctors, diets, and expensive therapies—that Rivera found chlorine dioxide. Within hours of his first dose, Patrick, then eleven years old, began to recover speech and connect with his mother.
“That is what happened. It had been eight years since I saw those eyes,” Rivera told me of that moment. “He was back and has been back ever since August of 2010.”
A chlorine-dioxide protocol ensued—including a high-protein diet, and substances to support and detoxify—that eventually took Patrick off the spectrum. Thousands more success stories followed, Rivera and others say.
Here is where I press the pause button. Anecdotal reports count for something. But as a reporter, I want data, studies, and something akin to assurance. Is this real?
Go to PubMed, the government repository for science publishing, and type in the words “autism and chlorine dioxide.” Press search. “Zero results,” comes up (although two came up at one point).
But if I learned anything during my pandemic reporting—when unpopular science was forcibly retracted and tests of off-grid drugs seemed designed to fail—it is that PubMed’s dearth of information is not a dealbreaker.
Kerri Rivera is silenced because she crosses two lines.
She has challenged a top tenet of autism—that it as a “lifelong” condition, for which, the literature holds, “recovery…is…unlikely.” Medicine, she contends, prefers management over cure with powerful medications like Risperdal, Strattera, and other drugs.
Moreover, she blames childhood vaccines in part for the rising rate of autism. In the United States in 2002, 1 in 150 children were deemed autistic; in 2022, the rate was 1 in 31.
“Autism is the biggest threat to humanity,” Rivera told me in an interview from her office in Mexico. In an email, I asked about her success rate: “Cure is 15-20%. Improvement is 100% . . . Most doctors treating autism have 0% recovery.”
‘Devil incarnate’
In 2019, an article in Wired magazine accused Amazon of selling books that promoted “bleach-like substances” as an “autism cure.” Amazon took down Rivera’s book and its 600 reviews, part of a pattern in which YouTube has removed videos and Facebook shuttered chat groups. In 2015, the Illinois Attorney General said Rivera made “unsubstantiated health and medical claims” regarding chlorine dioxide, and she agreed not to do business there.
On Google, “I look like…the devil incarnate, or I make Mengele blush,” she said.
Such depictions ignore chlorine dioxide’s use for decades to purify water and clean food that is consumed by millions—testament to its safety and pathogen-killing potential for human use. Rivera’s vilification also hinges on unsupported U.S. Food and Drug Administration chlorine dioxide warnings. Documents show FDA’s adverse events system—which counts two million reports a year—received just three for chlorine dioxide since 2010. (Two other cases involved suicide attempts.)
A half-century ago, women like Rivera were called “refrigerator mothers,” whose failure to nurture supposedly caused their children’s autism. Clearly, prevailing narratives sometimes fall. Is it so far-fetched to consider that toxins in food, water, air, clothing, and even vaccines (think mercury and aluminum components) might drive autism?
Rivera acknowledges her limits—“I’m a homeopath, not a medical doctor”—and of the lack of scientific documentation, for example, that chlorine dioxide removes accumulated heavy metals. “There is no medical establishment that’s ever done any studies on chlorine dioxide. No one.”
Maybe it’s time.
‘Scorched earth’?
Eight key developmental years passed before Rivera found a therapy—CD—that helped Patrick. A network of followers blossomed in many countries. People like David Lombardo in Panama saw his son’s autism melt away and formed a support group serving hundreds of people. Then followed the crash-and-burn of many who fight medical dogma—the censorship, vilification and false accusations. It was painful and costly.
When I asked Rivera if Dr. M should be named for this story, she did not hesitate, given what she has gone through: “No,” she said.
Since 2012, my articles and book have helped reshape the image of Lyme disease from an infection that is easily managed to what it too often is—a complex illness for which tests and treatments fail. But I thought twice about reporting on a poorly understood treatment that has been vilified as bleach.
Indeed, when I asked for input, a distant Lyme expert referred to chlorine dioxide as a “scorched earth type of treatment,” that risks killing pathogens indiscriminately and “seems to me to have a high risk of harm.”
“For now, I’ll sit on the sidelines,” this microbiologist wrote.
The effect on the microbiome is a valid concern, as is the use of harsh antibiotics for Lyme disease. CD is different, though: it kills pathogens through oxidation, mainly by stealing their electrons, and it quickly breaks down in the stomach. Animal studies have shown intestinal changes in rats that suggested “prolonged consumption should be avoided.” Other studies, some long-term, meantime show it is safe at therapeutic doses in people.
As for potential Lyme disease efficacy, there is hope. A 2023 laboratory study, published in the Journal of the European Society of Medicine, concluded that chlorine dioxide might work better than commonly used antibiotics (which themselves cause significant microbiome disruption) in killing various morphologies of the Lyme spirochete, Borrelia burgdorferi. “Our experiments demonstrated that it is possible to completely eradicate all forms of B. burgdorferi at specific concentrations of chlorine dioxide,” the study said, with “a near complete disinfection of the spirochetes.”
Much more research is needed. But Dr. M’s Lyme disease story—there are dozens of others in online testimonials—is an example of something few Lyme patients ever find: A way to quell an intractable infection with a treatment that is relatively simple, safe, and affordable (at $30 online for a generous supply).
In a video call and a series of emails and texts, Dr. M told me why Kerri Rivera’s autism experience led to her own Lyme disease success.
“From everything that I could learn about the mechanism, CD appeared to be doing what our innate immune system does to pathogens: killing or inactivating through oxidation,” she said. “Because both autism and Lyme share many underlying issues that predispose a given person to experience their symptoms (pathogen load, immune system dysregulation, toxic exposures that are overwhelming detoxification pathways, for example), it made sense to me that folks with Lyme might also benefit from a treatment that addresses all of those components.”
Stirring up junk
Dr. M’s own experiment, “on myself,” she said, involved slowly building up her chlorine dioxide dose to avoid unpleasant Herxheimer’s reactions, which occur when the body’s ability to eliminate killed pathogens is overwhelmed.
“I’d read enough to feel confident that a slow, measured ramp-up titrated to my symptoms would not hurt, and could potentially help,” she said. At the same time, “We’re doing things to support detoxing from all the junk that we’re stirring up. And we’re not pushing so hard that they’re just getting too much die-off, like, too much killing at once.” Among these are a binder to help eliminate toxins, Epsom salts, chlorine dioxide baths, and glutathione.
I decided to highlight Lyme disease in this article—at the risk of raising false hope—because Dr. M is not alone. Her journey aligns with testimonials of other Lyme patients, including one who was able to clear herself of an intractable tick-associated infection called bartonella after rounds of other therapies. I fully acknowledge these are anecdotes.
In one Lyme testimonial from the Universal Antidote documentary, a woman named Tessa describes going from “bed bound and unable to walk or pick up my arms” after antibiotics failed her. “In about 2 weeks (on chlorine dioxide) I was able to walk and had the stamina to cross the room, and in a month, I was much much more energized.”
Another patient with chronic Lyme disease was treated with antibiotics for two years, an anti-inflammatory, supplements, and ozone therapy that cost “an arm and a leg,” she wrote. After two weeks on chlorine dioxide, she wrote, “the results are AMAZING . . . I have a long way to go but I finally feel I’m on the right track.”
Another testimonial described a Lyme patient’s costly journey through “every alternative medicine known to humans” before beginning chlorine dioxide enemas, which other patients use. “After three months I am thrilled to say that my symptoms have lessened by 80%. I’m still weak but I believe now my body is able to really recover. This has been simple, cheap, easy, and fit so well into my life. I am eternally grateful.”
And of course there is Dr. M: After three months, “I felt healed. Like, I felt amazing.”
Medicate the ‘thorn’
From melanoma to memory, nail fungus to plantar fasciitis, many testimonials on chlorine dioxide can be found online. Among the most striking and controversial may be stories of autism.
Mothers tell of children looking into their eyes again and regaining function that had been lost, like Rivera’s son, after months of normal development. In one video, a mother says she researched chlorine dioxide for ninety hours before trying it on herself and then her autistic son. Searching for the right word, she said, “It’s been miraculous…Everybody that sees him now is in shock. He’s engaged, where he used to be very detached.” He no longer takes an anti-psychotic and many other medications, she said.
While chlorine dioxide is the central component, with frequent small doses in a water bottle, Rivera’s protocol, recently updated, can also include a special carnivore or low‑glutamate diet, minerals, detoxification support, antiparasitics, antifungals, and supplements. It takes commitment.
In our interview, Rivera was pointed on the FDA warning and medicine’s refusal to consider a curative gamechanger. “Chlorine dioxide is not dangerous, and it is not poison,” she said. “I understand that they don’t want people to use it, because it’s, you know, it breaks . . . the medical mold, which is, ‘You know, you’ve got a thorn in your side. I’m not going to take the thorn out. I’m just going to give you medication for that.’”
“I’m fighting an epidemic by myself,” she told me. “All they want to do is manage autism . . . They’re not recovering kids. They’re not erasing autism. They’re just making boatloads of money off of our suffering.”
David Lombardo’s son was nearly two years old when this curious, happy little boy became a lost child. He stopped talking and making eye contact. He exhibited new behaviors like toe-walking, drooling in response to video stimulation, craving certain foods, and fixating on fans. Here, in Lombardo’s words, is his story.
A father’s story
In 2016, my child was diagnosed with what local specialists described as a developmental delay associated with excessive screen exposure.
Now, let me clarify something important:
This term, “developmental delay associated with excessive screen exposure,” does not formally exist in English psychiatry or neurology. It is not a recognized diagnosis in the DSM-5 or in standard medical literature.
Three different evaluations, three different labels—all pointing to a lifelong condition. The last physician told me it was genetic.
But I had watched this child be born completely healthy. I had watched normal development. I had watched eye contact, interaction, curiosity.
And then I watched regression.
Shortly after receiving the MMR and the tetravalent vaccines between twenty-one and twenty-four months of age, changes began. Eye contact faded. Language disappeared. Fixations emerged—spinning fans, lining up toys. Toe walking. Drooling when exposed to fast-moving colorful screens. A diet reduced almost entirely to bread and bananas—strong cravings for gluten and dairy.
When we measured progress using the ATEC [Autism Treatment Evaluation Checklist, which ranges from 0-180] scale, the score was 134—categorized as severe autism.
What I was seeing did not feel genetic. It felt inflammatory. It felt toxic.
On Friday, September 2, 2016, we began a protocol that included chlorine dioxide as part of a broader effort to address gut health and microbial burden. I remember that date with absolute clarity.
That first morning, symptoms appeared to intensify—which I interpreted at the time as the body reacting.
At 4 p.m. that same day, something happened that I will never forget. As the nanny was leaving the apartment, she said goodbye. For the first time in months, my child turned, looked directly at her, and said “goodbye.” The very first day of chlorine dioxide.
Two days later, over forty-five words were being repeated.
Two weeks later, in a local supermarket, I stepped away from the shopping cart. After eight long months of silence, I heard “Dad!” shouted across the aisle. I broke down crying in the middle of that store.
About two weeks after that, a bag of beans was picked up and I was asked, “Dad, what is this?”
That question changed my life.
Our approach during that period focused heavily on the gut—including efforts aimed at reducing microbial overgrowth and parasitic involvement. We also incorporated rectal applications as part of that protocol, which in our experience support the elimination process and reduce systemic reactions that sometimes occur when microbial die-off happens.
Over time, communication continued improving. Eye contact returned. Engagement increased. The trajectory shifted dramatically from what we had been told was permanent.
In contrast to his initial ATEC score of 134, his most recent ATEC score dropped to 3. This reflects full recovery.
I understand how controversial this may sound. I am not presenting this as universal medical advice. I am sharing what we personally experienced—and what over 275 families I have supported since 2016 have witnessed in their own children—experiences that compelled me to question the prevailing narrative around autism as purely genetic and untreatable.
For me, this was not about ideology. It was about watching regression—and then watching recovery.
Since his son’s experience in 2016, Lombardo’s support group has assisted 413 autism patients, mainly from Panama, the United States, Brazil, and Spain. Of these, 275, he said, have “fully recovered.” About two-thirds of the group were between eighteen months and four years old; the remaining third was five to twelve years old. The process took eighteen to forty-eight months, he said, noting “Every patient is different.” Lombardo is now helping ten adults who are using the autism protocol.
Replace ‘autism’ with ‘Lyme’
Chlorine dioxide is a staple in Dr. M’s household. Her three children were raised on CD baths that reinvigorated them when they felt unwell before school. It is an important tool in her medical vocation.
Referring to Rivera’s Healing the Symptoms Known as Autism, she has a saying:
“Simply replace the word ‘Autism’ in the title with ‘Lyme,’ and follow the directions.”
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Great article! Thanks so much for the help in spreading the word!
Wow!!!🤩 I shared, restacked!!!