Curativa Bay

This serotype has a record. A 2024 national outbreak in the United Kingdom reached nearly three hundred cases, eleven HUS cases, and two deaths, traced to lettuce. Two recent American clusters closed with the vehicle never identified: eleven cases in 2025, including one HUS case and one death, and eight cases in 2024 (Flynn 2026).

What Freezing Does

Freezing is bacteriostatic rather than bactericidal. It suspends microbial metabolism and leaves the organism intact. STEC survives frozen storage for months. The bacteria that went into those bags in Chile were still viable when the bags reached Florida.

Cooking would have killed them. Nobody cooks blueberries. They go into smoothies, into yogurt, into a bowl on the counter for the grandchildren. Raw consumption is what turns a low-level contamination event into a multistate outbreak.

The Timeline

Illness onsets ran from May 11 to June 5, 2026. The Florida Department of Health notified CDC of an O145 cluster on July 1. Frutas y Hortalizas del Sur recalled a single lot on July 3. Publix expanded the recall to all lots of four products on July 29. FDA issued the Class I classification on August 18. Fourteen weeks separated the first illness from the highest-risk designation.

Traceback on a frozen commodity is genuinely hard work. The product crosses a hemisphere, sits in a warehouse, and then sits in a home freezer for weeks. The epidemiologists doing that work are underfunded and overextended. The system they operate identifies harm by counting sick people and interviewing them about what they ate. Surveillance is a lagging indicator by construction. It documents outbreaks after the fact.

The Wash Water

Every one of those berries was washed before it was frozen. The wash step is the only point in the chain where a pathogen sitting on the surface of the fruit meets something built to kill it. Set the antimicrobial concentration wrong, or the pH wrong, or let organic soil load overwhelm the tank, and the wash becomes a shared bath. Contamination from one lot then distributes efficiently across everything that follows. The produce industry has understood this for decades.

Hypochlorous Acid

Your own neutrophils manufacture this molecule. A neutrophil engulfs a bacterium, assembles myeloperoxidase, and generates hypochlorous acid inside the phagosome to destroy what it has captured. The oxidative burst is roughly as old as the vertebrate immune system.

Outside the body, pH governs everything. Free available chlorine in water sits in equilibrium between hypochlorous acid and hypochlorite ion, with a pKa near 7.5. Below that pH the neutral HOCl species dominates. Above it the negatively charged anion does. The neutral molecule crosses the bacterial membrane readily. The anion is repelled by the membrane’s own negative surface charge. HOCl is on the order of eighty to one hundred times more biocidal than hypochlorite at equivalent concentration. A solution formulated and held between pH 5 and 7 is doing something categorically different from one that has drifted alkaline, whatever the parts per million printed on both labels.

The kill mechanism is nonspecific oxidation. HOCl attacks membrane lipids, sulfhydryl groups on essential enzymes, and nucleic acids more or less at once. No single molecular target exists to mutate away from. Acquired resistance of the kind we see with antibiotics does not develop. For an organism like O145:H28, that matters.

What the Agencies Actually Do

FDA does not certify or approve a sanitizer. It reviews food contact substances through the Food Contact Notification process. Hypochlorous acid is the subject of multiple effective FCNs. FCN 1811, effective in October 2017, covers hypochlorous acid at up to 60 ppm free available chlorine as an antimicrobial in aqueous solution in the production and preparation of meat and poultry, fish and seafood, fruits and vegetables, and shell eggs (FDA 2017). An FCN is notifier specific. It authorizes one company’s substance for the notified use, and it is not a general clearance that any manufacturer may cite.

EPA holds jurisdiction over antimicrobial efficacy claims. Products are registered with EPA and carry a registration number. The organisms a product may claim to kill, E. coli among them, are the ones substantiated by submitted efficacy data and listed on the approved master label. That registration number is the difference between a validated claim and marketing copy.

Disclosure: I serve as Chief Medical Officer of Curativa Bay, which manufactures and distributes hypochlorous acid products, and I have a financial interest in the company.

What I Told My Own Family

Throw the recalled product away. Do not wash it. Do not spray it. Do not try to salvage it. No surface treatment is an appropriate response to a Class I recall. Pathogens on produce internalize through stem scars and micro-damage in the skin, where nothing applied to the surface will reach them. The berries are not worth your grandchild’s kidneys.

Sanitize what they touched. CDC recommends washing and sanitizing items and surfaces that contacted the recalled product, and it is the step almost everyone skips (CDC 2026b). Colanders, cutting boards, the freezer shelf, the counter where the bag sat and sweated. STEC transfers readily to surfaces and persists there. An EPA-registered hypochlorous acid disinfectant is a well validated tool for that job, and this is the part of the outbreak still under your control.

For the produce you are keeping, treat the wash step as a real step. Running water removes soil and reduces surface load, and that should be your baseline. A hypochlorous acid food spray adds an oxidative kill step to fruits and vegetables you intend to eat raw. It is what the processors are doing upstream, applied at the scale of your own kitchen.

Read the label for what it actually claims. Organic is an agronomic standard governing inputs. Frozen is a preservation method. Neither word tells you whether the wash water in San Carlos was doing its job on the day your fruit went through it.

The remedy in this outbreak was a well understood molecule, held at the right pH and the right concentration, at one specific point in a supply chain. Salt, water, and electricity are what it is made from. Our neutrophils have been performing that same function since before any of us were born. The open question is who is watching the wash water, and whether we intend to keep finding out fourteen weeks late.

Be well, and check your freezer.

RWM

References

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2026a. “Investigation Update: E. coli Outbreak, July 2026.” July 6. https://www.cdc.gov/ecoli/outbreaks/blueberries-07-26/investigation.html.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2026b. “E. coli Outbreak Linked to Frozen Blueberries.” https://www.cdc.gov/ecoli/outbreaks/blueberries-07-26/index.html.

Flynn, Dan. 2026. “Frozen Blueberries Recalled, Linked to E. coli Outbreak.” Food Safety News, July 6. https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2026/07/frozen-blueberries-recalled-linked-to-e-coli-outbreak/.

Food and Drug Administration. 2017. “Environmental Decision Memo for Food Contact Notification No. 1811.” October 5. https://www.fda.gov/food/environmental-decisions/environmental-decision-memo-food-contact-notification-no-1811.

Food and Drug Administration. 2026. “Outbreak Investigation of E. coli O145:H28: Frozen Blueberries (July 2026).” https://www.fda.gov/food/outbreaks-foodborne-illness/outbreak-investigation-e-coli-o145h28-frozen-blueberries-july-2026.

Food and Drug Administration. 2026. Class I risk classification, August 18, GreenWise Organic Whole Blueberries and Whole Mixed Berries, four SKUs.

21 C.F.R. 173.315. Chemicals used in washing or to assist in the peeling of fruits and vegetables.

The World's Most Efficient Disease Delivery System Has a Boarding Pass

Curativa Bay — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 15:37:23 GMT

By Dr. Robert Malone, Chief Medical Officer, Curativa Bay

Modern travel is one of civilization’s greatest achievements. It has connected families, transformed commerce, accelerated science, and opened the world to ordinary people. It has also created the most efficient disease distribution network mankind has ever built.

For the vast majority of human history, most people were born, lived, and died within a radius that a determined person could walk in a day. The idea that an ordinary citizen could eat breakfast in Tampa, close a business deal in Chicago by lunch, and be home in time to put the kids to bed was not a middle-class expectation a century ago. The compression of distance that modern aviation, rail, and infrastructure have achieved is one of the genuine miracles of our civilization, and we have so thoroughly normalized it that we rarely pause to appreciate it.

It has also created the most efficient disease distribution network mankind has ever built.

As a physician and scientist who has spent a career studying infectious disease and biodefense, I have no desire to discourage travel. Quite the opposite. Travel enriches our lives, broadens our understanding of the world, and underpins the global economy. But it also carries biological consequences that too few people understand. Those consequences become even more important in an era when naturally emerging diseases, laboratory accidents, and the possibility of deliberate biological attacks must all be considered.

Understanding risk is not the same thing as fearing it. The purpose of preparedness is to preserve the freedoms we value, not surrender them.

What Travel Makes Possible

The global travel and tourism industry contributes trillions of dollars to the world economy each year and supports hundreds of millions of jobs. Supply chains depend on it. Manufacturers depend on it. Universities depend on it. So do physicians, scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, and every profession built on collaboration.

Many of the most important conversations never occur in formal meetings. They happen over dinner after a conference, in an airport lounge between flights, or during the informal discussions that build trust between colleagues. Scientific collaborations, business partnerships, and lifelong friendships often begin because someone boarded an airplane.

The same is true for families.

Modern transportation allows grandparents to know grandchildren who live a thousand miles away. It brings military personnel home on leave. It reunites families for weddings, funerals, graduations, and holidays. Millions of Americans think nothing of crossing the country for a long weekend. Only a few generations ago, such journeys would have been extraordinary.

Travel also broadens perspective. Spending time in another country, navigating a different culture, and seeing how other people live reminds us that our own way of doing things is not the only way. You return home with a better understanding of both others and yourself. These are extraordinary achievements.

But every system has tradeoffs.

The Paradox of Modern Travel

The very characteristics that make travel so valuable also make it remarkably efficient at moving infectious disease.

An international airport is, in biological terms, an enormous mixing vessel. Tens of thousands of people from dozens of countries arrive within hours of one another. They stand in the same security lines, touch the same kiosks, use the same restrooms, eat in the same restaurants, breathe the same air, and then disperse across the country and around the world. Some are young. Some are elderly. Some are healthy. Others are immunocompromised. Some are vaccinated, some are not. Some are carrying pathogens without the slightest hint that they are infected. This is simply the biological reality of rapid global transportation.

Commercial aircraft amplify that reality. Although modern aircraft use high-quality HEPA filtration, passengers still spend hours in close proximity while sharing confined airspace and frequently touching contaminated surfaces. Studies have shown that tray tables, seat pockets, armrests, and lavatory fixtures can harbor bacteria and viruses long after one passenger leaves and another boards.

An infected traveler may board a plane feeling perfectly healthy, change planes in another city, attend meetings, share meals, and return home before developing the first symptom. By then, a pathogen may already have spread across multiple cities, states, or countries.

COVID-19 reminded the world how rapidly a novel pathogen can circle the globe. Long before governments globally imposed masks, lockdowns, and travel restrictions, infected travelers had already carried the virus across continents.

The travel network is extraordinarily good at what it was designed to do. It moves people rapidly across great distances. Unfortunately, pathogens get a free ride.

The Invisible Passenger

What makes travel such an efficient vehicle for disease transmission is not simply the movement of people. It is biology.

Most infectious diseases do not make you sick the moment you are exposed. Viruses and bacteria need time to establish themselves, replicate, and reach sufficient numbers to cause symptoms. Depending on the organism, that incubation period may last anywhere from a couple of days to two weeks or more.

That delay changes everything.

A traveler can board a flight feeling perfectly healthy, spend several days attending meetings, visiting family, eating in restaurants, and shaking dozens of hands before the first symptom appears. By then, the pathogen may already have been carried through multiple cities and across several states or countries.

This is not theoretical. It is exactly how COVID-19 spread around the world during the early months of 2020. Long before governments globally imposed lockdowns and travel restrictions, infected travelers had already seeded outbreaks across multiple continents. The travel network does not create disease. It simply allows disease to move at the same speed as modern transportation.

What You Can Actually Control

That reality should not frighten anyone. It should encourage practical preparedness.

Most of the infections that travelers bring home are not exotic diseases. They are the ordinary illnesses that make vacations miserable and business trips memorable for all the wrong reasons. Norovirus from a cruise or hotel buffet. A respiratory virus picked up during a flight. A gastrointestinal infection from contaminated hands or surfaces. A cold that works its way through the entire family after everyone returns home.

Many of these infections spread through direct contact. Contaminated hands touch faces. Travelers handle luggage, tray tables, security bins, armrests, door handles, elevator buttons, and restaurant menus. Break that chain of transmission, and you reduce your risk.

That is where hypochlorous acid, or HOCl, deserves attention.

Despite the unfamiliar name, HOCl is not some new laboratory invention. It is one of the primary antimicrobial molecules produced by your own immune system. White blood cells generate it naturally to kill bacteria, viruses, and fungi. It is remarkably effective because it attacks pathogens through basic oxidative chemistry, a mechanism against which microbes cannot develop meaningful resistance.

Today, stabilized HOCl can be produced from nothing more than salt, water, and electricity. At appropriate concentrations, it is highly effective against a broad range of pathogens while remaining gentle enough for routine use on skin and common surfaces. It combines broad antimicrobial activity with an excellent safety profile

For travelers, the practical applications are obvious.

Before settling into your seat, wipe down the tray table, armrests, seatbelt buckle, and touchscreen. Clean your hands before eating. Wipe high-touch surfaces in hotel rooms, particularly remote controls, light switches, bathroom fixtures, and door handles. If you are traveling through crowded airports during periods of increased respiratory illness, consider using an HOCl nasal spray to reduce pathogen exposure in the nasal passages, where many respiratory viruses first establish infection.

None of these measures is perfect.

Preparedness is almost never about finding a single solution. It is about stacking small advantages in your favor. Every barrier you place between yourself and an infectious agent reduces the probability that your trip ends with an unwanted souvenir.

Most infectious diseases encountered during travel are preventable with simple, inexpensive, common-sense precautions. That is a far more rational response than fear, panic, or surrendering basic freedoms every time a new outbreak appears.

Disease as a Weapon

Everything I have described so far concerns the natural spread of infectious disease. But there is another reality that deserves discussion, particularly in a world where biotechnology is advancing rapidly and geopolitical tensions continue to rise.

Disease can also be used deliberately.

The idea is hardly new. Long before the discovery of bacteria and viruses, armies understood that disease could be as effective as swords or cannon. During the fourteenth century siege of Caffa, plague-infected bodies were reportedly catapulted over the city walls. Refugees fleeing the city helped carry what we now know was Yersinia pestis into Europe, contributing to the pandemic we remember as the Black Death.

The twentieth century transformed biological warfare from isolated acts into organized state programs.

The United States conducted limited biological weapons research during the Cold War before President Richard Nixon terminated the nation’s offensive biological weapons program in 1969 on both strategic and moral grounds. The Soviet Union made a very different choice.

Operating under the cover of Biopreparat, the Soviet Union built the largest offensive biological weapons program in history. Tens of thousands of scientists and technicians worked on weaponized anthrax, plague, smallpox, Marburg virus, and numerous other pathogens. Even after signing the Biological Weapons Convention, the program continued in secret, developing organisms designed to be more virulent, evade detection, and resist treatment.

The United States also conducted field experiments to better understand how biological agents might spread through modern cities. The best known was Operation Sea-Spray in 1950, in which bacteria believed at the time to be harmless were dispersed over the San Francisco Bay area. Whatever its scientific value, the experiment remains controversial because civilians were unknowingly exposed.

The anthrax letter attacks of 2001 demonstrated another reality. A biological attack does not require mass casualties to produce enormous consequences. Only a handful of letters killed five people, infected seventeen others, disrupted government operations, and generated nationwide fear. In biological warfare, panic can become a weapon in its own right.

Then came COVID-19.

Whether history ultimately concludes that SARS-CoV-2 emerged through a laboratory accident, institutional negligence, or some combination of failures, the broader lesson remains unchanged. A novel pathogen reached a highly connected world and, within weeks, had spread to virtually every continent through the existing transportation network. The virus did not create that network. It simply exploited it.

The consequences extended far beyond the disease itself. Entire economies were shut down. Schools closed. Medical care was disrupted. Civil liberties were restricted. Governments asserted emergency powers on a scale few people believed possible only months earlier. Whatever conclusions one reaches about the origin of COVID-19, it exposed just how vulnerable modern societies have become to biological events.

Why Modern Travel Changes Everything

What distinguishes today’s world from every previous era is not simply biotechnology. It is mobility.

Within days, what began as a single infection can become dozens. Soon it becomes hundreds, then thousands. Exponential growth is not merely a mathematical concept. It is the engine that drives epidemics.

The transportation system that fuels global commerce also allows pathogens to move with extraordinary speed. This is not speculation. It is the reason airports, transportation hubs, and other critical infrastructure occupy such prominent positions in biodefense planning by the Department of War, the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department and other national security agencies. These organizations recognize that transportation networks are both an extraordinary national asset and a potential vulnerability. No single intervention can eliminate that vulnerability.

Surface disinfection alone will not stop an airborne biological weapon. Vaccines alone cannot stop every emerging pathogen. Border controls alone cannot contain a rapidly spreading disease. Effective biodefense depends on layers of protection: surveillance, rapid diagnosis, environmental hygiene, medical countermeasures, and informed citizens who understand how to protect themselves. COVID also demonstrated the limits of centralized pandemic management. By the time many governments imposed sweeping restrictions, international spread was already well underway. Several policies proved ineffective, while others caused lasting economic, educational, and social harm. Governments have an important role in public health, but they are only one layer of preparedness. Individuals remain responsible for protecting themselves, their families, and their communities.

Good hygiene, situational awareness, and practical preparedness may seem like small measures, but millions of people taking sensible precautions can substantially reduce disease transmission. We should never underestimate the value of informed citizens who understand both the risks they face and the steps they can take to reduce them.

That is how resilient societies respond to biological threats. Not through panic, and not by surrendering freedom, but through knowledge, preparation, and common sense.

What This Means for All of Us

I am not writing this to discourage travel.

Quite the opposite.

Travel enriches our lives. It strengthens families, drives economic growth, accelerates scientific discovery, and reminds us that there is a remarkable world beyond our own communities. Those are benefits worth preserving.

But preserving them requires understanding the risks that accompany them.

COVID-19 taught us many lessons. One of the most important was that governments often respond to uncertainty by expanding their authority. Lockdowns, travel restrictions, vaccine passports, business closures, school closures, censorship, and emergency powers became the default response across much of the world. Many of those policies inflicted profound economic, educational, and social damage while doing far less to stop viral transmission than promised.

The answer to infectious disease is not fear. It is not panic. It is not surrendering fundamental liberties every time a new pathogen emerges.

The answer is preparedness. Preparedness begins with understanding how diseases spread and recognizing that simple measures often provide meaningful protection, particularly when traveling. Wash your hands. Clean the surfaces you are about to touch. Pay attention to outbreak reports without becoming consumed by them. Support your immune system through good nutrition, adequate sleep, regular exercise, and appropriate preventive healthcare. If you are traveling through crowded airports, airplanes, hotels, or conference centers, carry an effective antimicrobial and use it. As far as I am concerned, HOCL is the most non-toxic and effective one available on the market.

Biodefense has never relied on a single intervention. It depends on layers of protection, each reducing risk and buying time. Individuals have a role to play, just as institutions do.

The goal is not to eliminate risk. That is impossible. The goal is to reduce unnecessary risk while preserving the freedom to live, work, travel, and experience the world.

Modern transportation remains one of humanity’s greatest achievements. It connects nations, ideas, markets, and families. That same network also allows infectious diseases to move farther and faster than at any other time in history.

Civilization depends on the free movement of people, ideas, and commerce. The challenge is not to restrict that movement, but to understand the biological realities that accompany it and prepare accordingly.

That reality should not make us fearful; it should make us wiser.

Go see the world.

Just don’t give the invisible passenger a free ride.

Click here for more HOCl info

Disclosure: I serve as Chief Medical Officer of Curativa Bay, a veteran-founded company focused on technologies that help reduce the spread of infectious disease. Curativa Bay manufactures stabilized hypochlorous acid (HOCl) products for personal, institutional, and emergency preparedness applications. The company’s products hold EPA List N registration for emerging viral pathogens, FDA 510(k) clearance where applicable, ISO 13485 certification, and are used in settings ranging from healthcare and emergency response to military and public preparedness.

The views expressed in this article are based on publicly available scientific literature, biodefense planning documents, and my professional experience in infectious disease research, biodefense, and public health. This article is intended for educational purposes and should not be considered individual medical advice.

Dr. Robert Malone serves as Chief Medical Officer of Curativa Bay, a veteran-founded company dedicated to preventing the spread of human disease and equipping individuals, institutions, and government agencies with the tools to protect their people. Curativa Bay’s HOCl-based products hold EPA List N, FDA 510(k), ISO 13485, and WHO recognition credentials. This article is for general educational purposes and does not constitute personal medical advice. The biodefense perspectives expressed reflect publicly available assessments and published scientific literature.

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Health

Curativa Bay — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 21:20:46 GMT

By William Maher, Founder, Curativa Bay

Every Fourth of July, we light up the sky to remember a simple, radical idea: that ordinary people are capable of governing their own lives.

In 1776, a group of farmers, printers, physicians, and merchants decided they no longer needed a distant authority to tell them how to live. They pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor on a single conviction — that free people, given the truth and the right tools, can take responsibility for their own future. It was audacious. It was unproven. And it changed the world.

Two and a half centuries later, that same spirit still runs through us. We hear it in the crack of fireworks over the water and see it in the flags lining Main Street. But independence was never only about politics or borders. At its heart, it has always been about something more personal: self-reliance. The quiet, unshakable belief that the person best equipped to look after you and your family is you.

A nation of people who prepare

Americans have always been a people who get ready. We stock the pantry before the storm. We keep a first aid kit in the truck. We teach our kids to swim, to change a tire, to stand on their own two feet. We don’t wait to be rescued — we roll up our sleeves and handle it.

That instinct isn’t cynicism about the world. It’s confidence in ourselves. It’s the frontier ethic that built this country, carried forward into every kitchen, garage, and workshop where an American decided, I can take care of this.

Health is no different. For too long, we were taught to treat our own wellbeing as something to be handed over entirely to someone else — to wait, to hope, to defer. But the founding American impulse tells a different story: that we are capable of understanding our own bodies, our own risks, and the simple steps we can take to protect the people we love.

Why we do what we do

At Curativa Bay, that belief is our entire reason for being.

We are a veteran-founded company with a straightforward mission: to help stop the spread of disease, and to put safe, simple, effective protection into the hands of everyday Americans. Not to lecture. Not to frighten. To equip.

The molecule at the heart of our work — hypochlorous acid — isn’t some foreign laboratory invention. It’s the very same compound your own white blood cells produce to fight off invaders. Your body has been making it your whole life. We simply produce it, cleanly and consistently, from three of the humblest ingredients imaginable: salt, water, and electricity. Made here, in America, by Americans.

But a bottle is only half the story. The other half — the part we care about most — is knowledge.

The most powerful thing you can give a free person isn’t a product. It’s knowldege.

Because when you understand how disease actually moves — how it spreads from a doorknob, a handshake, a shared space — you stop being a bystander to your own health. You become the first and best line of defense for your family, your coworkers, your community. That is what it means to be armed in the truest sense: informed, prepared, and unafraid.

The most American idea of all

Taking charge of your own health is not a fringe notion. It is a deeply, unmistakably American one.

It’s the same idea that animated a ragtag group of colonists who believed people didn’t need permission to shape their own destiny. It’s the same instinct that pushed settlers west, that keeps a small business owner up at night solving a problem no one else will solve for them. It is the belief that liberty and responsibility are two sides of the same coin — that being free means being willing to look after yourself and your neighbor.

When you learn how to protect the people around you, you aren’t just guarding against germs. You’re carrying forward the oldest American tradition there is: the refusal to be helpless. The determination to take charge of your own life.

This Fourth of July

So tomorrow, as the fireworks fade and the smoke drifts off over the fields and the harbors, take a moment.

Be grateful for the extraordinary gift of freedom — bought at a price we can never fully repay. And then recommit to what that freedom asks of us in return: to live wisely, to prepare well, and to protect the people we love.

That’s what we’re building toward at Curativa Bay, one household and one community at a time. Because a free and independent people deserves to be a healthy one, too.

Happy Independence Day. Stay strong, stay ready, and God bless America.

Curativa Bay is a veteran-founded company dedicated to preventing the spread of disease and empowering Americans to protect their families and communities. To learn more about our mission and our HOCl-based products, visit us at www.curativabay.com

The Antibiotic Crisis Nobody Is Talking About

Curativa Bay — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 18:54:34 GMT

HOCl Info

Fast-moving threats get our attention. A new virus, a sudden outbreak, or an alarming headline moves quickly enough to be noticed. Slow-moving threats are harder to see, because they develop over years, and by the time the damage is obvious it is often well advanced.

One such threat is the steady loss of effective antibiotics. It produces few headlines, but it is gradually eroding one of the most important advances in the history of medicine, and it receives little attention outside the field of infectious disease.

What antibiotics made possible

Antibiotics changed what medicine can do. Before them, a minor wound could become fatal, childbirth carried a high risk of deadly infection, and surgery often led to it. Much of modern medicine depends on antibiotics working. Chemotherapy, organ transplants, joint replacements, and intensive care all assume that if an infection occurs, it can be treated.

That assumption is now in question. Every use of an antibiotic exerts selective pressure. Bacteria that survive pass on their resistance, and over time the drug becomes less effective. The effect is measurable. Recent estimates associate drug-resistant infections with nearly five million deaths worldwide each year, and as the direct cause of more than a million of them. That number is rising.

Why few new antibiotics are being developed

For most of the twentieth century, resistance was met by developing new antibiotics. When one drug failed, another was available. That is no longer the case. The discovery of new antibiotics has nearly stopped. No genuinely new class of antibiotics has reached patients in decades, and most large pharmaceutical companies have left the field.

The reason is as much economic as scientific. An effective new antibiotic is held in reserve and used as little as possible to delay resistance. A drug that is deliberately not sold returns little on the cost of developing it, so most companies that could produce new antibiotics have stopped. The supply of effective drugs is being used up, and little is being added to replace it.

How bacteria develop resistance

There is also a structural reason that bacteria adapt so quickly. Most antibiotics act on a single molecular target inside the bacterium. A single mutation at that target can make the drug ineffective. Bacteria also exchange resistance genes with one another, including across species, which spreads resistance faster than mutation alone would.

Bacteria also form biofilms, protective layers they build on wounds, catheters, and other surfaces that shield them from both drugs and the immune system. The result is a set of resistant organisms now common in hospitals: MRSA, CRE, multidrug-resistant Pseudomonas, and Clostridioides difficile. These are not rare. They are present in hospitals today.

The case for prevention

The response to this problem has focused almost entirely on developing new drugs to treat infections once they are established in the body. That work matters, but it has overshadowed a second approach that has received far less attention: preventing infections in the first place, and controlling them at the surface before they require a systemic antibiotic.

Consider where antibiotic use typically begins: an infected wound, a contaminated surgical site, a catheter line, or a pathogen transmitted in a hospital or school. Each of these precedes the prescription. Reducing the number of infections that occur reduces both antibiotic use and the selective pressure that drives resistance. Prevention is not a secondary concern in this problem. It is one of the most underused means of addressing it.

Hypochlorous acid

Hypochlorous acid, or HOCl, works on different principles from an antibiotic. It is produced by white blood cells to destroy the pathogens they engulf, and it is one of the immune system’s oldest defenses.

Its mechanism is what makes it relevant here. HOCl does not act on a single target. It oxidizes several structures within a microbe at once, damaging membranes, proteins, and genetic material together. No single mutation can overcome all of these at once. After decades of study and use, no organism has been documented to develop resistance to HOCl. It also penetrates and breaks down biofilms, and because it is not toxic to human tissue at the concentrations used, it can be applied directly to wounds without the harm caused by older antiseptics.

It is worth being clear about the limits of HOCl. It is not a systemic antibiotic, and it cannot replace one for an infection that has reached the bloodstream. Its value is in prevention: wound antisepsis, surface and air disinfection, and infection control. Used well, it can keep infections from reaching the point at which a systemic antibiotic is the only option.

What this means for antibiotic stewardship

A pattern is visible here. For roughly a century, the strategy has been to design increasingly precise single-target drugs, and bacteria have eventually developed resistance to each one. The immune system uses a different approach: broad, multi-target oxidative chemistry that bacteria have not evolved around. That approach is worth applying more deliberately.

Antibiotic stewardship is usually defined as prescribing fewer antibiotics. That is correct but incomplete. Stewardship also means reducing the need for antibiotics by preventing the infections that lead to them. The drugs that remain effective are best preserved by using them less often.

Conclusion

The loss of effective antibiotics is real, it is accelerating, and it receives little public attention. New drugs alone will not arrive quickly enough to solve it. Prevention can reduce the pressure, particularly through methods that do not select for resistance, including ones the immune system has used for a very long time. This is worth addressing before the remaining options are exhausted.

Dr. Robert Malone serves as Chief Medical Officer of Curativa Bay, which produces hypochlorous-acid-based products. This article is for educational purposes and is not a substitute for professional medical advice or appropriate antibiotic therapy when it is needed.

The Power of Prevention: Hypochlorous Acid as Our Smart Defense Against Today’s Infectious Threats

Curativa Bay — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 21:26:58 GMT

As we move through 2026, public health headlines continue to remind us how vulnerable we remain to rapidly evolving respiratory threats. The 2025–2026 influenza season brought a sharp surge in cases across the United States and beyond, driven largely by the fast-spreading H3N2 subclade K variant—widely dubbed the “super flu.” This strain emerged after the current season’s vaccine was formulated, resulting in lower-than-expected vaccine effectiveness: interim CDC data show protection against outpatient visits ranging from roughly 22–41% depending on age group, with even more limited impact against the dominant circulating viruses in many adults.
Compounding these concerns, a disturbing multi-country hantavirus cluster emerged in May 2026 linked to passengers and crew aboard the Dutch-flagged cruise ship MV Hondius. As of early May reports, at least eight cases—including six laboratory-confirmed Andes virus infections—resulted in three deaths. The outbreak, which began after excursions in hantavirus-endemic areas of South America, has sparked worldwide attention and highlighted how quickly pathogens can spread in close-quarters travel environments.
These events underscore a clear reality: reliance on vaccines alone is insufficient when new variants outpace formulation or when viruses transmit through environmental contamination. The smartest, most reliable approach is rigorous prevention—especially through surface and environmental disinfection that actually works in real-world settings.
Hypochlorous acid (HOCl) offers exactly that. This naturally occurring substance, generated by our own immune cells, is a stable, nontoxic solution proven to inactivate a broad spectrum of pathogens, including enveloped viruses like influenza and hantaviruses. Unlike traditional bleach or ammonia-based cleaners, HOCl is dramatically more effective—often achieving rapid kill times at far lower concentrations while leaving no harmful residue, toxic fumes, or irritating byproducts. It evaporates cleanly and is gentle enough for frequent use around children, the elderly, and those with respiratory sensitivities.
Scientific literature consistently shows HOCl’s superior performance. It disrupts viral proteins and nucleic acids efficiently, with studies demonstrating strong virucidal activity against influenza strains in seconds to minutes at appropriate concentrations. For hantavirus prevention, where transmission occurs primarily through aerosolized rodent urine, droppings, or saliva, thorough disinfection of contaminated surfaces and high-touch areas is a cornerstone of control. HOCl-based protocols—via spraying, fogging, or misting—provide comprehensive coverage, penetrating organic matter and reducing viable virus on surfaces without the drawbacks of harsher chemicals that CDC guidelines traditionally recommend for rodent-related cleanup.
In confined environments like schools, nursing facilities, public buildings, and especially cruise ships or other shared travel settings, implementing a consistent HOCl disinfection protocol could meaningfully curb the spread of contagions. Fogging or aerosolized application has shown promise in reducing airborne and surface viral loads quickly and safely, even in occupied spaces at very low concentrations. This is practical prevention: proactive, scalable, and far less disruptive than reactive quarantines or overwhelmed hospitals.
During my tenure as Indiana’s Attorney General, I prioritized protecting Hoosiers from genuine threats to health and safety while respecting individual liberty and avoiding overreach. That same principle guides my strong support for HOCl today. It embodies common-sense conservatism—effective, efficient, and respectful of people and the environment.
Public awareness remains woefully low. Most Americans have never heard of hypochlorous acid or its advantages over conventional disinfectants. It is time for state and federal officials, health departments, school boards, long-term care administrators, and the cruise and travel industries to act. Integrate HOCl into standard infection-control guidelines. Provide clear education and incentives for adoption. Support research and procurement policies that make this safe technology readily available and affordable.
We cannot predict the next variant or the next unexpected cluster, whether flu, hantavirus, or something yet unnamed. What we can control is how well we prepare everyday environments to interrupt transmission. Establishing HOCl disinfecting protocols in our institutions is a straightforward, evidence-based step that protects the vulnerable, reduces illness burdens, and strengthens community resilience.
Prevention through innovation like hypochlorous acid isn’t a luxury—it’s a necessity. Let’s move beyond anticipation and reaction. State leaders, federal agencies, and health institutions should champion its use now. Our families, schools, workplaces, and travelers deserve solutions that are both powerfully effective and responsibly safe.
The time for widespread adoption of HOCl is here. Let’s lead with clarity, science, and practical action.
Curtis T. Hill Jr. served as the 43rd Attorney General of Indiana. He continues to advocate for practical, liberty-respecting approaches to public health and safety.
Click here for more HOCl info

Ebola in Eastern Congo: The Outbreak You’re Hearing About, and What’s Missing About Treatment

Curativa Bay — Sat, 30 May 2026 17:21:10 GMT

Dr. Robert W. Malone

Chief Medical Officer, Curativa Bay - www.curativabay.com

For more info on HOCl click here

The version in circulation goes like this: There is an outbreak of Ebola in central Africa. Case numbers are climbing. The World Health Organization has declared an emergency. The risk to Western readers is low.

Each of those statements is accurate. Assembled, they form a story shaped to be skimmed and set down. But there is a critical omission in the coverage that extends far beyond the usual gaps in outbreak reporting. It concerns not just what is happening, but what tools exist to address it—and why those tools are being overlooked while governments and institutions focus on vaccines and antivirals that do not work for this strain.

The numbers are estimates, and the people producing them are playing catch-up.

A strain of Ebola called Bundibugyo is spreading through eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and has crossed into Uganda. As of late May, the combined count runs past a thousand suspected and confirmed cases and more than 230 deaths.

Those figures are estimates, and the institutions issuing them describe them as such. The WHO’s director-general says responders are “playing catch-up” because the outbreak ran undetected for weeks before it was declared. In DRC there are roughly 900 suspected cases against about 105 confirmed. Health workers put the true total higher than either.

The direction of the error matters. This is not authorities inflating a threat. The official count almost certainly runs low, because surveillance in an active war zone barely functions. The operative fact about the numbers is that they are soft, and a precise tally drawn from a region with no working surveillance system reflects confidence rather than measurement.

The Approved Tools Do Not Work on This Strain—But There Is a Tool That Does

After the 2014 West Africa epidemic, the world produced an Ebola vaccine and two approved antibody treatments. That is the institutional success story that underwrites every appeal to defer to the experts.

None of those tools are approved for this strain. The vaccine and the antibody drugs target the Zaire strain. This outbreak is Bundibugyo. The existing antibody treatments were tested against it and did not improve survival. There is no approved vaccine and no approved treatment for the disease now spreading.

Bundibugyo is rare, with only two prior outbreaks ever, in 2007 and 2012, which is why no countermeasure was developed for it. The current options are experimental: an antibody cocktail with strong results in monkeys and no proof in humans, and the antiviral remdesivir, the COVID drug, both being moved toward clinical trials that have not yet begun.

Frontline care consists of managing fever, administering fluids, and supportive therapy.

Here is where the conversation needs to expand.

The standard approach to Ebola outbreak response focuses on three pillars: vaccination (to prevent new cases), antivirals (to treat infected patients), and supportive care (to manage complications). In this outbreak, the first two pillars do not exist. We are left with the third.

But “supportive care” is incomplete as a concept, and its incompleteness is costing lives.

What supportive care typically means in resource-limited settings is intravenous fluids, electrolyte management, treatment of secondary bacterial infections, and management of hemorrhagic complications. These measures save lives. The data is clear: patients who receive aggressive supportive care have significantly higher survival rates than those who do not.

But there is a critical additional intervention that is rarely discussed in outbreak response frameworks: environmental disinfection and infection control.

This is where hypochlorous acid enters the picture, and it enters not as a theoretical tool but as one with immediate practical application.

For more info on HOCl click here

Hypochlorous Acid: The Disinfectant You Have Not Heard About

Hypochlorous acid (HOCl) is not a new invention. It is the antimicrobial that your own immune system produces. Neutrophils generate HOCl through the myeloperoxidase pathway as part of the innate immune response to infection. It is the body’s most potent endogenous antimicrobial agent.

Stabilized HOCl solutions have been used in wound care, burn management, and healthcare settings for years. What most people do not know is its virucidal activity—its capacity to inactivate viruses rapidly and completely.

The relevant evidence is straightforward. HOCl solutions with an oxidation-reduction potential (ORP) of 850 to 1,100 millivolts inactivate viruses—including non-enveloped RNA viruses—within seconds to minutes of contact. This includes:

Direct application to surfaces contaminated with blood or body fluids

Application as a disinfectant for medical equipment and facilities

Use in wound irrigation and surface decontamination in healthcare settings

Critically, available HOCl formulations have been documented to kill Norovirus, a non-enveloped virus. Under the EPA’s emerging viral pathogen guidance, antimicrobial products that are registered and proven effective against non-enveloped viruses like Norovirus qualify to make efficacy claims against Ebola and Hantavirus. This means that the HOCl solutions available today are documented to be effective against the very pathogens spreading through eastern Congo—including Bundibugyo Ebola.

For Ebola response in resource-limited settings, the implications are significant.

Ebola spreads through direct contact with blood and body fluids. A single infected individual generates contaminated material that can remain infectious on surfaces for extended periods. In hospitals and treatment centers lacking adequate cleaning supplies and trained personnel, that contamination becomes a vector for secondary transmission.

Healthcare workers managing Ebola patients face occupational exposure not only to infected patients directly, but to contaminated surfaces, contaminated equipment, and contaminated waste. Personal protective equipment (PPE) protects them, but only if the underlying environment is not persistently contaminated.

HOCl changes that equation.

A stabilized HOCl solution can be deployed in Ebola treatment centers to:

1. Disinfect surfaces contaminated with blood and other body fluids

2. Irrigate wounds and prevent secondary bacterial infection

3. Disinfect medical equipment between patients

4. Support healthcare worker safety by reducing environmental viral load

Unlike many disinfectants, HOCl is not corrosive at therapeutic concentrations. It is not toxic to skin or mucous membranes. It breaks down to water and salt, leaving no toxic residue. It can be produced electrolytically in resource-limited settings where supply chains are fragile.

It is, in other words, precisely the kind of tool that makes sense for an outbreak in a war zone with compromised healthcare infrastructure.

Why This Is Being Overlooked

I want to be direct about why the role of disinfection and infection control in Ebola response is minimized in public discourse.

It is not technical. The science is solid. It is institutional.

The narrative around epidemic response has been shaped, over the past decade, by a particular framework: vaccines and antivirals as the primary countermeasures, with supportive care as a secondary measure. This framework drives funding. It drives research priorities. It drives the institutional expertise that gets mobilized when outbreaks occur.

Disinfection is unsexy. It does not generate pharmaceutical profit. It does not require centralized distribution networks. It does not create ongoing dependencies on specific manufacturers. It can be taught to local healthcare workers in days rather than requiring external expertise.

For that reason, it is systematically deprioritized in outbreak response, despite the fact that it is often more immediately deployable and more cost-effective than the alternatives.

The WHO is not claiming otherwise about this outbreak. Its director-general said the outbreak “will get worse before it gets better.” The statement is accurate given the current response framework, which is waiting for experimental treatments and vaccines that do not yet exist rather than maximizing the deployment of tools that are available now.

But consider what an alternative response might look like.

Imagine if the first response to this outbreak—concurrent with efforts to develop Bundibugyo-specific vaccines and antivirals—was to flood eastern Congo with stabilized HOCl solutions, to train local healthcare workers in their use, to support treatment centers in disinfection protocols, and to prioritize infection control as aggressively as vaccine development.

That would not prevent this outbreak. It would not replace the need for supportive care. But it would reduce secondary transmission. It would protect healthcare workers. It would reduce the viral load in treatment settings. It would buy time for experimental treatments to be developed and tested.

Instead, the response framework is built around waiting for tools that do not exist for this strain.

The War Is Not Context for the Outbreak—It Is the Reason It Continues

The outbreak is centered in Ituri and the Kivu provinces, among the most violent regions in the world, where scores of armed groups operate. The largest, the M23 rebels, backed by Rwanda, seized the major cities of Goma and Bukavu this year. Several of the cities now reporting Ebola cases are under rebel administration rather than government control.

The Congolese health system cannot operate freely in the areas where transmission is highest. That constraint, not any failure of medical technique, is the central reason the outbreak is not being contained.

But here is the critical point that extends beyond the political framing: infrastructure failure is what makes disinfection and infection control interventions so critical and so lacking.

In a functioning healthcare system, treatment centers have established protocols for disinfection, trained personnel for infection control, and supply chains for disinfectants. In eastern Congo during an active conflict, none of those exist.

But stabilized HOCl solutions are precisely what you would deploy in that context because they require minimal infrastructure. They do not require sophisticated equipment. They do not require a supply chain that depends on international shipping. They can be produced locally. They require training, but that training is straightforward and can be delivered in days.

The population also resists the response, and the resistance is not simple ignorance. Treatment centers have been burned twice in a single recent week. Health workers have been attacked. Families have fought burial teams for their dead.

Some of this resistance reflects fear and misinformation. But much of it reflects legitimate distrust. The affected communities have been exploited for generations, are currently living under a foreign-backed rebel occupation, and are being instructed by outsiders to surrender their dead and trust unfamiliar health teams.

What if the response included not just external health workers and centralized treatment centers, but support for local healthcare workers to manage disinfection and infection control using tools that are simple, locally producible, and non-toxic?

That would shift the dynamic from “outsiders imposing control” to “strengthening local capacity.” It would not eliminate the legitimacy of distrust, but it would align the intervention with the community’s own capacity for self-protection.

The government issuing the instructions is itself compromised. President Tshisekedi is maneuvering toward a third term. His predecessor, an eighteen-year ruler stripped of immunity and accused of treason, is openly backing the rebels. A government in that position has limited standing to demand public compliance, which weakened the centralized response from the start.

The Minerals Deal Is the Buried Motive—And It Shapes What Response Looks Like

The element most often missing from short-form coverage is the economic and geopolitical one, and it reframes the entire outbreak response.

Eastern Congo holds enormous reserves of cobalt, copper, lithium, tantalum, and gold, the critical minerals in demand for batteries and electronics. The war is, in large part, a contest over that wealth. In December 2025 the United States, the DRC, and Rwanda signed a set of agreements in Washington that traded mineral access for security guarantees. The American president stated the terms openly: the United States gets “a lot of the mineral rights from the Congo as part of it.” Human Rights Watch characterized the arrangement as “a mineral deal first, an opportunity for peace second.”

The Congolese calculation was explicit. Hand over resource access in exchange for protection against Rwanda and M23. A Congolese critic described his own government as choosing “to give away its mining resources without restraint in exchange for American protection.” Congolese lawyers filed a constitutional challenge against the deal domestically.

The protection did not materialize. Within a week of the December signing, M23 advanced toward another city. Fighting spread to new provinces. The rebels who hold the contested ground were never party to the negotiations, so the agreement bound the actors who could not stop the war and left the war itself untouched.

The connection to the virus is concrete, not figurative. The gold-mining economy moved infected people around the region before the outbreak was identified. It began in a mining hub. The mobility that spreads the disease and the extraction that drives the war are the same economy.

This is a resource conflict with a virus moving through it. The governments with the most leverage have treated that conflict primarily as a procurement opportunity. But the opportunity for procurement of minerals means the opportunity to build infrastructure, establish supply chains, and distribute resources—including simple, effective disinfectants like stabilized HOCl.

If the mineral deal was genuinely about “peace,” it would include investment in health infrastructure, supply chains for essential medical supplies, and training of local healthcare workers in infection control. Instead, it is treated as a strictly extractive arrangement.

This is not merely a critique of geopolitics. It is a practical matter of outbreak response. A response that is coordinated with infrastructure investment would look different from one that is not. It would include stabilized HOCl as a primary tool, not an afterthought. It would fund local capacity for disinfection, not just external treatment teams.

Institutional Overreach, Tested Rather Than Assumed

Distrust of the WHO and its emergency authority is reasonable given the record of the past five years. Any expansion of an unaccountable body’s power during a crisis warrants scrutiny.

But the scrutiny is most useful when it is precise.

In this instance, the WHO is not overreaching. It is outmatched.

There is no vaccine for Bundibugyo Ebola. The trials have not started. The institution has conceded it is “playing catch-up.” This is not a bureaucracy exercising surplus power. It is one unable to deliver what it is tasked with coordinating.

What would constitute genuine overreach in this context? It would be the WHO claiming to have tools it does not have. It would be governments imposing restrictions based on false claims of epidemiological control. It would be prioritizing vaccine distribution for a vaccine that does not work for this strain.

None of that is happening. What is happening is an institution conceding its limitations and moving toward experimental treatments that have not been tested.

The relevant scrutiny is not whether the WHO is overreaching. It is whether the international response is deploying all available tools, including simple, effective, non-patented disinfectants that are immediately available and do not require pharmaceutical partnerships or centralized distribution.

Africa’s own CDC declared a continental emergency and is running the cross-border coordination, convening the affected nations’ health ministers directly. Its director-general called the outbreak “not a DRC issue” but “a regional issue.” That is a regional institution asserting ownership, which sits closer to decentralization than to centralized global control.

But even that regional response is not addressing the disinfection and infection control pillar with the urgency it warrants.

A specific target does remain. Africa CDC has cited a need for roughly $264 million for operations and an additional $54 million for “preparedness” in neighboring countries that currently have no cases. Preparedness budgets for places with zero infections are the line items that justify itemized accounting.

The question worth asking is: How much of that budget is allocated to infection control infrastructure and disinfectants? How much is allocated to training local healthcare workers in contamination management? How much would be required to deploy stabilized HOCl solutions across the affected region?

Those are the line items where emergency spending tends to harden into permanent institutional structure that outlasts the emergency. Scrutiny of how the money flows and which structures survive the outbreak is better aimed than scrutiny of whether the outbreak is real.

The Personal-Risk Question, Answered Plainly

For a typical Western reader the personal health risk is low, and that is worth stating without qualification.

Ebola spreads through direct contact with bodily fluids, not through the air. It is not comparable to an airborne pandemic in transmissibility. The US has imposed travel screening and recorded no cases. Two suspected cases recently surfaced in Italy in travelers from Uganda, which confirms that air travel is the relevant export route, but isolated imported cases in countries with functioning hospitals are containable.

In the US and Europe, if a case of Ebola were identified, the response would be immediate isolation, identification and quarantine of contacts, and aggressive disinfection of any environments where the patient had been. Those measures work. They have worked every time they have been deployed in developed nations.

The populations at serious risk are in eastern Congo and its ten neighbors, where weak health systems coincide with open borders, active conflict, and mining operations that move people constantly across the region.

The Bottom Line: Precision in Skepticism

Skepticism is most useful when it is aimed precisely.

The clean numbers warrant skepticism. They are estimates from a place where counting barely works, and they likely run low rather than high.

The “we have this handled” tone warrants skepticism. There is no vaccine for this strain and the trials have not started.

The focus on antivirals and vaccines while disinfection and infection control receive minimal attention warrants skepticism. Simple, effective tools are available now.

The sanitized framing warrants skepticism. It reduces a war-traumatized population’s resistance to “misinformation” while ignoring their legitimate reasons for distrust.

The minerals-for-security deal warrants skepticism. The powerful signed it and short-form coverage largely omitted it. And critically, that deal should have included commitments to health infrastructure that are conspicuously absent.

The “preparedness” budgets for countries with no cases warrant skepticism. The relevant question is where that money ends up and whether it is prioritizing the disinfection and infection control infrastructure that would actually prevent regional spread.

Two conclusions the evidence does not support are worth ruling out. This is not COVID: different disease, different transmission, and an institution conceding it is behind rather than claiming control it does not need. And the outbreak is not invented: Red Cross volunteers are among the first known dead.

The accurate summary is neither “trust the experts” nor “it is all a power grab.” A lethal virus is moving through a region the most powerful governments on earth have chosen to treat as a mine. The health apparatus responding to it is more overmatched than overreaching. And the response, as currently configured, is waiting for tools that do not exist rather than maximizing the deployment of tools that do.

The discipline is not in declining to look. It is in declining to look only where the official account points, and in asking why simple, effective interventions like stabilized hypochlorous acid disinfection are absent from the outbreak response framework.

The missing conversation is the conversation about what tools we have now, deployed aggressively in resource-limited settings, rather than what tools we are waiting to develop.

That conversation could save lives in the next weeks and months. The fact that it is not happening is the real scandal.

Robert W. Malone, MD

Chief Medical Officer, Curativa Bay - www.curativabay.com

For more info on HOCl click here

The Acne Industrial Complex: When Regulatory Capture Meets Chemical Recklessness

Curativa Bay — Wed, 20 May 2026 16:36:14 GMT

I want to tell you a story about regulatory failure. It is a story about an independent laboratory doing the work that federal regulators refuse to do. It is a story about benzene—a known carcinogen—contaminating products used by 50 million Americans every year, with concentrations 880 times higher than FDA limits. And it is a story about the FDA’s stunning indifference to that contamination. This is not speculation. This is not fear-mongering. These are facts documented by one of the most credible independent testing laboratories in America, facts that the mainstream media—particularly Bloomberg investigative reporter Anna Edney—has been documenting for years while federal regulators sat idle. The laboratory is Valisure. The products are benzoyl peroxide acne creams. And the regulatory failure is so profound that it demands we ask: who is actually protecting American consumers?

The Laboratory That Does the FDA’s Job Better Than the FDA

Let me establish the credibility here, because this matters. Valisure is not some fringe operation. For the past 11 years, this independent testing laboratory has been conducting quality control on pharmaceuticals that the FDA itself failed to catch. Over that period, their findings have led to over $12 billion in product recalls. Think about that number: $12 billion. That is not a rounding error. That is a systemic indictment of federal regulatory failure.

Valisure’s most famous case: they discovered nitrosamines—potent carcinogens—in Zantac (ranitidine), the blockbuster heartburn medication that hundreds of millions of people took without knowing it might be poisoning them. GSK ultimately paid a $2.2 billion settlement, and Valisure won a multimillion dollar whistleblower award for their discovery. (See: GSK Settlement Details)

They’ve found benzene in hand sanitizers used during COVID-19 when people were trusting government assurances that these products were safe. They’ve found benzene in sunscreens. They’ve found it in dry shampoos. And now they’ve found it—in alarming concentrations—in the acne treatments used by teenagers and young adults across America (see Dermatology Times report).

The question is: where was the FDA while an independent laboratory kept finding contaminated consumer products? The answer is unavoidable: the FDA was slow-walking, equivocating, and defending regulatory inertia.

The Benzene Problem: Vastly Worse Than Acknowledged

Here are the facts that Valisure documented: Valisure tested 66 benzoyl peroxide products and found that while FDA guidelines allow up to 2 parts per million of benzene, some products contained up to 12 times that allowed amount. Let me translate what that means: FDA limit is 2 ppm. Valisure found products with 24 ppm. Some considerably higher.

Specific examples: Proactiv’s 2.5% benzoyl peroxide cream contained as much as 1,761 parts per million of benzene during stability testing, while a similar cream from Target reached 1,598 parts per million and Estee Lauder’s Clinique hit 401 parts per million. 1,761 parts per million. That is 880 times the FDA limit.

And this is not some theoretical contamination that only appears under extreme conditions. Valisure found that even an unopened Proactiv product leaked high levels of benzene when kept at 104 degrees Fahrenheit—the temperature of a hot shower—for approximately 17 hours. A hot shower. The kind of temperature your acne cream reaches sitting on the bathroom counter. This is not a stability problem that requires specialized knowledge to exploit. This is a basic storage condition in the real world.

The Leukemia Connection: Why Benzene Matters

Benzene is not a minor concern. Benzene is a known carcinogen that can cause leukemia in high amounts, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And here is what is particularly important: the risk is not just about acute exposure. It is about chronic, low-level exposure over time. Recent research from the United Kingdom linked low-level chronic benzene exposure to an increase in mortality, with exposure as low as less than 1 ppm.

Consider the epidemiology: we are talking about teenagers and young adults—86% of people aged 12 to 24 have some form of acne. Many of them use these products daily. For months. For years. Exposed to benzene contamination levels that are orders of magnitude above what epidemiological research suggests is safe. The latency period for benzene-induced leukemia is measured in years and decades. We are not going to see an obvious epidemic tomorrow. We might not see it for 10 years. But when we do, we will have known it was coming because an independent laboratory told us so in 2024.

The FDA Response: Regulatory Theater

The FDA’s response to Valisure’s findings has been, in a word, pathetic. When Valisure filed a citizen petition in March 2024 requesting recall of the contaminated products, the FDA did not immediately act. Instead, the agency said it would “work to verify whether Valisure’s data was accurate.” Let me parse what that means: an independent laboratory with 11 years of successful product safety discoveries and $12 billion in recalls to their credit documents dangerous contamination in widely used consumer products, and the federal regulator responds by saying: we’ll check to see if they’re right. This is not agency caution. This is regulatory negligence dressed in bureaucratic language.

By March 2025—a full year after Valisure’s petition—the FDA finally undertook its own testing of 95 benzoyl peroxide products. Even then, the agency’s response was defensive and inadequate. The FDA claimed that 90% of the products showed “undetectable or extremely low levels of benzene,” conveniently neglecting that 10% of products tested did show problematic levels. 10% of products means millions of contaminated units sitting in retail stores and medicine cabinets.

And the FDA still did not issue a comprehensive recall. Instead, it allowed the recall to be conducted “at the retailer level”—which is code for saying: stores can remove them if they want, but we’re not going to make it mandatory. This is what regulatory capture looks like.

The Woodcock Problem: How Former FDA Leadership Enabled This

Before we move on, we need to name something important. Anna Edney, the Bloomberg investigative reporter who has been covering this story, has been particularly critical of the former FDA leadership, especially Janet Woodcock, for enabling poor quality medicines to come through U.S. borders, even though many had import alerts from prior FDA findings and sanctions. Woodcock was the director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research for years, and then became the acting FDA commissioner from 2021-2023. Under her tenure, the agency became increasingly passive, increasingly deferential to industry, increasingly willing to accept explanations rather than demand evidence. This is the institutional rot that allowed benzoyl peroxide to remain on shelves despite a known degradation mechanism that produces carcinogens.

The FDA’s Attack on Valisure: A Cautionary Tale

In a particularly troubling development, Consumer Reports documented how the FDA actually inspected and targeted Valisure after it discovered the benzene contamination. The FDA accused Valisure of operating without proper regulatory approvals—a claim that Consumer Reports’ investigation found to be without merit.

This FDA inspection became a weapon used by manufacturers in lawsuits. Companies like Banana Boat began citing the FDA’s report to undermine consumer claims of harm. As Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) stated: “I fear, whether deliberate or not, FDA is in the act of shooting the messenger. Valisure’s work has raised the alarm on both the quality and safety of drugs and personal care products for millions of consumers and their families. Instead of this ongoing hostility, FDA should embrace their efforts in the pursuit of safeguarding the public’s health.”

The Alternative: Hypochlorous Acid and Actual Safety

Now, here is where this story could actually have a redemptive arc. Hypochlorous acid—HOCl—is a naturally occurring antimicrobial compound produced by the human immune system. It kills bacteria with precision. It does not generate free radicals that damage healthy tissue. It naturally degrades into simple saline (salt water) and does not form carcinogenic byproducts. And, most importantly, the clinical evidence supports its effectiveness for acne. Studies have found that HOCl-based products are as effective if not more effective than benzoyl peroxide, with a superior safety profile and fewer adverse effects.

For a substance that has been used in wound care, post-operative infection prevention, and immune support for years, the clinical literature on its efficacy and safety is extensive. A study assessing the efficacy of superoxidized solution (essentially pharmaceutical-grade HOCl) in the treatment of mild to moderate inflammatory acne found no significant differences in outcomes between SOS and benzoyl peroxide, while HOCl demonstrated reduced keratinocyte cytotoxicity and better wound healing.

This is evidence-based medicine. HOCl works. It is safer. It does not turn into benzene.

Why, then, is benzoyl peroxide still the standard of care? The answer is institutional inertia, commercial investment, and regulatory precedent. Benzoyl peroxide is entrenched. It is manufactured at scale. It has decades of marketing behind it. And the regulatory machinery that would normally function to protect public health has been too compromised to act.

What Actually Needs to Happen

If we were operating in good faith—if public health actually took priority over commercial interests and regulatory comfort—here is what would happen: First, the FDA would issue a comprehensive recall of all benzoyl peroxide products found to contain elevated benzene levels. Not retailer-level requests. An actual regulatory action. Second, the agency would issue public guidance explaining the mechanism of benzene degradation in benzoyl peroxide and recommending that consumers consider alternatives, particularly HOCl-based products. Third, dermatologists would be presented with evidence-based information comparing benzoyl peroxide and HOCl side-by-side, with clear acknowledgment of the benzene contamination risk. Fourth, the pharmaceutical and skincare industry would reformulate acne products to use HOCl as the primary antimicrobial agent.

None of this requires extraordinary action. It requires the FDA to do the job it is supposed to do: protect public health. But that would require the agency to acknowledge years of regulatory failure. It would require admitting that an independent laboratory has been more effective at protecting consumers than the federal regulator. It would require abandoning the defense of entrenched treatments. It is easier to move slowly and hope the problem goes away.

The Lesson: Trust the Lab, Not the Regulator

Here is what I want to say directly: Valisure has earned credibility through 11 years of rigorous work and $12 billion in recalls driven by their discoveries. The former FDA leadership has not.

If you have a teenager with acne, and they are using a benzoyl peroxide product, you should consider transitioning to an HOCl-based alternative. This is not speculation. This is not alarmism. This is a recommendation based on documented contamination, a known carcinogenic degradation product, and a safer, evidence-supported alternative.

The FDA will not tell you this. The pharmaceutical companies marketing benzoyl peroxide will not tell you this. The dermatologists trained in the standard protocols will likely not tell you this. But Valisure has told you this. And their track record over the past 11 years suggests they are more reliable than the regulators who preceded them.

That is the state of pharmaceutical oversight in America in 2025. An independent laboratory with no government mandate and no regulatory authority is more effective at protecting public health than the federal agency that was charged with doing exactly that. That is not a critique of Valisure. It is an indictment of the former FDA leadership.

Until we have regulatory leadership willing to prioritize public health over institutional comfort, and willing to acknowledge that safer alternatives exist, teenagers will continue being exposed to benzene through acne products that the former FDA approved and continues to defend. Valisure did the work. The former FDA did not. Choose accordingly.

— Robert W. Malone, MD, MS
Dr. Robert W. Malone is the Chief Medical Officer of Curativa Bay (CuraClean Technologies). He is a physician, scientist, and the inventor of foundational mRNA vaccine technology. He has served on multiple biotechnology and biodefense advisory bodies and writes regularly on pandemic preparedness, medical countermeasures, and public-health policy.
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The Hantavirus Narrative Machine: How Fear Replaces Epidemiology

Curativa Bay — Thu, 14 May 2026 16:32:35 GMT

Part II: Six Weeks In, and Still No Honest Conversation About Risk

It is early May 2026. Eight cases. Three deaths. One cruise ship. And somehow this has become a “Level 3” emergency requiring hazmat suits, coordinated international response, and endless speculation about pandemic potential. Let me be clear about what is actually happening versus what the machinery is pretending is happening.

The Math Doesn’t Support the Hysteria

Between 1993 and 2023, the United States saw 890 laboratory-confirmed hantavirus cases. Over thirty years. That’s roughly 30 cases per year across an entire continent. This outbreak has produced 8 cases. The case fatality rate of 38%? That’s exactly what Andes virus does. This is not a newly emerged pathogen with shocking lethality. This is a known virus with a known epidemiological profile making an appearance in an atypical location because one infected person boarded a ship.

The WHO itself stated plainly: “the risk to the global population posed by this event is low.” But you would never know that from watching the institutional response unfold.

Watch How The Sausage Gets Made

The fear narrative follows a predictable formula. First: “Cases identified on cruise ship. Deadly outbreak. Human-to-human transmission possible.” Implication: this could spread unchecked. Then: “Passengers disembarked before outbreak identified. Travelers bringing virus to multiple countries. Experts warn of pandemic potential.” Implication: anything is possible. Next: Healthcare officials don hazmat suits for photo opportunities. “Protective equipment as precautionary measure.” Implication: the danger is apocalyptic. Finally: CDC issues Health Alert Network advisories. WHO publishes Disease Outbreak News. Multiple agencies mobilize. “Level 3 emergency response.” Implication: this is officially a crisis.

What’s happening is not coordination. It’s institutional theater designed to create the appearance of competent response. Each phase generates headlines. Each reinforces public perception that something unprecedented is occurring. The mathematics tell a completely different story, but the mathematics don’t generate clicks.

The Transmission Story Everyone Gets Wrong

Yes, Andes virus can spread person-to-person. The literature documents this clearly. It happens among family members and healthcare workers with close exposure to severely ill patients. Here’s what the literature also makes clear: it’s rare. It requires sustained, intimate contact. It occurs in predictable epidemiological contexts.

Previous outbreaks in Argentina and Chile followed a consistent pattern: initial spillover from rodents, followed by limited human-to-human spread among people living in close quarters or providing direct care without protection. On a cruise ship, person-to-person transmission would require shared cabins, direct contact with bodily fluids, and inadequate infection control. The kind of sustained intimacy that is not typical cruise ship interaction, despite the close quarters.

But that distinction—”rare transmission in specific contexts” versus “virus spreads person-to-person like flu”—has been obliterated in the public conversation. The media is repackaging one isolated outbreak into proof of pandemic potential. This is not honest communication. It’s fear weaponization.

The Index Case Story That Destroys The Panic

The Dutch citizen who became the first confirmed case had spent four months (November 2025 to April 2026) on a road trip through Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina. He returned to Argentina from Uruguay four days before boarding the ship. He was exposed in an endemic region. He became infected there. He boarded a cruise ship during the incubation phase.

This is not a mystery. It’s not evidence of viral evolution or newly adapted transmissibility. It’s geographic spillover—exactly what epidemiologists expect when people from non-endemic regions travel to endemic regions and come back infected.

The Argentine health ministry is now capturing and testing rodents along the route he traveled. That’s rational epidemiology. It’s also completely absent from the sensationalized coverage, which prefers the “outbreak on a cruise ship” narrative to the far more boring “traveler picked up endemic virus and came home infected” narrative.

Media Has a Business Model Problem

The media’s love affair with alarm is not accidental. It’s structural. “Eight cases of known virus identified aboard cruise ship, all connected to that ship, with limited evidence of further spread” generates zero clicks. It’s boring. People move on with their lives.

“Deadly virus spreads person-to-person aboard cruise ship, passengers disembarked to multiple countries, health officials warn of pandemic potential” generates engagement. It gets shared. It keeps people anxious and checking for updates. The business model is straightforward: fear drives engagement. Engagement drives advertising revenue. Measured assessment of contained problems does not sell advertising. This is not a media failure. It’s a media feature. Fear is the product.

What Actual Risk Communication Looks Like

If public health authorities were operating with any integrity, the message would be: What Happened: An outbreak of Andes virus, a known South American pathogen, appeared aboard a cruise ship. Eight cases connected to that vessel. Three deaths, consistent with the known 35-40% case fatality rate of this virus.

What We’re Doing: Contact tracing through standard protocols. Isolation of symptomatic individuals. Supportive treatment with oxygen and cardiopulmonary support. Appropriate PPE for healthcare workers. Environmental disinfection.

What You Should Know: This is a contained incident in a specific setting. Andes virus has circulated in South America for decades without triggering pandemic concerns. Person-to-person transmission is possible but rare, requiring close contact. The appearance of this virus in a non-endemic location reflects geographic spillover, not viral evolution. Risk to the general population is minimal. That would be accurate. That would be honest. That would allow people to calibrate actual risk appropriately. Instead we get emergency declarations and hazmat suits.

The CDC’s Credibility Problem

Public health agencies face genuine pressure to demonstrate they are “doing something” in response to any perceived threat. Measured responses do not satisfy political demands. Quiet epidemiological investigation does not generate political capital. High-profile mobilizations do.

When the CDC issues a “Level 3” emergency response, the signal is: we are taking this seriously. We are mobilizing resources. You can trust us. When the CDC issues measured guidance based on actual risk, the signal is: this is under control. You probably don’t need to worry much. From a political perspective, the first signal is always preferable. From a public health perspective, the second is more honest. This gap between what institutions do and what institutions should do has widened so much that the public has stopped expecting honesty. We’ve been recalibrated to interpret measured guidance as insufficient and to demand visible action as proof of competence. Institutions have learned to deliver exactly that.

The Prevention Tool Nobody’s Mentioning

If Andes virus spreads via respiratory route among close contacts—and evidence suggests this is theoretically possible under sustained exposure—then we have documented, available tools for mitigation that require no vaccines, no antivirals, and no extended quarantines. Hypochlorous acid (HOCl) nasal spray operates upstream of systemic infection. Applied preventively to the primary mucosal surface where respiratory viruses establish infection, it provides direct antiviral activity before infection can progress.

HOCl room nebulization reduces viral particles in enclosed spaces—healthcare settings, ship cabins, any closed environment—without the toxicity concerns of chemical disinfectants. Both approaches are evidence-based. Both are deployable immediately. Both would actually reduce transmission risk among close contacts and healthcare workers.

In all official guidance about this outbreak, HOCl has been mentioned exactly zero times. Why? Because HOCl is not a pharmaceutical product with multinational marketing apparatus. It does not generate regulatory excitement or generate fees for development. It does not fit the institutional framework of emergency response. But it would help.

The Institutional Theater Continues

What we’re witnessing is the predictable performance of modern institutions responding to a manageable problem as if it were an existential threat. This is not conspiracy. It’s not deliberately malicious. It’s structural. It’s what happens when institutions face pressure to demonstrate competence through visible action, when media profits from fear, and when public expectations have been calibrated by decades of crisis narratives.

The virus is real. The deaths are real. The concern is justified at a local level—among healthcare workers, close contacts, passengers, and crew. The global “Level 3 emergency”? The mobilization of resources across multiple countries? The endless speculation about pandemic potential? That reflects institutional incentives more than epidemiological reality.