There are plenty of controversial health stories, but few rise to the level of the Grenon family’s. Their story reads like a political thriller: a church founded around a controversial treatment credited with tremendous results, an international arrest, and four members of one family sent to prison.
Mark Grenon spent decades as a missionary before helping establish the Genesis II Church of Health and Healing, an international movement built around the use of chlorine dioxide, also known as Miracle Mineral Solution (MMS). Grenon and his followers regarded it as a religious sacrament and made its distribution central to the church’s mission. Federal regulators saw something very different: an unapproved drug being marketed as a treatment for serious diseases.
That conflict might have remained one more dispute at the margins of alternative medicine, but instead, it escalated into an international criminal case.
When the FDA ordered the Grenons to stop distributing MMS in 2020, the family refused to comply. Mark and his son Joseph were arrested in Colombia, where they had been living for several years, and extradited to the United States. Two other sons, Jordan and Jonathan, were arrested in Florida. All four were eventually convicted, with sentences ranging from five years to more than 12.
In this conversation, Grenon tells the story as he understands it — from his early missionary work and introduction to chlorine dioxide, to the creation of Genesis II, the government raids, his imprisonment, the unexpected blessings that arose from the experience, and the continuing incarceration of two of his sons.
His account is intensely personal, deeply religious and, at times, controversial. It also raises questions considerably larger than chlorine dioxide: Can declaring a substance a religious sacrament remove it from government oversight, or protect its use under the constitution? What responsibility does the government have, if any, when adults knowingly choose unconventional treatments for themselves? And when someone believes a court has no legitimate authority over him, is refusal an act of conscience or a costly legal miscalculation?
This interview does not settle those questions. What it does is give Grenon the chance to explain why he made the choices he did and what those choices ultimately cost his family.
The medical claims expressed by Mark Grenon are his own. Chlorine dioxide is not approved by the FDA to prevent or treat disease. This interview is presented for documentary and journalistic purposes and does not constitute medical advice.
Relevant links:
Mark Grenon’s website: God’s Universal Antidote
Collapse Life interview with Dr. Pierre Kory | The War over Chlorine Dioxide
