WIRED Missed a Pulitzer — How Editorial Fear Buried a Medical Breakthrough

Jul 28, 2025

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A Patient Forwarded This to Me in Rage. I Felt Something Else.

When one of my patients angrily forwarded me WIRED’s recent article, I didn’t even have a WIRED account. I couldn’t access the full text. I reached out to the journalist, David , requesting a copy. He never replied.

So I turned to ChatGPT. After multiple prompts and iterations, it reconstructed a detailed outline of the piece.
As a Chinese citizen, I couldn’t subscribe to WIRED directly, so I had to rely on alternative methods to access the article’s contents.

Strangely, I wasn’t upset. I was relieved.

WIRED had invested nearly two months (that I know of), assigning serious editorial resources to an in-depth investigation of my work. Although the result was negative—even hostile—I found very little that was explicitly false, aside from a few carefully engineered distortions.

What I don’t understand is this: why did WIRED publish the article so hastily? What external pressure forced their hand?

Because this wasn’t just a profile. It could have been a journalistic landmark.

A Missed Opportunity for Serious Journalism

The article, titled “An Inventor Is Injecting Bleach Into Cancer Tumors—and Wants to Bring the Treatment to the U.S.”, had all the ingredients of a Pulitzer-caliber story:

A highly controversial medical breakthrough
Terminal patients with no remaining options
Legal ambiguity across borders
A network of global collaboration
And one man challenging the orthodoxy of oncology

But instead of embracing the complexity, WIRED opted for caricature. It sidestepped every meaningful scientific, ethical, legal, and philosophical question—and chose instead to frame the story with a single inflammatory word: bleach.

As Marx once said:

“I sowed dragon’s teeth and harvested fleas.”

What I gave WIRED was a detailed, paradigm-shifting medical narrative.

What they printed was a fear-driven headline.

1. Scientific Terminology Replaced by Tabloid Trigger Words

Throughout the article, WIRED avoids calling my therapy by its name: chlorine dioxide (ClO₂). Instead, they repeatedly refer to it as “a bleach solution.”

Yes, chlorine dioxide is used to disinfect water, sanitize equipment, and neutralize pathogens. But it is also the subject of ongoing medical research across multiple countries.

Here’s how WIRED chose to describe it:

“He is injecting high concentrations of chlorine dioxide—a bleaching solution—into cancerous tumors.”

This isn’t science writing. It’s semantic manipulation. It preloads the reader with revulsion—while ignoring the essential context:

This therapy is reserved for terminal patients who have exhausted all standard treatments.

2. A Weaponized Cover Image, Not Medical Journalism

The article’s lead image isn’t just biased—it’s calculated. A high-contrast syringe is overlaid on a sea of green bottles with red caps, stylized to resemble household bleach containers.

This is not medical imagery. It’s psychological warfare.

The visual message is unmistakable:

The syringe is ominous, not clinical.
The background screams “toxic,” not therapeutic.
The aesthetic resembles Cold War propaganda more than science reporting.

There are no doctors, no patients, no tumors—just bleach and fear.

This kind of visual priming hijacks rational processing before a single paragraph is read. It tells the reader:

“Don’t engage. Just react.”

It’s the visual equivalent of yelling “fire” in a theater. It doesn’t belong in science journalism—it belongs in a smear campaign.

3. Withholding Evidence to Undermine Efficacy

WIRED quotes a former Pfizer executive saying:

“All he’s providing is WhatsApp messages. That’s not evidence of efficacy.”

This is demonstrably false.

I’ve published:

Tumor measurements
Before-and-after imaging
Ultrasound records
Timeline data
Case summaries

All publicly available. All shared with the journalist.

Worse yet, WIRED acknowledges that my pitch deck included before-and-after tumor images—but then failed to show those to the expert they interviewed. Instead, they cherry-picked a WhatsApp screenshot and built their entire expert commentary around that.

This isn’t honest skepticism.

It’s a rigged courtroom with hidden evidence.

4. Manufacturing Legal Suspicion Without Basis

WIRED clearly acknowledges that I have never conducted this treatment inside the United States. And yet, the article repeatedly sprinkles in vague insinuations such as:

“The therapy could be illegal under FDA regulations…”

There is no allegation—only suggestion.

No statute cited. No violation identified. Just the whisper of illegitimacy.

This is not journalism. It’s a theatrical framing device: create the illusion of danger without establishing any legal substance.

In reality, all treatments have taken place outside of the United States—specifically in countries where informed consent and physician autonomy operate within legal or regulatory gray zones.

To add a veneer of legal weight, WIRED quotes a U.S. attorney, Clint Hermes, whose comment is now featured in a press release on his law firm’s website Bass, Berry & Sims – July 25, 2025. There, Hermes states:

“Mr. Liu may not understand how the Right to Try Act or the Declaration of Helsinki work…”

But when read carefully, his statement contains no legal citation, no precedent, and no rebuttal of the international context of my work. It is a hollow, speculative dismissal dressed in credentialed language.

I evaluated this statement using ChatGPT—not to seek validation, but to test its logic from a neutral lens. Even the AI, trained on thousands of legal documents, could detect what any clear thinker would see: this is not a legal opinion; it is a rhetorical placeholder.

There is nothing “illegal” about treatments occurring under foreign jurisdictions with proper patient consent. The real legal confusion here lies not in what I’ve done, but in how carelessly some lawyers speak when playing to media attention.

5. Ignoring the Legal Frameworks That Do Apply

WIRED quotes a legal expert implying:

“Mr. Liu may not fully understand how the Helsinki Declaration or Right-to-Try laws apply…”

This line is both condescending and deceptive.

In reality:

Article 37 of the Helsinki Declaration explicitly permits new treatments when no standard exists.
Right-to-Try laws have been implemented in many U.S. states to support precisely this kind of end-stage patient experimentation.

WIRED doesn’t dispute these facts.

It simply refuses to acknowledge them.

6. Selectively Silent on a Real Legal Question

WIRED states:

“A month after that, she flew to China, where Liu, who lacks a medical background, injected her with the solution.”

That’s a real event. I did perform the injection.

But curiously, WIRED—so quick to suggest potential illegality in the U.S.—says nothing about whether this act in China violated any law.

They even mention an explosion in my lab, quoting my daughter’s proximity for added drama. But when it comes to the more sensitive legal question—whether a non-doctor injecting a patient in China is illegal—they go completely silent.

That silence isn’t journalistic restraint.

It’s narrative preservation.

7. Erasing Scientific Mechanisms and Animal Results

WIRED never once mentions the actual mechanisms proposed behind my therapy:

Disruption of tumor vasculature
Hypoxia-induced necrosis via ROS
Selective oxidation of tumor masses

They also omit our successful veterinary cases.

None of this is speculative. The underlying biology has been supported by preliminary lab findings, animal models, and visible clinical responses.

Why did WIRED leave it out?

Because it breaks their preferred narrative: no science, just pseudoscience.

8. The Three “Events That Must Not Be Named”

I suspect WIRED wasn’t just reporting—but also interfering. Consider three developments that never made it into print:

Coordinated smear attempts that failed
Legal traps that never reached prosecution
Signed collaborations that mysteriously collapsed

These weren’t minor side notes. They were turning points. But if WIRED had reported them, readers might have started asking inconvenient questions:

Who orchestrated these attacks?
Why did they fail?
Did WIRED play a role?

Instead, the magazine chose silence. Not due to irrelevance—but to self-protect from its own proximity to the story’s collapse.

This Wasn’t Omission. It Was Control.

When a story omits key facts, core frameworks, scientific context, and legal clarity—yet includes theatrical imagery, selective quotes, and calculated omissions—that’s not investigative journalism.

That’s narrative engineering.

WIRED didn’t just bury a story. They buried a historic opportunity.

🔒 The rest of this article reveals why WIRED missed its moment—how fear replaced truth, how evidence was buried, and what journalism could have been.

👉 Subscribe to read the final act—the Pulitzer they ran away from.

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