Czelazewicz is just one of many affiliates selling Pure Body Extra online, including Larry Cook, one of America’s best-known anti-vax influencers. Cook and his Stop Mandatory Vaccination group were removed from Facebook in 2020, but only after the group had amassed around 200,000 followers. Today, Cook sells Pure Body Extra as a cure for autism through his Detox for Autism website.

Pure Body Extra is manufactured by a company called Touchstone Essentials, which was founded in 2012 by Eddie Stone and is based in Raleigh, North Carolina.

The company sells a variety of other health and wellness products. On the product page for Pure Body Extra on the Touchstone Essentials website, the company says the product is safe “for all ages,” and in a section labeled “science,” the company states that the product’s “ability to eliminate toxins and capture heavy metals and environmental pollutants as evidenced by more than 300 studies documented on PubMed.”

However, when WIRED analyzed the 300 studies, it found that many were non-human studies, including numerous tests on animals. Over the past decade, only seven medical studies involving clinoptilolite, the specific type of zeolite used in telephone exchanges, have been conducted on humans. These were all performed on adults, and some of them did not involve detoxification. .

“This is a broader trend in alternative health care, where (anti-vaxxers) are railing against the medical establishment and saying that they don’t have your best interests at heart and that you can’t trust regular doctors or regular medical science, but they like to look at studies that appear to show favorable results for some remedy they offer,” says Calum Hood, head of research at the Center for Countering Digital Hate. “They then misapply that science to sell people the idea that a little zeolite will cure their child’s autism.”

When asked to provide evidence that clinoptilolite was safe for use in children, Touchstone Essentials did not provide an answer, but Sonia O’Farrell, the company’s Chief Marketing Officer, told WIRED that the company “does not claim that Pure Body Extra ( PBX) can cure or treat autism, or any medical condition for that matter. Pure Body Extra is a dietary supplement with natural zeolite to support the body’s detoxification systems. By definition, dietary supplements may not claim to treat, cure, diagnose or prevent any disease.”

O’Farrell added that the company does not endorse any individual who sells its products or how they promote them. “If our compliance team becomes aware that an affiliate is making medical claims, it will advise an affiliate to remove such materials,” O’Farrell added.

A statement written in small text at the bottom of the Touchstone Essentials website reads: “These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. Our products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.”

The FDA did not respond to a request for comment on how Pure Body Extra is promoted online.