DISASTROUS DMSO

My debut article on DMSO was a warning shot. This one hits dead center.

Before we start

I’m rewriting this because my first DMSO piece hit harder than I expected. I moved an old article to Substack, typos and all, and I’m excited to find a platform that doesn’t censor after months of bans and shadowbans. The response made two things clear: a lot of people are hungry for straight talk that isn’t bought and paid for. Second, many people are fanatical about the brand of saviour in a bottle. Like a sports team fan, they go a little nuts when you say anything against their cure-all.

By the way, if you value my research and investigative articles, I invite you to support

Agent131711

and my joint venture, the Shadow Banned Library. It’s a place where you can download and save the work we’ve poured our time and energy into, digging relentlessly for the least common denominator of truth.

As you know, time is running out on platforms that allow uncensored free speech. Supporting the library means supporting writers who refuse to peddle affiliate links, refuse to push corporate-sponsored poisons, and refuse to sell pharmaceuticals like DMSO dressed up as health. This is gift-free journalism: truth without corporate puppet strings. You’ll also find our original songs there, created as a unique way to share and reach those just beginning to wake up. Now back to DMSO.

And make no mistake, DMSO is a Pharmaceutical drug used in the medical industry. With $226 million in annual revenue, there is some money to play around with. Pharmaceutical representatives sing the praises while never revealing they are pharmaceutical representatives.

Medicine Girl’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. Thank you for considering becoming a paid subscriber. I am grateful for any and all support in bringing the truth to light. It gets lonely out here, and I love to read and engage with your comments and thought-provoking ideas. Lately, they have been excellent. By the way, I am affiliate link-free, sponsor-free, and corporate-made product-free, and always will be. Thank you for supporting grift-free truth.

So I’m back to clean it up, add what I’ve learned, and lay out exactly how this solvent ended up in bathroom cabinets. If you read the first version, this is the one to save and share. And even when I clean it up, I seem to make it riddled with typos and misspellings, so I will do my best to clean it up again.

Feeling Generous?

Buy Me A Coffee?

How I got sold on DMSO

I lived in Bellingham, Washington, for more than twenty years, a short drive from the Georgia-Pacific paper mill. Some days, the air burned your nose, and we were told to stay inside. When the mill shut down, the local paper said cleanup would cost upwards of 44 million and take more than a decade. That was my backdrop. So when Amandha Vollmer started selling DMSO, dimethylsulfoxide from birch bark, I didn’t connect the two. Her book opens with a simple tree extract, and the cover features hand-drawn trees. The message is clear: nature made it, so it must be safe. It reads like you tap a maple tree for maple syrup, and out pours medicine.

In 2020, I bought the story. Or more to the point, I beLIEved her story. I ordered the book, even paid extra for an autographed signature, and picked up a gallon of DMSO for my home kit so I could stay out of the medical industrial complex. I was wrong. I let a sales narrative and a stack of industry papers talk me into an industrial solvent.

Here is how the hook lands. First, nature-washing: take a chemical from a dirty industry and wrap it in forests and purity. Second, authority: cite studies that most people won’t read and frame it as suppressed knowledge. Third, community: build a following that repeats the script and treats any pushback as an attack on the tribe. I watched that play out in real time.

After I published my first DMSO piece on my website purifywithin.com, this came through my site’s contact form. I am including it in full.

You have a new message in the form: Contact form.

First Name
Fred

Last Name
Luchetti

Email
FredLuchetti@protonmail.com

Subject
Removal of Amandha Vollmer from your blog

Message
I am here representing the marketing department of Amandha’s business, and I want to impress upon you the urgency of removing any mention of Amandha, her book “Healing with DMSO,” or any products or claims that Dr. Vollmer is alleged to have made, from your blog: https://purifywithin.com/blog-robin-stebbins-purify-within/dmsodisastor. I am the first line of approach, ignoring my request will result in lawyers coming on board to address this problem. Your comments are simply scare tactics, not based in any science, and if you had done the research, you would find that DMSO is widely used in the practice of traditional medicine BECAUSE it is a transdermal agent. Any attacks on our business will be met with severe legal consequences this is the only warning we are going to send out.
— Fred Luchetti

That is not what censored looks like. That is a marketing department protecting a product. And thank you, Fred, for the confirmation of a bull’s-eye direct hit against a longstanding grift. By the way, who can afford a marketing department? My departments and team consists of me, myself, and I. Which most of you know and have pointed out that my writing needs a full-time editor, as it’s riddled with mistakes. My high school English teacher would agree and fully support that as well. Which is actually all you can find fault with. I simply point out evidence-based reality. Nothing more. So call it my opinion, call it a conspiracy, call it a crazy lady who can’t spell her way out of a wet paper bag, but truth is truth. You can put the pieces together however you like and come to your own conclusions. I am simply stating the facts.

What sits behind the DMSO label

Bullseye or not, DMSO lives in the world of industry, turning hard pulp into paper. It is not a woodland tonic made by hobbits in a shire. No one goes woodcutting in the forest with a butter knife. It is not easy to turn wood into paper. If a mill treated every liquid byproduct as waste, it would pay to dispose of it. If it bottles and sells part of that chemistry instead, the balance sheet flips. That is a huge incentive. Make money instead of paying money.

Here is how a mill works, step by step. Logs arrive, get debarked, and are chopped into chips. The chips are placed in a pressure cooker called a digester, along with a liquor made of sodium hydroxide and sodium sulfide. That liquor is called white liquor. Its job is to strip away lignin so the cellulose fibers can be freed. The cooking process is hot, caustic, and heavy in sulfur. The rotten-egg smell people remember comes from sulfur gases such as hydrogen sulfide, methyl mercaptan, dimethyl sulfide, and dimethyl disulfide. And a reason for “acid rain”.

When the cook is done, the fibers are washed and sent on, while the spent liquor becomes a dark, thick soup called black liquor. Black liquor carries dissolved lignin, hemicellulose, extractives, and a load of sodium and sulfur compounds. A spill can kill a river by stripping oxygen out of the water and burning gills and banks with the caustic liquid. Mills concentrate black liquor in evaporators and burn it in a recovery boiler to generate steam and reclaim cooking chemicals. The ash or sludge is dissolved to produce green liquor, which is then treated with lime to regenerate white liquor. The loop runs day and night. Every step generates volatile compounds and wastewater that must be controlled.

Bleaching comes next when a mill wants white paper. The unbleached pulp is treated in stages to raise brightness. Older mills used elemental chlorine, which produced dioxins and furans in the effluent. Many switched to chlorine dioxide and other oxidizers, such as oxygen and peroxide, but the goal remains the same, and the health risks are the same. Strip more lignin, brighten the sheet, keep the machine running. Along the way, you get volatile organic compounds, sulfur gas, caustic mists, and sludge.

There are side streams from this chemistry. Turpentine from softwoods. Tall oil from fatty acids in the wood. Methanol and sulfur compounds from the cook. Black liquor off-gases that carry sulfur compounds. DMSO sits in this sulfur loop.

This is why the origin matters. Papermaking is one of the most polluting industrial processes on air and water. It loads wastewater with color, organics, and caustic chemicals. It releases sulfur gases and fine particles that burn eyes and lungs. Anything born in that loop is not meant for ingestion or for use as a daily wellness habit, rubbed into the skin.

From waste stream to wellness jar

Pulp mill liquid wastes carry endocrine disruptors, neurotoxic compounds, sulfur solvents, and other contaminants. DMSO sits in that solvent family. Before the rebrand, mills had to pay to get rid of these liquids. That was the line item: disposal fees for materials no one would dare drink or rub into the skin because the EPA deemed them harmful to the environment, as they kill aquatic life and destroy plants and animals. So what are the owners supposed to do, keep paying to dump a toxic stream, or find a way to sell a slice of it back to the public as a health aid?

That is exactly what happened. The industry brought in consultants, lab scientists, and a medical front to comb the waste streams and frame a new story. The pitch wrote itself. Call it tree-derived. Call it pure. Call it powerful. Seed-friendly papers. Build a protocol. The expense line becomes a product line. So instead of paying $100K a month to dump the waste, they save the $100K and make an additional $50K to sell it. That is $150K in the black instead of $50K in the red. Remember, this is a corporation, and corporations run like a DSM-IV diagnosis of a psychopath. They only seek two things: to make money and to make more money.

If this playbook feels familiar, it should. The fatcat version shows up across industries: fluoride chemicals from fertilizer stacks recast as a public benefit, iodized salt tied to industrial brines cast as wellness, zeolite and zinc powders riding in under the cape of natural and essential. Chlorine Dioxide to clean your pool becomes a miracle combo that cures eczema and autism. Different sectors, same move. Do not pay to dispose of a problem when you can package it as a solution.

That is a double dip: not only to avoid the expense of disposing of an environmental poison, but also to make a handsome profit by selling their own brand of toxic waste, sorry, I mean health tonics.

Enter Dr. Stanley W. Jacob

Before the wellness makeover, DMSO was an industrial workhorse. In the 1940s and 50s, it was sold as antifreeze, a paint and resin solvent, a textile aid, and a cleaner.

In the early 1960s, Stanley W. Jacob at Oregon Health and Science University began championing it as a therapy with university backing and federal grant money in the background. The pitch had to flip from shop chemistry to human cure. Meaning the papermill industry paid the university, and they found the unscrupulous “professor” to create a use for the solvent. Similarly to what they do with drugs.

From the start, there was pushback about safety and method. The core worry was permeability. DMSO does not sit on the skin. It passes through quickly and reaches sensitive tissues, including the brain and eyes, almost immediately. Early lab work and animal studies flagged lens changes and ocular irritation at higher exposures. Clinicians reported the telltale garlic odor on the breath within seconds and frequent skin burns, rashes, and chemical sensitivities at the application site. Those are solvent effects, plain and simple.

The playbook around it looked like this. Publish a burst of promising case reports. Court the press with stories about pain relief and wound healing. Lean on compassionate use when regulators ask hard questions. Build a speaker circuit and patient testimonials. Keep the chemistry simple in public. Complicate it in the fine print.

What made DMSO irresistible to promoters is what makes it risky. It is a carrier. Jacob’s group highlighted that it could move drugs through skin and into tissue without needles. That idea fed the rise of transdermal delivery and patch culture for hormones and pain meds. The Food and Drug Administration eventually allowed a DMSO product for bladder pain that is instilled directly into the bladder by a clinician. Outside that narrow lane, the solvent reputation followed it. People learned that if it pulls medicine in faster, it can do the same for recreational drugs, household residues, dyes, fragrances, pesticides, and whatever is on the surface you touch. The door into the body gets wider for everything, not just the thing you hoped to deliver. Yes, DMSO is a pharmaceutical, which makes Amandha a pharmaceutical representative. And yes, the industry is making a lot of money.

Behind the scenes, the commercialization was straightforward. Veterinary suppliers moved gallons through horse barns and racetracks. Technical grades were sold online under not-for-human-use labels while influencers described human protocols they claimed were being hidden from the public, similar to the pfizermectine and hydroxychloroquine narrative. Vendors told customers to use glass because DMSO pulls plasticizers out of droppers and bottles. They told people to clean their skin, but skipped the fact that it’s easy to miss residues from perfume, lotions, essential oils, and soap, all of which go straight into the bloodstream and tissues once DMSO is applied. Meanwhile, Jacob coauthored books, presented at conferences, and kept the focus on benefits rather than the carrier effect or the impurities that accompany them.

That is how an industrial solvent gained a halo. University letterhead and early NIH enthusiasm conferred status. A narrow medical approval created the illusion of broad safety. The rest was marketing.

What it does to the body

DMSO passes through the skin quickly and does not travel alone. It drags in whatever is sitting on you or your gear. Lotion, perfume, sunscreen, dye from a towel, plasticizers from a dropper, pesticide dust, chemtrails, herbicides from the park, chemicals, and toxic soap. from clothing and laundry soap, on and on we go. If it comes into contact with DMSO, it gets a ticket directly into the brain and crosses the blood-brain barrier instantly. That is the carrier effect. And you know it because you can taste it instantly.

The first signs show up as warmth or flushing. A strong odor on the breath. Skin that prickles or burns, sometimes blisters. Eyes that sting and water if you get a splash. Use it again, and the skin can become angrier more quickly. Some people report headaches, dizziness, nausea, loose stools, and lingering weird tastes. If you were testing a herb in the wild and had this reaction, you would never touch it again. But Mother Nature doesn’t give you a sales pitch and fake testimonials to get you to go back for more.

The deeper harm

Here is the part no one selling jugs of the solvent wants to say out loud.

DMSO strips and thins the barrier you rely on to keep the outside world out. With repeated use, the skin gets easier to penetrate, not tougher. That opens the door for more of whatever is on you to get inside. The first hits are obvious. Burning, redness, peeling, and chemical rashes that come back faster each time. Garlic taste on the breath within minutes because sulfur compounds have moved from skin to blood to lungs.

Eyes are a soft target. Splashes sting, blur vision, and can leave the surface irritated for days. High-exposure lab work in animals documented lens changes and vision effects; that is why the early medical push stalled for years. Human case reports describe halos, light sensitivity, and eye irritation after accidental contact. Contact lenses make it worse because DMSO can carry lens residues and trapped debris straight into the cornea.

Inside the body, solvents do what solvents do.

Liver and heart cells do not like solvents. People report headaches, dizziness, blood-pressure swings, and gut upset. In clinical settings where DMSO is infused with preserved cells, nurses watch for bradycardia, flushing, nausea, and neurological symptoms because the solvent itself can trigger them.

Using a solvent on skin strips the sebum and acid mantle, the thin oil film that keeps water in, pathogens out, and slows chemical penetration. Remove that layer, and you raise water loss, irritate follicles, disrupt your microbiome, and open the door for whatever is on your hands or surfaces to move in. On hair, solvents dissolve the lipid coat and lift the cuticle, drying the shaft and stressing the scalp barrier. Hair follicles are wired to mechanoreceptors that detect air movement and light touch; the hair shaft is an antenna that amplifies those signals. Strip the oils and damage the shaft, and that sensory feedback dulls. There are long-standing field accounts from military tracker programs that shaving recruits’ hair annihilated their edge.

Inside the mouth, a solvent strips the salivary pellicle and mucosal lipids that protect teeth and tissue, called the biofilm. That film keeps acids in check, slows chemical penetration, and feeds the oral microbiome. Remove it, and you raise sensitivity, dry the surface, and make demineralization easier. Commercial toothpaste is a daily chemical assault, with foaming agents like sodium lauryl sulfate that blow through the mouth’s protective film and leave tissue raw. Peroxide and any whiteners and abrasives rough up enamel and chew into the necks of teeth where roots are thin and exposed from your love of solvents. “Natural brands” are usually worse with essential oils like clove and cinnamon, burning gums, inflaming pulp, damaging roots, and speeding up erosion. Xylitol and other sweeteners disrupt the biome and promote further decay. Add dyes, preservatives, and antiseptics, and you have a daily assault on enamel and roots, not a favor to your mouth. That is how you end up with inflamed gums, burning patches, and enamel that wears faster. And go to the biological dentist or regular, and they hit you with hole infusing X-rays to cause cavities and destroy your teeth from the root on.

In the gut, the same logic applies. Swallowed or colonic use of a solvent thins the mucus barrier and stresses tight junctions. That makes the lining more permeable to whatever rides along with it and primes the tissue for irritation and inflammation. If you pair that with coffee or coffee enemas, you are adding stimulants and irritants directly to vulnerable tissue. Reported outcomes include cramping, proctitis, colitis, electrolyte swings, infections, burns, and death. None of that cleanses anything. It removes the very films and defenses your body builds to protect you.

About the anti-inflammatory pitch. Swelling is part of the repair plan. It stabilizes an injury and brings in cleanup and rebuild crews. Kill it on reflex, and a joint may feel looser today, but you are trading short-term comfort for a long-term joint issue and arthritis. A solvent that forces drug-level effects through skin without dose control is not an intelligent option.

Cancer talk deserves plain English. The danger is that it is a door. It is used in lab work precisely because it dissolves chemicals and drives them into cells. Which is what cancer is, an out-of-control collection of toxins that go straight into the body with its defenses removed. Reproduction and development are harmed by prolonged use. High exposures in animals have shown embryo toxicity and growth delays. Whose side is Amandha on again?

NEW Material

DMSO: The Paper Mill’s Trojan Horse

The celebrated story of Dr. Stanley W. Jacob and DMSO was never about a lone surgeon stumbling onto a miracle. It was the calculated repurposing of a toxic paper-mill by-product by Crown Zellerbach, one of the largest pulp and paper companies in America.

For years, the company had been burdened with the costly disposal of dimethyl sulfoxide, a foul-smelling solvent left over from the Kraft pulping process. Rather than continue paying to dump it, Crown Zellerbach sought a way to turn this chemical into profit. Their chemist, Robert J. Herschler, introduced DMSO to Jacob, a surgeon with an interest in cryopreservation and novel drug carriers.

A Solvent That Breached the Body’s Defenses

Jacob quickly saw what made DMSO extraordinary. It could penetrate the skin and cell membranes with ease, delivering itself and any dissolved substances directly into the bloodstream. This ability to bypass the body’s defenses was alarming from a toxicology standpoint, yet it was exactly what the pharmaceutical industry had been waiting for: a delivery system disguised as a drug. What began as a hazardous solvent destined for waste management suddenly became a potential billion-dollar medical commodity.

Patents That Tell the Real Story

The partnership between Jacob and Herschler was formalized in patents. Two key filings made the paper trail impossible to ignore:

• U.S. Patent 3,790,682: Ataractic use of dimethyl sulfoxide

• U.S. Patent 3,740,420: Pharmaceutical compositions with dimethyl sulfoxide

Both list Jacob and Herschler as inventors, and Jacob is explicitly named as assignor to Crown Zellerbach Corporation. This ensured that ownership and profits flowed to the paper company. Once the FDA granted Investigational New Drug status in 1964, Crown Zellerbach quickly licensed DMSO to leading pharmaceutical companies eager to get in on the new solvent-turned-drug delivery system.

The FDA Slams on the Brakes

The dream unraveled almost as quickly as it began. By late 1965, animal studies showed disturbing side effects, most notably changes in the lenses of the eyes in dogs, rabbits, and pigs. Alarmed, the FDA halted all human clinical trials in November of that year. Regulators were still on edge after the thalidomide tragedy, and DMSO’s potential risks were too great to ignore.

By 1972, the National Academy of Sciences reviewed the available data and concluded that there was insufficient evidence to support broad approval. Their recommendation was clear: DMSO should remain limited to investigational use. Only in 1978 did the FDA finally grant approval, and then only for the treatment of interstitial cystitis. Every other grandiose claim remained unsupported.

Media Hype and the Miracle Narrative

Despite regulatory caution, the press cast DMSO as a wonder drug. In 1980, Time magazine asked whether it was “the aspirin of the 21st century” or “another Laetrile.” The article repeated sweeping claims: that DMSO could relieve arthritis pain, heal burns, soothe toothaches, ease headaches and muscle strains, and clear infections of every type. It even suggested it might prevent paralysis, treat developmentally delayed children, and regrow hair on bald scalps.

Jacob himself admitted, “The uses grew like Topsy.”

That same year, CBS’s 60 Minutes aired The Riddle of DMSO. The program highlighted the chemical’s strange double life: beloved by desperate patients, demonized by regulators. Re-airings of the segment only fueled public fascination, reinforcing the idea that DMSO was a miracle suppressed by bureaucracy. Just like Ivermectin, Hydroxychloroquine, and Chlorine Dioxide. They play the public like a fiddle.

The Side Effects Swept Under the Rug

What received far less coverage were the toxicological concerns. The lens changes seen in animal studies were not a trivial finding. Damage to the eyes was a warning sign that the solvent could interfere with sensitive biological structures. For those claiming pain relief, do you need corrective lenses and reading glasses? I don’t, and I am almost 57, so there is that. My point is that there are many safer ways to heal the body that don’t involve toxic waste.

Modern research has only deepened the concerns. DMSO exposure has been shown to disrupt early embryo development, alter gene expression, and impair fertility in laboratory animals. Its ability to change epigenetic programming and disrupt DNA methylation patterns raises questions about long-term generational effects. These are not the hallmarks of a benign substance.

From Waste to Wonder Drug

The true story of DMSO was not about healing but about industrial alchemy. A paper-mill giant, desperate to avoid waste-disposal costs, found a willing partner in medicine. A surgeon provided the legitimacy, a chemist provided the patents, and the pharmaceutical industry provided the marketing machine.

What started as a pulp by-product was smuggled into the medical system under the guise of innovation. DMSO’s most dangerous property—its ability to pierce the body’s defenses—was turned into its greatest selling point. This was not a miracle compound. It was the perfect Trojan horse: industrial waste disguised as medicine, slipped directly into the human bloodstream while the public was told it was progress.

There is no good reason to rub an industrial solvent into your skin and call it health.

Not for you and not for the kids who come after you. The jar is born in the same loop that pollutes rivers and chains cleanups to city budgets. The chemistry does what chemistry does.

My line is simple. If it shows up in paper plants, antifreeze, paint shops, and solvent aisles, it does not belong on my body. Not as a daily habit. Not as a miracle. When the next shiny cure rolls through with the same playbook, remember how this one worked. Story first. Numbers last.

You do not need a jug to get well. Eat real food. Drink clean water. Get sun on your skin and dirt on your hands, and a little in your diet. Sleep. Breathe. Move. Love your people. Let the body do what it was made to do.

I am not your nurse here. I am a consumer telling the truth as I see it.

From

GeoffPainPhD

In the article, Grok apologized for lying about DMSO deaths.

Geoff Pain PhDGrok apologizes to me over DMSO DeathsFascinating thread on X if you are interested…Read more4 months ago · 18 likes · GeoffPainPhD

For further reading, check out

Ray Horvath, “The Source” :)

Ray’s NewsletterWhy Is DMSO Being Popularized?Humans are now entering the NWO…Read more3 months ago · 53 likes · 67 comments · Ray Horvath, “The Source” :)

I first addressed the problem of DMSO (and methylene blue) as “miracle meds” on April 15, 2025:

Ray’s NewsletterMore Miracle Drugs: DMSO and Methylene BlueWhen aspirin came out, it was marketed as a miracle drug. Of course, it’s not, but are there any miracle drugs at all…Read more8 months ago · 44 likes · 61 comments · Ray Horvath, “The Source” :)

Disclaimer

This article is an opinion piece and a consumer education piece. It is not medical advice, diagnosis, treatment, or a substitute for care from a qualified clinician. Do not start, stop, or change any drug or supplement because of this piece. Speak with a licensed health professional who knows your history.

I am a Registered Nurse with an active license. I am not currently practicing, and I am not acting in the capacity of an RN here. Nothing in this article constitutes nursing care or advice.

Nothing here is legal advice. This is criticism and commentary on products and marketing, based on materials available at the time of writing. No clinician–patient or client relationship is created. I do not use affiliate links or sponsorships and accept no compensation from the products or companies discussed or anyone else, for that matter.

I aim for accuracy. If you think something is factually wrong, contact me, and I will review and correct it if needed.