Tuesday morning, a spokesperson with the Missouri Attorney General’s Office told the News-Leader that the office was filing suit against the Jim Bakker Show operation near Branson.
Spokesman Chris Nuelle said in an email that the goal of the suit was “to stop (Bakker) from selling that Coronavirus ‘cure,’” a product known as “silver solution” that was priced at $80 or more on Bakker’s show.
Documents were filed Monday in Stone County, Nuelle said, with televangelist Jim Bakker and his Morningside Church Productions, Inc. named as defendants.
“Anyone who has bought “Silver Solution” from the Jim Bakker Show should know that it cannot cure or treat coronavirus,” Attorney General Eric Schmitt’s office said in a news release, which referred to the product as a “fake.”
The suit asserts that Bakker and Morningside are in violation of the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act. It asks for a restraining order and a permanent injunction ordering Bakker to stop selling “silver sol” as a treatment for the coronavirus, dubbed COVID-19, that emerged late last year in China before infecting at least 113,000 people worldwide, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University.
On Monday, two federal agencies also warned Bakker that he was violating federal law and should stop selling “silver sol” products that he and a show guest had promoted on the air in February as capable of “eliminating” coronavirus from the human body in a matter of hours.
Such claims fly in the face of scientific information handed down by public health authorities in Missouri, the federal government and the World Health Organization. At this time, there is no medication to treat coronavirus, but multiple vaccines are in development, a process that could take a year or more.
Late last week, Bakker got a similar warning from New York state’s attorney general.
SPRINGFIELD NEWS-LEADER
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