A video went viral on Facebook, supposedly from the Mexican news program Fuerza Informativa Azteca, in which presenter Alejandro Villalvazo appears reporting on a medication capable of curing diabetes in just five days and, later, an older adult talking about the benefits of the drug and a supposed doctor endorsing the effectiveness of the medication.
The publication was made on June 22 by the Facebook page ‘FreeMed’, which, according to its description, publishes about medicine and health topics and originates from the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina. The content is accompanied by the following message: “93% OF PATIENTS WITH TYPE 2 DIABETES DO NOT KNOW THE EXISTENCE OF THIS METHOD“(sic).
The audiovisual also contains a link that leads to a portal where a product called Diaprox is promoted. The page does not have much information about this or its components, but it does request the name and contact number of visitors.
Colombiacheck decided to verify this publication due to its virality, since at the time of this verification it has more than 11,000 views, more than 100 ‘likes’ and 26 comments in which several users request more information or express their interest in acquiring the supposed medicine.
In the past we have published other verifications of supposed cures for diabetes that are apparently promoted by journalists, politicians and even supposed specialists. This can be seen in checks such as ‘False video promotes ‘cure’ for diabetes using images and logos of Noticias Uno’, ‘Mexican doctor did not invent a cure for diabetes nor does Caracol presenter promote it’, ‘Video about fictitious cure for diabetes falsifies voices of Petro and a CityTv journalist’ and ‘Noticias Caracol video manipulated to promote false diabetes cure with malicious link’, among others.
Video scheduled on Facebook
When doing a search in Meta’s ad library, we found that the video under verification was featured by the ‘FreeMed’ page since it began circulating on June 22, 2024. This same page also featured another video with the same description about diabetes and which has also circulated on Facebook since that date.
The search also revealed that this same ad was published by the ‘Healthy Life’ Facebook page, which also posted it three times since June 24.
Video is a montage
The viral video begins with a presenter informing about the supposed medication. To identify it, we performed a reverse search in Yandex with the clip fragment. The results showed that it is the Mexican journalist and presenter Alejandro Villalvazo on the Fuerza Informativa Azteca news program on Tv Azteca.
However, although you can hear a voice very similar to yours, when watching the audiovisual you can notice that what you hear does not coincide with the natural movement of your lips. This is a sign that it may be a dubbing performed with artificial intelligence (AI).
We have explained this in other checks such as “La W did not leak this alleged audio conversation between Dilian Francisca Toro and Alejandro Char” and “Possible audios created by AI reach the regional elections, how feasible is it to identify them?”
In this case, we analyze the audiovisual with the TrueMedia.org tool, developed to reveal ‘deepfakes’ (files manipulated with artificial intelligence). The result showed that there is substantial evidence of this type of alteration, especially in audio and facial gestures.
We also used the classifier from Eleven Labs, a software company specializing in speech synthesis and natural-sounding text-to-audio conversion. Based on its results, there is a 98% chance that it was created using one of the company’s applications.
In addition, these types of simulations are currently used to attract people to scams, using the voices of public figures such as former president Álvaro Uribe, businessman Luis Carlos Sarmiento Angulo or singer Shakira, among others.
However, the headline “NOW IT’S REAL: CURE DIABETES IN 5 DAYS” has a font and colors that do not match those used by the media outlet.
Social media video:
Actual news release note:
Testimony about medication is false
In the video, an elderly woman who claims to be 95 years old appears, who supposedly managed to recover her vision thanks to the promoted medication and her diabetes completely disappeared. To identify her identity, we did a new reverse image search on Google Lens and the results allowed us to conclude that the alleged testimony is false.
The search returned a match with a note from the Pulzo media outlet updated on August 19, 2022 and titled ‘[Video] With tears, a 97-year-old woman said that her 16 children forgot about her.’ The article mentions that the woman – the same as the one in the online video – is called Isabel Méndez Jiménez and the content, as the title indicates, has nothing to do with the drug.
A web search with the woman’s name showed us that the same video had been published by multiple media outlets in Colombia and Latin America, such as Clarín, Semana and El Tiempo. According to them, the original was published by user Jaime Toral (@Jaimetoraltv) on TikTok and on his YouTube channel (although it no longer appears there).
In the recording – which also circulates on different portals and social networks – you can hear how the woman does not talk about any medication for diabetes. Instead, she narrates her difficult economic and family situation due to the absence of her children.
Doctor in the video did not create the promoted drug
In the testimony about the efficacy of the alleged drug, they mention that it was developed by Dr. David Arroyo. A man who describes himself as the person responsible for the drug also appears in the video, assuring that it is 100% reliable, as it was evaluated by the International Health Association.
Like the previous cases, the voice of the supposed doctor also does not match the movement of his lips. Furthermore, there is no record on the website about the existence of the alleged association that it mentions as a guarantee of reliability.
We did a search with the name of the supposed doctor, but we found no matches with the man who appears in the social video. Additionally, we did another reverse image search in the Google Lens, Yandex and Bing search engines, but none of them showed results or matches with the audiovisual character.
What we did find is that the supposed doctor who appears in this misinformation also appeared in another network video that we verified on December 15, 2023 in the check ‘Noticias Caracol video manipulated to promote false diabetes cure with malicious link ‘.
There we explain that the man in the video is Ezequiel Montaño, from the United States, who describes himself on his social networks of Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and on an internet portal as a naturist, writer, author and founder of an academy of “comprehensive naturism.” with his name. He also has a profile on Amazon where books on diabetes have been attributed to him in which he says that this disease can be reversed. Furthermore, on his social networks he promotes how to “live without diabetes” and publishes videos similar to the fragment seen in the misinformation.
Health alert in Paraguay and possible non-compliance with regulations in Colombia
We performed a search on the web with the name of the supposed drug, Diaprox, and among the results we found that it has a website for its sale in Colombia. According to the site, it helps control blood sugar levels and claims to be natural because it has turmeric, artichoke and yacon among its components.
On the other hand, the results of this search also showed a health alert from the National Directorate of Health Surveillance of Paraguay, issued on May 31, 2024. The official document warns that on several digital platforms this supposed medicine is illegally promoted as a “legitimate cure” for diabetes, claiming to be superior to the opinion of specialists and other treatments, but the truth is that these claims lack scientific support and have not been evaluated or approved by the Paraguayan entity.
In the case of Colombia, we consulted the health records of the National Institute for Food and Drug Surveillance (Invima), but we did not find results with that name. On the Mercado Libre e-commerce portal, where it is marketed as a “supplement” (1, 2), there have been those who have asked about this requirement and the answer given in the comments is that it is an official homeopathic medicine and that, Therefore, it does not have to comply with that requirement, according to Decree 1737 of 2005 of the then Ministry of Social Protection.
This type of product, according to the definition established in that standard, is based on a simple formula and must be “prepared by a pharmaceutical chemist or under his direction, in an authorized homeopathic pharmacy, in accordance with the techniques and standards established in the pharmacopoeias. official homeopathic regulations in force in Colombia.” This means that their production should not be industrial and, consequently, Article 6 establishes that they should not be marketed under commercial names or brands, such as Diaprox.
In fact, Invima issued a health alert in October 2023 for another medicine that had a similar strategy: it was sold on the internet as an official homeopathic medicine, but used a commercial name: Toxic Off. For this reason, the entity determined that “it does not comply with the requirements established in Decree 1737 of 2005 and does not have a health record to date, so it has not been evaluated in aspects of quality, safety and effectiveness, representing a risk.” for the health of consumers.”
“On several occasions, the Institute has warned about the risks that these types of products have for the health of those who use them and also allude to unauthorized properties that give rise to false expectations about the true nature, origin, composition or quality of the products,” the document states.
Diabetes has no cure
In addition to this, we must remember that diabetes is a chronic (long-term) disease that affects the way the body converts food into energy and has no known cure until now.
The United States Department of Health and Human Services notes, through its Medline Plus portal, that common treatments for diabetes include a diabetic eating plan, regular physical activity, and medications, while some less common treatments include weight-loss surgery (for type 1 and 2 diabetes) and, for some people with type 1 diabetes, an artificial pancreas or pancreatic islet transplant.
Regarding medications to treat diabetes, the Mayo Clinic organization points out that, in general, they all act differently to reduce blood glucose levels. As we explained in the aforementioned previous checks in this regard, this is a way to control the disease, it is not a cure and it does not exist.
With all these elements, Colombiacheck qualifies as false the video posted on Facebook that pretends to be an informative note from a Mexican news program about a medicine capable of curing diabetes in just five days. The audiovisual uses the Fuerza Informativa Azteca logo and the image of one of its presenters along with clips taken from other sources with alleged testimonies from a patient and a doctor, but all the statements are staged, probably with AI. Furthermore, this disease really has no cure, while the product has been the subject of a health alert in Paraguay and would be violating the standards for homeopathic medicines in Colombia.