A video has been circulating on Facebook with an alleged report from the news program CityNoticias, from the Bogota channel CityTv, about an advertisement by the president, Gustavo Petro, in which he promotes a medicine whose development is attributed to scientist Manuel Elkin Patarroyo and which, according to the content , would be able to cure diabetes.

But this is false. The clip uses fragments of other videos from the newscast and the president, which were manipulated with a dubbing of a voice similar to each other. Furthermore, the immunologist has not developed medications for this chronic disease, which has no cure.

The viral post was made on May 14, 2024, by the Facebook page ‘Skylounge Siem’, described as a science and technology site, and has the following description: “🧡💥One of the best treatments for diabetes!💥 🧡” (sic). Next, it includes the video in which the CityTv logo is shown and a headline that says: “A new drug has stopped the diabetes epidemic. Hurry up and get it at Government Price”.

In the 2:40-minute audiovisual, a woman initially appears collapsing in the middle of a press conference, supposedly as a result of her diabetes. Next, the news presenter talks about this disease and how Colombia’s neighboring countries want to acquire the medicine capable of curing it. Furthermore, he says that this drug was supposedly developed by Patarroyo.

After this, the Danish Medicines Agency said in a tweet: “Our director of pharmacovigilance, Tanja Erichsen, fainted during today’s press conference. She is conscious again and doing well under the circumstances, but she rides by ambulance to the emergency room to get checked out just in case.”

The audiovisual also shows Petro with his back turned in the Plaza de Bolívar in Bogotá, giving an alleged announcement about said medication:

“I promise our citizens: we will not deliver the medicine until all citizens of Colombia who suffer from diabetes receive this medicine (…) We have ordered that the medicine begin to be distributed at the lowest possible price online, on our website special, through the ‘read more’ button that appears below this video. This ensures fast delivery directly to your hands and a guaranteed subsidized price.”

Colombiacheck decided to verify this publication due to its high reach and virality, as it has more than 166,000 views, 1,000 likes and 188 user comments on Facebook.

It is worth mentioning that this is not the first time that a publication on social networks talks about an alleged announcement by Petro about a medicine to cure diabetes in Colombia. In February 2023, we published the check “There is no reform for people with diabetes nor does Petro promote a medicine that cures it.”

Likewise, in the past we have verified other misinformation in which journalists are falsely shown spreading the news of supposed diabetes medications and personalities from the scientific and political field recommending their use, as explained in the checks “Mexican doctor does not invented a cure for diabetes nor does the Caracol presenter promote it”, “False video promotes ‘cure’ for diabetes using images and logos of Noticias Uno”, “Noticias Caracol video is manipulated to promote false diabetes cure with malicious link” and “Video uses the image of former minister Fernando Ruiz to promote medication against diabetes.”

The video of the fainting: old, foreign and due to low voltage

For this verification, we started by verifying the video of the woman who appears collapsing in the middle of what appears to be a press conference, so we did a reverse image search in Google Lens.

Among the results, we find a note from the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia, dated April 15, 2021, titled “The director of the Danish Medicines Agency faints during a press conference.”

According to the media, the woman who appears in the first seconds of the Facebook video is Tanja Erichsen, who fainted live at the joint press conference with the Danish authorities announcing the definitive elimination of the AstraZeneca vaccine from the plan. vaccination of that country.

For its part, the media outlet La Razón, also from Spain, explained that the Danish official’s fainting was related to a drop in blood pressure due to stage fright.

Manipulated voices, possibly with AI

Journalist Esteban Bejarano, a reporter for CityNoticias, also appears in the Facebook video, announcing the supposed diabetes medication. However, when watching the audiovisual it is observed that the presenter’s voice does not coincide with the movement of his lips, so it would be a manipulation, possibly with some artificial intelligence tool.

As we have explained in previous checks on misinformation that implements artificial intelligence to replace original voices of different personalities in public life (1, 2, 3), one of the signs of the use of this technology is that the voice is not in line with The movement of the lips and the gestures of the mouth also present slight alterations, as in the case of Bejarano.

Furthermore, when listening to the voice that was given to him in the viral video we noticed that it – although it sounds very similar to his real voice – does not make diction errors, does not make mistakes, does not make unexpected pauses or repeats what he just said, which It is natural when a person speaks.

Likewise, we analyzed the audio of the video where the journalist speaks with the voice classifier from Eleven Labs, a software company specialized in speech synthesis and text-to-speech conversion with natural sound. Their result was that there was a 98% chance that the reporter’s voice had been created with the company’s AI program.

Something similar happens with Petro’s supposed voice, because when comparing the audio of the video on networks with his original voice, we also noticed inconsistencies. For example, in the audiovisual his voice, although it sounds similar to that of the president, has a Mexican accent that does not correspond to his natural speech.

We also analyzed with Eleven Labs a fragment of the video where Petro speaks and the result was that there was a 69% probability that the voice attributed to the president had been created by this program with AI.

In addition to this, we analyzed the network video with the TrueMedia.org tool, designed to detect deepfakes (files manipulated with artificial intelligence) and found that the file was highly suspected of containing AI. According to these results, there is a 100% chance of voice manipulation with AI and 92% of face alterations.

However, it is worth clarifying that, so far, no AI detection application is completely reliable in its conclusions.

Another point to take into account is that, since this is a supposed announcement during an event in a public square, the ambient sound of the place and the people present should be heard, something that does not happen either, since the audio is heard with a typical reverberation of a closed space.

The warnings in the video are not like those of City

Additionally, the font of the supposed headline of the newscast does not match the official font used by the media outlet either.

As we can see below, the newscast uses a thinner, gray font in its headlines (not black, as the social media video shows) and includes below the headline the official social networks of the media outlet, something which does not appear in the misinforming video either.

Video of disinformation on networks:

Typography and original headlines of the newscast:

Now, in the case of Gustavo Petro’s supposed speech in which he announces the medicine for Colombians, the video was actually taken from his speech in the Plaza de Bolívar, in Bogotá, on May 1, Labor Day.

Original video

Misinformation video

As you can see, both in the original video and in the misinformation video, Petro uses the same dark green jacket and the same dark blue cap with a Colombian flag embroidered on the back. The same frame is also shown with a view of the Primate Cathedral of Colombia, in the Plaza de Bolívar and the summoned citizens.

However, at no point in his speech on May 1 did the president refer to diabetes in Colombia or any medication capable of curing it.

The suspicious link was removed

Finally, the viral post urges Facebook users to enter a link for “more information,” but after verifying the security of the website through VirusTotal, we found that the link does not work or is a scam. page that was deleted.

Patarroyo does not study diabetes, which has no cure

In the viral video, the CityTv journalist states that the medicine was supposedly developed by the renowned Colombian immunologist, but this is not true either.

As we explained in the previous check “With fake audio mounted on a video of Manuel Elkin Patarroyo they sell a ‘cure’ for arthritis on Facebook”, the scientist is recognized as the author of a failed synthetic vaccine for malaria, a disease in which who has focused his research for decades. He has no connection with a diabetes cure.

Patarroyo is founder and director of the Colombian Institute of Immunology and has been recognized around the world by different awards dedicated to his research work focused on vaccines (1, 2).

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.

In conclusion, Colombiacheck qualifies as false the social media video in which they use the image of the CityTv media outlet and one of its journalists to report on an alleged advertisement by Gustavo Petro about a medicine capable of curing diabetes, created by scientist Manuel Elkin Patarroyo.

As we have shown in the article, the audiovisual uses different fragments of videos from other moments taken out of context and manipulated, as it also replaces the original voice of both the media journalist and the president. Furthermore, the scientist has no connection with the development of drugs against diabetes, a chronic disease that has no cure so far.

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