Filipino news anchor's footage manipulated to sell unregistered 'diabetes pill'
- Published on February 15, 2024 at 07:34
- 6 min read
- By Lucille SODIPE, AFP Philippines
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A clip of veteran Filipino journalist Noli de Castro anchoring a news programme was posted on Facebook on November 22, 2023.
In what sounds like his voice, de Castro says in Tagalog: "A doctor in the Philippines created a way to put diabetes patients back in the pink of health with just one course of medicine."
"More than 3,000 Filipinos have become healthy again. Read the article and bring back your good health."
A link in the post leads to an article with a Tagalog headline that reads: "Metformin is not a solution for diabetic patients! The Filipinos' wrong understanding about diabetes that can shorten lives."
Written by a person identified as "Eliana Villaroman," the lengthy writeup is published on a webpage that bears the logo of major Philippine broadcaster ABS-CBN, where de Castro works.
It claims popular Filipino physician Willie Ong warned against metformin, an oral drug prescribed to treat type 2 diabetes.
Diabetes -- a chronic illness where a patient has elevated blood sugar -- is a major cause of blindness, kidney failure, heart attacks, stroke and lower limb amputation, according to the World Health Organization (archived link).
With type 2 diabetes, the body doesn't use the hormone insulin properly and has difficulty keeping blood sugar at normal levels (archived link).
The article has also fabricated a quote by Ong that reads: "Metformin is the way towards sickness and early death; not towards becoming well. If you have type 2 diabetes and your doctor prescribed metformin, you should change your physician right away."
It goes on to falsely claim the drug has "fatal side effects" including certain types of cancer, blindness, kidney stones and liver disease.
The article also claims that Ong promoted an alternative to metformin -- a product called "Glucocalm."
Another version of de Castro's video was shared in Facebook posts here and here, and links to the same article.
The post appears to repackage a persistent piece of disinformation about metformin and Ong, which AFP already debunked in 2023.
Drugs for diabetes
Health experts have told AFP that the article contradicts decades of research about metformin.
Iris Isip Tan, a professor from the University of the Philippines College of Medicine, cited the medical journal Diabetologia and said the drug has been used to treat diabetes for more than 60 years with "no major safety issues" (archived link here and here).
"Metformin is an effective medication for diabetes. It lowers blood sugar which can help prevent complications," she told AFP on May 3, 2023.
John Paul Bagos, an endocrinologist at the Novaliches General Hospital, also dismissed the false claims about metformin's purported side effects listed in the article (archived link).
"Metformin does not cause kidney or liver damage, kidney stones, cancers, hypertension and blindness," he told AFP on May 3, 2023. "Uncontrolled diabetes would actually be the reason for these conditions mentioned. It's not the other way around."
Willie Ong said the claim was "fake news" in a Tagalog-language post on April 21, 2023 on his verified Facebook page (archived link).
"This is the truth: metformin is okay. Believe your doctors," Ong said.
In a separate Facebook video shared on the same day, he also recalled previous posts in which he referred to metformin as an effective medication for diabetes (archived link).
Manipulated video
Arlene Burgos, head of engagement and partnerships at ABS-CBN News Digital, told AFP on February 7 that the videos used to spread the false claims were "manipulated".
"An ABS-CBN News item was distorted to make it appear we reported about a certain product," she said.
She went on to say the broadcaster does not employ a journalist named "Eliana Villaroman" -- that name that appears in the article's byline.
While the voice used in de Castro's clip closely resembles the anchorman's own, a closer look at the footage shows his mouth does not move in sync with the words being said.
Visual clues in de Castro's videos, coupled with multiple keyword searches on Google, found the original clips, on which the manipulated videos were based.
The first clip was taken from a September 4, 2023 episode of TV Patrol, ABS-CBN's nightly news programme (archived links here and here).
It shows de Castro at the 57-minute, 36-second mark concluding a feature on the town of Pola, south of Manila, which was affected by an oil spill six months earlier.
A tanker, the Princess Empress, was carrying 800,000 litres of industrial fuel oil when it sank in rough seas off the central island of Mindoro in February 2023.
De Castro does not discuss diabetes treatment during the report. It also does not show Ong's picture as seen in the false video.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the manipulated footage (left) and the original TV Patrol episode (right):
De Castro's footage in the second video was taken from a TV Patrol episode aired on November 27, 2023 (archived link).
He can be heard at the two-minute, seven-second mark introducing a report about a police officer who allegedly fired his gun in a bar in Manila, during a brawl he was involved in.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the manipulated footage (left) and the original TV Patrol episode (right):
Moreover, the website where the article on the product "Glucocalm" was published, is not ABS-CBN's official website for its news reports (archived link).
Multiple keyword searches on the Philippine Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) verification portal also did not find a product named "Glucocalm" in its list of registered food and drugs (archived links here and here).
De Castro's video is the latest in a string of false posts debunked by AFP here and here, that manipulate Filipino journalists' recordings to promote dubious products.
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