FACT CHECK: Former adviser of task force vs COVID-19 did not develop hypertension cure
Claim: Leading cardiologists in the Philippines, including Dr. Tony Leachon, have developed a new cure for hypertension.
Rating: FALSE
Why we fact-checked this: The video, posted on August 6, has garnered 675,000 views, 6,500 reactions, and 282 comments as of this writing.
In the video, ABS-CBN News Channel (ANC) host Karen Davila purportedly introduces Dr. Leachon as one of the developers of a new hypertension medication. Davila supposedly claims that this medicine can “lower hypertension within 24 hours.”
The script in the video closely resembles the AI-manipulated video of Dr. Willie Ong, which Rappler fact-checked on May 13, 2024.
The facts: Dr. Leachon has denied the claim that he developed or endorsed any hypertension medication. He was a former adviser of the National Task Force against COVID-19.
“I’m trying to inform my followers and other patients about this anomaly but it seems that we need to do something drastic with the media’s help,” Leachon said in a Viber message to Rappler on Monday, August 19.
The video in question was manipulated, using footage from ANC’s Headstart. In the original video, uploaded on May 6, 2024, Davila and Leachon discussed reports of alleged collusion between some physicians and pharmaceutical companies regarding prescription practices.
Leachon suggested that a certain pharmaceutical company offers luxury cars and other incentives to doctors in exchange for prescribing their products.
At no point in the video did Leachon and Davila discuss any new hypertension medication.
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Deepfake: Deepfake detection tool Sensity also found the video to be “suspicious” with a 99% confidence level.
“High confidence indicates that the detector has found definite signals of AI generation or manipulation. Minimum confidence for this detector is 50%,” Sensity noted.
A closer examination of the video reveals unnatural mouth movements and glitches, consistent with Sensity’s findings that the video was manipulated through “lipsync.”
The tool also flagged the faces of Davila and Leachon as “fake faces,” each with a 99% confidence level.
In recent months, Rappler has noticed a surge in the number of AI-manipulated videos to promote health products. – James Patrick Cruz/Rappler.com
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