Fabricated CNN clip used to promote fake diabetes cure

A social media post claimed that a leading drug manufacturer violently assailed an antivaccine activist.

"Dr. Barbara O’Neill has been attacked by representatives of Pfizer," CNN news anchor Anderson Cooper appears to say in a Dec. 13 Facebook video. "They set her car on fire in an attempt to stop the spread of her antidiabetic method." The video then cut to footage of firefighters rushing towards a burning car.

Health officials in the Australian state of New South Wales in 2019 banned O’Neill, an unregistered Australian health practitioner, from offering health services after an investigation determined her treatments risked people’s health.

The post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads.)

It is the latest in a series of social media claims PolitiFact has checked that paint O’Neill as being corruptly targeted by drug companies or governments over what they falsely purport to be her medical cure discoveries. But these claims are unfounded.

This post’s video does not show a real CNN newscast. Cooper’s lip movements are not synchronized with the video’s narration, signaling that the video has been digitally manipulated.

The burning car video clip was posted on YouTube in February. The video’s caption said it was from Brick Township, New Jersey. We geolocated the video to confirm that the incident occurred  there.

The Facebook post also said an embedded link would take users to a video that reveals a cure for diabetes. But the post did not contain a link for more information.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other experts say diabetes has no cure.

A 2019 investigation by the New South Wales Health Care Complaints Commission found that O’Neill was spreading health misinformation that "has huge potential to have a detrimental effect on the health of individuals as Mrs. O’Neill discourages mainstream treatment for cancer, antibiotics and vaccinations." An August report by The Guardian, a British news outlet with U.S. operations, found that O’Neill’s likeness has been widely used to promote online health scams.

In its own fact-check about similar scams, Agence France-Presse reported that O'Neill's spouse, Michael O'Neill, said O’Neill "does not claim to be a medical doctor and does not promote ‘wonder’ cures": "Unfortunately," the article quoted Michael O’Neill saying, "There are a lot of unethical people using Barbara's good name to sell products that she does not recommend, and in some cases, they are just outright scams."

We rate the claim that CNN reported that representatives from Pfizer set O’Neill’s car on fire to stop the spread of her antidiabetic method False.