MANILA, March 18 — Filipino single mother Mary Ann Eduarte postponed chemotherapy for breast cancer for several years and instead turned to nutrition falsely promoted on social media as a cure for the deadly disease. Ingested supplementary food.
They didn’t work, and the cancer spread to her lungs and bones.
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Eduarte is one of many Filipinos who have been fooled by medical misinformation flooding the social media platform, one of the most heavily used in the world.
A shortage of doctors, difficulty in accessing the archipelago’s hospitals, low health literacy, and fear of high medical costs have led many people suffering from chronic illnesses to seek alternative treatment online.
In recent years, AFP digital investigative journalists have seen an explosion in the amount of posts and paid ads promoting unproven treatments for cancer and other conditions.
This trend was accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which overwhelmed healthcare systems and left many people too scared to go to the hospital.
Eduarte, 47, who makes a living selling beauty products online, discovered a lump in her right breast during a self-examination in 2014.
She was advised to undergo a biopsy to find out if it was cancer, but she was so scared that she delayed having the surgery for two years.
Instead, she spends about 50,000 pesos (US$900) a month on nutritional supplements, such as drinks made from tropical fruits and barley grass, that she sees advertised as cancer treatments on Facebook and YouTube. spent.
Eduarte finally agreed to undergo a biopsy in 2016, which confirmed the tumor was malignant.
But she refused chemotherapy, fearing she would get sick and lose her hair, and continued taking supplements for three more years.
“I really believed they would destroy my cancer cells because that’s what the marketing said,” Eduarte told AFP from his home near Manila.
“They were posting testimonies of people being healed.”
After the cancer spread, Eduarte agreed to chemotherapy.
“I made the wrong decision,” she admitted.
“Those nutritional supplements actually cost more than if they had received standard treatment right away.”
“Our power has limits.”
Madonna Realyo, a medical oncologist at the Bicol Regional Hospital and Medical Center in the central Philippines, said misinformation online about cancer treatment was a “serious problem.”
“Five out of 10 patients I see ask me about something they’ve seen or read on the Internet, and 90 percent of the time, that information is wrong,” Rialyo said.
“Even if we give them the right information, it doesn’t mean they will listen to us or believe us.”
Cancer treatment costs can reach millions of pesos, leaving patients vulnerable to deceptive marketing of unproven products that claim to be cheaper.
Irene Antolin of the Philippine Breast Cancer Foundation says, “The reality is that when you are diagnosed with cancer, you end up paying a lot of money out of pocket.”
AFP has a global team of journalists who debunk misinformation as part of Facebook’s parent company Meta’s independent fact-checking program. Fact checkers from around 90 organizations, including news organizations, are checking his Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram posts.
AFP reports that many Facebook posts falsely promote products as natural cancer treatments, including one of the products used by Eduarte, “Doc Atoye’s Finest Guyabano Wine.” He has repeatedly exposed his mistakes.
The drink was featured in hundreds of posts and shared on its Facebook page with tens, and in some cases, hundreds of thousands of followers.
The Philippine Food and Drug Administration (FDA) tells AFP it will go after companies and individuals who falsely advertise their products online as there are still no guidelines to implement this provision of the 2009 law that established the Food and Drug Administration. He said he could not.
Instead, they issue warnings on their websites and social media pages.
“Our powers are limited,” FDA lawyer Pamela Sevilla told AFP.
Facebook owner Mehta’s advertising policy prohibits “promises or offers of unrealistic outcomes” for “health, weight loss, or economic opportunity.”
Advertisements for over-the-counter medicines must comply with licenses and approvals required by local law.
These ads can be removed from the platform if flagged, but posts that don’t directly violate Meta’s community standards but are rated false by third-party fact checkers like AFP , will be labeled as misinformation and demoted, making it less likely to appear in your news feed. .
However, when AFP checked Meta’s ad library, it found that ads for Doc Atoie’s Finest Guyabano Wine and several other products debunked by AFP were still in existence.
Silent due to lawsuit
The barrage of medical misinformation during the pandemic prompted Adam Smith, a Tagalog-speaking Melbourne doctor, to create a YouTube video identifying misleading ads and posts.
“I realized that so many people in the country believed that they could treat diseases with supplements and vitamins, and that was unbelievable to me,” Smith told AFP via Zoom. .
However, he quit after being hit with several lawsuits from companies that owned the products he was promoting.
“These companies and individuals are willing to use the Philippine judicial system to silence free speech and silence all criticism,” Smith said.
Eduarte, a cancer survivor, said she is now on a mission to educate others about the dangers of online misinformation.
“I’m telling you, I took these nutritional supplements… They didn’t really do anything to cure my illness,” she said.
