Altered videos appear to show Wolf Blitzer, Dr. Mehmet Oz promoting diabetes cure

Researchers continue to pursue a cure for diabetes, but a recent social media post suggests one already exists — and is being promoted by television personalities. 

"An American doctor said he will pay $1 million to anyone who could not cure diabetes with his new drug," CNN news anchor Wolf Blitzer appears to say in a video shared Nov. 6 on Facebook. "The new medicine normalizes blood sugar levels after the first use."

The video then cuts to Dr. Mehmet Oz, former Republican Pennsylvania U.S. Senate candidate and former host of "The Dr. Oz Show," who appears to say: "I guarantee you that your blood sugar levels will return to normal in three days. All symptoms will disappear within two weeks and diabetes will never return. One hundred thousand Americans have already tried the medicine on themselves and got rid of diabetes."

This 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 and Instagram.)

The first clue that this video was altered: the alleged audio of Blitzer and Oz talking doesn’t sync with their mouths’ movements. 

The Blitzer clip appears to have come from a September episode of "The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer," in which he discussed an effort by one of former President Donald Trump’s co-defendants to move a pending criminal case to federal court. 

We couldn’t find the Oz clip, but we also found no evidence that he’s promoting a diabetes cure.

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stated on October 11, 2018

If you get a flu shot, you're "poisoning yourself."

But in 2019, Oz posted on Facebook that social media users "might have seen ads for my ‘diabetes breakthrough’ promising to cure diabetes and regular blood sugar in two weeks." 

"Friends and viewers wanted to know if it was legit," Oz wrote. "It wasn’t."

We rate claims these videos show Blitzer and Oz promoting a diabetes cure False.