PeakMetrics / Fact Checks
Health & medicine fact checks
Explore claims publishers have checked about health & medicine. Read their original ratings and follow the evidence.
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Search by text or image13,677 published reviews in this topic
De cada 500.000 embarazos, 100.000 acaban en una interrupción voluntaria
Publisher’s rating: Verdadero
During an Atresmedia debate, Pablo Casado said that 100,000 of every 500,000 pregnancies end in a voluntary termination. Newtral’s article quotes that statement and labels it true, directing readers to data for its explanation. The supplied excerpt does not include those data or describe how the claim was checked, so it does not support a fuller account of the evidence or methods behind that assessment.
OTC medicines, including Vicks Action-500 and D-Cold, can cause strokes.
Publisher’s rating: FALSE
Child called Michael has stomach cancer and mother looking for money to fund his surgery in appeal shared on Facebook
Publisher’s rating: Fake
Eating eggs and banana at the same time will kill a man in five minutes.
Publisher’s rating: FALSE
Claim: Teeth whitening natural tips viral video
Publisher’s rating: Fact Crescendo Rating: False
Fact Crescendo investigated a viral video claiming that a mixture of ginger, salt and lemon juice could whiten stained yellow teeth. Its headline promised a change in two minutes, while the instructions in the video reportedly said to use the mixture twice a week. The review also noted that the before-and-after images showed two different people’s teeth, rather than documenting a transformation in one person. The review describes searching for studies or medical guidance supporting the mixture as a whitening treatment. It says it found none. It distinguishes that absence of whitening evidence from ginger’s reported gum-related properties: the article says ginger may help with gum problems but that it found no medical study showing it whitens teeth. The reviewer also sought comments from two clinicians: Dr. Deepa, an assistant professor in the natural and yoga medicine department at a government Siddha and Ayurveda medical college and hospital in Chennai, and dentist M.S. Ravi of MSR Dental Hospital in T. Nagar, Chennai. Both clinicians warned about potential harm rather than endorsing the recipe. Deepa said the ingredients could increase tooth sensitivity and erode enamel with continued use. Ravi called the whitening claim false, warned that lemon juice can damage enamel, and said there was no medical study showing ginger whitens teeth. On the video’s images, he also said they depicted different people’s teeth. The review concluded that the video’s promised whitening effect was misleading and that the mixture could harm teeth; it did not report a controlled test of the recipe.
Vitamin B17 in apple seeds cures cancer
Publisher’s rating: Incorrect
The supplied excerpts concern the claim that vitamin B17 in apple seeds cures cancer. They are related reporting, not the original Africa Check review. The passages describe a book called “World Without Cancer” and attribute to it the assertion that a cancer cure comes from “apricot and apple seeds.” They also recount a claimed laboratory effect: one passage says B17 supposedly killed cancer cells in tests on animal tissue. These are descriptions of claims, not evidence in the excerpts that eating apple seeds cures cancer in people. The excerpts do not provide clinical-trial results, patient outcomes, or enough detail to assess the laboratory tests they mention. One passage itself identifies a safety qualification: it describes a report of a man dying after eating almost a cup of apple seeds, while saying the case “never has been authenticated.” The other warns that excessive intake can be harmful. Thus, the material supplied neither demonstrates a cancer cure nor supports treating apple seeds or laetrile as a safe cancer treatment; it is too incomplete to assess the underlying research in detail.
Can one binge make you fat?
Publisher’s rating: No. While regular overeating leads to fat gain, a lot of the weight you gain from just one binge will simply be water, especially if your starting glycogen stores are low and your food rich in carbs.
El hospital Johns Hopkins de Baltimore ha dicho que la quimioterapia es la gran equivocación médica
Publisher’s rating: Falso
The claim concerned a widely shared post alleging that Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore had declared chemotherapy “la gran equivocación médica” (“the great medical mistake”). Newtral reports that the hospital itself denied the claim in an email to the outlet: its communications office said, “La historia es falsa y ha estado circulando la Internet desde hace ya algún tiempo.” The review traces the circulating story to a 2013 item and says the hospital’s Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center had not issued a statement casting doubt on chemotherapy. Instead, Newtral reports, the hospital’s website had warned about a false cancer-related email dating to April 2009. The review says it checked that the claims in the email were the same as those circulating again. The hospital material described in the review supports a conclusion opposite to the post’s allegation: it says traditional treatments including chemotherapy work, while acknowledging that they do not work for every patient or may stop working. The review also reports that the hospital described chemotherapy as killing cancer cells with “una selectividad sorprendente” and said limiting common, temporary side effects is part of treatment. These qualifications do not amount to the claimed rejection of chemotherapy.
Es falso que hayan encontrado “la causa” de la fibromialgia
Publisher’s rating: Falso
Pradhan Mantri Surakshit Matritva Abhiyan offers more than 1.16 crore antenatal check-ups have been conducted as of January.
Publisher’s rating: TRUE
The claim concerns the number of antenatal check-ups conducted under the Pradhan Mantri Surakshit Matritva Abhiyan (PMSMA), not antenatal care across all programmes. FACTLY identifies it as the third of four claims about PMSMA and records the claim as “more than 1.16 crore antenatal check-ups have been conducted as of January.” To check it, the review cites a Lok Sabha answer from July 2018. That answer said that, since PMSMA began in 2016, more than 1.35 crore antenatal check-ups had been conducted under the programme “till date.” This figure exceeds the 1.16 crore threshold in the claim. FACTLY therefore judged the claim TRUE. The cited figure is a programme-wide cumulative total, rather than a count limited to January. The excerpt does not specify which January the claim refers to, but the later cumulative figure cited by the review supports the stated threshold.
More than 6 lakh high risk pregnancies identified under Pradhan Mantri Surakshit Matritva Abhiyan
Publisher’s rating: TRUE
The claim concerns the number of high-risk cases identified through PMSMA since the programme began in 2016. FACTLY’s review describes identification and follow-up of high-risk pregnancies as a critical component of the scheme, then compares the claim’s threshold of more than 6 lakh with the figure it reports: over 7 lakh women with high-risk conditions identified since the programme’s inception. That reported figure exceeds the claimed threshold. The review’s wording is slightly more specific than the claim: it reports women identified as having “high risk conditions,” while the claim describes “high risk pregnancies.” The article treats these figures as addressing the same measure and concludes that the claim is supported. In the supplied excerpt, however, it does not identify the underlying record or provide a separate calculation for this particular figure, so the evidence available here is the review’s stated count and its comparison with the claim. The article places this claim among four claims about PMSMA drawn from a government infographic on the 48-months portal. Its treatment of the high-risk figure is distinct from its checks of the other claims: the excerpt gives a since-inception figure for high-risk conditions, rather than a dated count or a detailed account of how cases were counted.
Pradhan Mantri Surakshit Matritva Abhiyan offers more than 12900 health facilities across all state/UT under
Publisher’s rating: TRUE
The claim is about the number of facilities offering services through the Pradhan Mantri Surakshit Matritva Abhiyan (PMSMA), not about how many antenatal check-ups had been conducted or the programme’s broader goals. FACTLY assessed this as the second of four claims in an infographic about PMSMA. For its count, the review cites data shared in the Lok Sabha in July 2018: since the programme began in 2016, free quality antenatal services were being provided at 13,047 PMSMA sites across the country. It also reports that the programme website showed 13,222 facilities on 8 April 2019. Both figures exceed the claim’s threshold of 12,900. FACTLY’s stated conclusion uses the earlier figure, describing more than 13,000 centres as offering PMSMA services as of July 2018 and judging the claim TRUE. The evidence therefore supports the claimed facility count, though the excerpt does not separately enumerate facilities by state or Union Territory.
Pradhan Mantri Surakshit Matritva Abhiyan launched to ensure good health of mother and child.
Publisher’s rating: UNVERIFIED
FACTLY examines a claim about the purpose of the Pradhan Mantri Surakshit Matritva Abhiyan (PMSMA): that it was launched to ensure the good health of mother and child. The review reports that it checked the programme’s stated aims against information on its official website. That information describes PMSMA as a Ministry of Health and Family Welfare programme offering free antenatal care to pregnant women on the ninth of each month, with a minimum package of services for women in their second or third trimesters at designated government facilities. (S1: “According to the official website, ‘the PMSMA has been launched by the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare (MoHFW), Government of India. The program aims to provide assured, comprehensive and quality antenatal care, free of cost, universally to all pregnant women on the 9th of every month. PMSMA guarantees a minimum package of antenatal care services to women in their 2nd/3rd trimesters of pregnancy at designated government health facilities’.”) The review further says the programme envisages improving the quality and coverage of antenatal care, including diagnostic and counselling services. It does not treat the broad statement about ensuring maternal and child health as a specific, independently measurable outcome; instead, it characterizes the wording as vague and as expressing the programme’s goal. On that basis, it marks this claim UNVERIFIED. The excerpt does not report outcome data demonstrating whether the programme improved the health of mothers or children. (S1: “As per the official website, the PMSMA envisages improvement in the quality and coverage of Antenatal Care (ANC) including diagnostics and counselling services”; S1: “However, the claim is vague and it states the goal of the program. Hence, the claim remains UNVERIFIED.”)
香蕉燉冰糖可治療咳嗽
Publisher’s rating: 錯誤
The review investigated a circulating message that claimed banana with rock sugar was specifically for treating coughs and would work in ten minutes. The message described cutting bananas into pieces, adding crushed rock sugar, steaming the mixture for about ten minutes, and eating it after it cooled. The review assessed whether this food remedy could treat coughs, rather than whether bananas could be part of an ordinary diet. (The source describes the claim as: “通訊軟體流傳訊息如下：「香蕉加這個，專門治咳嗽，10分鐘就搞定…」「去市場買兩根香蕉切成小塊。然後放入一塊冰糖，冰糖要用搗蒜的罐子敲碎，和香蕉一塊放入碗中…然後蒸，大約10分鐘即可，放溫了吃就行了。」”) To assess the treatment claim, the review consulted two physicians: Fang Lijuan, an otolaryngologist at Cathay General Hospital, and Ye Ruiru, a family medicine physician at Shuang Ho Hospital. Fang explained that cough can arise from different causes, including infections and conditions such as postnasal drip or gastroesophageal reflux, and said the cause should be identified before treatment. The review therefore treats cough as a symptom with varied causes, not a single condition that this recipe could be assumed to address. (The source reports: “咳嗽大概可分成「感染性咳嗽」和「慢性咳嗽」等。感染性咳嗽是病毒感染、細菌感染等原因所導致；慢性咳嗽則有鼻涕倒流、胃食道逆流等等因素。咳嗽是症狀而非病因，如果病患有咳嗽症狀，還是要找出病因再進行治療。”) Ye noted that banana contains compounds that might have some anti-inflammatory or antibacterial effects, and that a small number of studies had suggested bananas might ease some inflammation or cough symptoms; however, the source says this would require further study. Ye also emphasized that those ingredients are present in limited amounts and that the banana-and-sugar preparation is high in sugar. Fang said the food does not treat disease and that eating banana with rock sugar in quantity may increase stomach acid and provoke reflux. The review’s conclusion is that the recipe should not be relied on as cough treatment; it does not claim that research has ruled out every possible effect of banana. (The source states: “因此有少數研究指出香蕉可以緩解部分發炎、咳嗽的症狀，但這些都還需要進一步研究。” and “香蕉的成分也許確實有些許功效，但畢竟相關成分的含量少，而且香蕉和冰糖一起燉時含有高糖分，容易產生痰咳，因此不建議用「冰糖燉香蕉」來治療咳嗽。”)
Ensuring timely check-ups under Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana
Publisher’s rating: MISLEADING
FACTLY examined the claim that Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana (PMMVY) ensures timely check-ups. Its review describes the scheme’s eligibility conditions and how payments are tied to meeting them. One condition requires a woman to have received at least one antenatal check-up after six months of pregnancy; the other conditions concern early pregnancy registration and registration of the birth and the child’s vaccination. The review says payments are made in three installments depending on whether the beneficiary meets the criteria. That requirement, the review concludes, mandates only one check-up after six months of pregnancy. It does not require continuity of check-ups. This distinction is central to the assessment: a single check-up is a condition for eligibility, but that alone does not establish that the scheme ensures timely, ongoing check-ups. The review also notes that almost all the criteria were similar to those in the earlier Indira Gandhi Matritva Sahyog Yojana. On the basis of the one-check-up requirement and the absence of a continuity requirement, FACTLY judged the claim that PMMVY ensures timely check-ups to be misleading.
Children in the south Bronx are suffering from the highest rates of childhood asthma in the country.
Publisher’s rating: Mostly True