FORMER CHIEF MEDICAL Officer of Ireland Tony Holohan has said that health claims spread online which appear to cite his views have “nothing to do with me whatsoever”.

Claims wrongly attributed to the former CMO have appeared on a fake RTÉ news website, and suggest that someone undergoing a “vascular cleansing” can live to be 100 years old.

“After such vascular cleansing, high blood pressure disappears in older people — and with it, nine supposedly ‘incurable’ diseases!” reads a headline on a site that uses the RTÉ logo, as well as a similar font and site layout.

No such headline has been published by RTÉ.

The fake site appears to follow a well-known pattern: social media posts appear to show headlines or news stories featuring celebrities. Users who click on these are then sent to a fake site: often RTÉ. The Irish Times, The Irish Independent, and The Journal have all also been faked previously. 

These sites often try to either capture personal information about the users, or lure them into a financial scam. In cases of health claims, however, the purpose is usually to sell a product with dubious health claims. 

These sites can be recognised by having different URLs than the real websites they mimic.

“According to Professor Dr Tony Holohan,” the story begins, “the secret to a long life lies in healthy blood vessels: if they are clean and strong, we can live to be 100 years old or older—in full health.

“The cardiologist is convinced that everyone can cleanse their blood vessels and improve their overall health.”

Holohan is a medical doctor, but not a cardiologist. Instead, he specialises in public health, most notably when he chaired the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET) to limit the impact of Covid-19.

Similar claims about him appeared to have spread online last year, also featuring Miriam O’Callaghan who called them out as fake. O’Callaghan’s Instagram post about the story noted she had previously taken legal action against Facebook’s parent company to stop the spread of fake stories about her.

This story, in which O’Callaghan appeared to interview Holohan, appears to have taken on a life of its own outside the fake RTÉ website, again appearing on Facebook. 

A screenshot from the fake site was shared on a Facebook page for “Paddy’s Powerful Bottle”, an Irish company selling a drink they tout as helping to flush toxins out of the body and fight arthritis, as well as saying it “may prevent dementia”.

On 23 March, the page posted a screenshot of the fake RTÉ page with the message “Some doctors saying the same as me”.

The makers of Paddy’s Powerful Bottle also claimed that the EU was enacting legislation to censor their health claims, including their slogan “Sick of Aches and Pains? Try this!”, in a video published just hours after they posted the fake Holohan story.

“It’s not the first time I’ve seen something like this attributed to me,” Tony Holohan told The Journal. “I’m saying in absolute and clear terms that this has nothing to do with me whatsoever.”

Last year, the Irish Hospital Consultants Association (IHCA) warned that real doctors had reported that their images and names had been used in misleading online adverts promoting nonsensical medical products such as oral drops for weight loss.

The Health Products Regulatory Authority (HPRA) has also warned about dubious social media posts advertising medicines, medical devices and cosmetics featuring the agency’s logo.

Like Holohan, the two groups have encouraged people to be vigilant about medical advertisements, saying these products promoted under false pretences could pose a real risk.

“I’m concerned that many people will be taken in by these bogus claims quite apart from the fact that they’re attributed to me,” Holohan said.

“They could be causing genuine harm.” 

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