Sixty-two people died Aug. 9 when a plane bound for Sao Paulo’s Guarulhos International Airport crashed in the city of Vinhedo. After the crash, multiple posts on social media shared a video of a cancer researcher identified as "Dr. Leo Ferreira," who they claimed had been killed in the crash.The victim is misidentified. The video is of researcher Leonardo Ramos Ferreira, who is an assistant professor of microbiology and immunology at the Medical University of South Carolina and is alive. José Roberto Leonel Ferreira, a radiologist and retired professor at Brazil's State University of Western Paraná, was killed in the plane crash.
An account on X, formerly Twitter, of Leonardo Ramos Ferreira describing his research into treating tumours. The post claimed this Leo Ferreira was "on that plane," that his "plane just exploded" and that if his researched worked, "it basically ends cancer."
About eight hours after posting the claim, the poster the oncology scientist in the video was not the radiologist who died in the crash. The account promised to take the post with the inaccurate information down "later this evening."
More than 24 hours later, the post with the false information was still live and had been viewed more than four million times. The post correcting the information had been viewed about 50,000 times.
The video and corresponding false claim was picked up by , including one from an account appearing to be from Canada, which said Leo Ferreira's work "could prove a 90% remission rate" and asked, "If Narco Cartels have blown up planes to protect themselves … why wouldn’t Big Pharma?"
Right-wing commentator Alex Jones, who has faced extensive legal trouble for promoting conspiracy theories, shared that post, writing
Rating: False
The ATR-72 turboprop plane, was bound for Sao Paulo from Cascavel, in Brazil's state of Parana, when it crashed in a residential area. they recovered the remains of everyone on board.
The cause of the crash is currently unknown, but authorities are analyzing the black boxes containing voice recordings and flight data to help identify what caused the loss of control.
After the plane crash, the Western Paraná State University that nine of the people on board were teachers, doctors and former students.
The Associated Press in Brazil Parana’s medical council has said eight doctors were on board and at least two of the doctors were headed for an oncology conference.
One of the victims of the crash was professor and radiologist José Roberto Leonel Ferreira who retired three months ago and also owned his own imaging centre. In posted by the Brazilian College of Radiology, he is identified as Dr. Leonel Ferreira.
A photo included with the obituary, as well as statements and other photos posted on the company's , show that Dr. Leonel Ferreira is clearly not the person in the video posted on X with the misinformation.
The man in the video is Leonardo Ramos Ferreira, an of microbiology and immunology at the Medical University of South Carolina.
The clip shared online is part of a posted by the university in April.
In an email to Ïã¸ÛÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÒÅÆ×ÊÁÏ, Leonardo Ferreira confirmed he is "alive and well working in my laboratory at the Hollings Cancer Center, Medical University of South Carolina."
He said he was thankful for all the worried people who reached out to make sure he was alive.
"My graduate student this morning in the lab forwarded me an email of someone asking him if I was alive and then we saw on Twitter that Alex Jones and others had posted on Twitter/X about me being in a plane crash and other messages about this event started coming in," he said in the email Monday.
The posts on X also misrepresent Leonardo Ferreira's research work. A form of immune cell therapy, or T-cell therapy, is in humans to treat certain cancers, and his mentioning of "up to 90 per cent remission rates" in the was referring to those therapies.
His research includes work on developing an immune cell therapy, similar to what is used to treat blood cancers, that could work on solid tumours.
He said he discovered that a subset of cells can be engineered to recognize tumour cells and kill them in a Petri dish and control the growth of solid tumours in humanized mouse models.
Leonardo Ferreira said clinical trials based on his approach have not started, "so it is not rigorously proven in patients yet."
Sources
Claims on X can be found (, ), () and ()
Aug. 12 post on X acknowledging the original post was untrue ()
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Facebook photos posted by Centro De Imagem Dr. Leonel Ferreira ()
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