Deepfake videos of NHS doctors promoting supplements have been circulating on social media, raising concerns about medical misinformation and questions about where to pin liability.
Mounting deepfake videos of doctors have health professionals and digital health experts concerned about the spread of medical misinformation. Victims of impersonation have criticised the lax response from social media companies in combating the issue, calling them “useless” while attributing their indifference to preserving commercial interests.
This past April, Dr Karan Rangarajan, an NHS surgeon and established TikTok creator, took to the platform to warn his followers about a circulating deepfake video. The now-removed video features a deepfake of the doctor promoting a herbal supplement to treat symptoms associated with high cortisol.
“Feel tension and pain in your shoulders, that’s a sign of high cortisol. Is your hair thinning unexpectedly like mine did? That’s high cortisol too,” the deepfake purports before offering a “solution”.
“Just take two capsules of [moringa] every day. Right now, they’re running a spring sale where you can get it for half the price.”
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Dr Rajan, as he’s known to his 5.4 million followers, says he was shocked by how “scarily accurate” the deepfake looked and that it duped multiple viewers who messaged him for further guidance on the capsules.
Speaking to The Mirror, Dr Rajan expressed his concern for the medical wellbeing of social media users. He said: “It’s very worrying that someone has then actioned health advice based on a deepfake and they could come to harm.
“Who knows what’s in these herbal supplements, how regulated it is, what’s the purity and safety testing, where it was manufactured, contamination. God forbid someone becomes unwell or worse from taking these things.”
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Dr Gemma Newman (aka @plantpowerdoctor), another NHS doctor with 124k followers, had an almost identical experience. She sent out a warning to her followers in April when she was alerted to a deepfake video of herself – also promoting a ‘health’ supplement.
“The thing that bothers me the most is the emotional manipulation of the deepfake – trying to appeal to women’s insecurities about how they look, how they can feel confident and sexy – as if a supplement is going to do this,” Dr Newman told The Mirror.
Like Dr Rajan’s deepfake, Dr Newman’s digital doppelganger honed in on health insecurities and vulnerabilities in its sales pitch. According to Dr Rachael Kent, a leading researcher in digital culture and health and a senior lecturer at King’s College London: sensationalism sells.
Dr Kent explains that social media platforms are not neutral spaces but “commercial ecosystems” underlined by the rise of influencer culture. And that while social media platforms like TikTok, Meta and Instagram have misinformation policies in place, these policies are inherently at odds with their algorithms which amplify sensationalist claims and emotionally charged posts.
That means that it isn’t just supplement companies that stand to profit from these deepfake videos. “You have a conflict of interest,” says Dr Kent, “You have a platform that wants to generate profits from attention and visibility and virality and then you have misinformation which absolutely feeds into those profits and revenue streams.”
She continues: “Largely I think that [social media platforms] avoid intervention because it threatens their commercial interest.”
In a subsequent social post, Dr Rajan says TikTok, Instagram and Meta were “useless” in his attempts to get the deepfake video removed, prompting him to seek the advice of lawyers. While he was worried about public safety, Dr Rajan also feared he might be liable if the capsules did cause harm.
Dr Kent confirms that in Dr Rajan’s case, the primary liability would be with the seller and, as a victim of impersonation himself, he would not be liable. She emphasises, however, that liability can only extend to whoever created and disseminated the deepfake if they are identifiable, which is another question.
Furthermore, despite hosting and potentially amplifying the deepfake content, Dr Kent says the liability of social media companies is “more contested”. She argues platforms should be recognised and regulated as health infrastructures and need to be more transparent about what content they do and do not amplify.
“I physically don’t have the time to message all these people. But I made it a point to spend several hours over several days responding to every single DM asking about this [supplement] and whether it was me or the deepfake because it was really important from a safety point of view and to protect public interest,” Dr Rajan shared.
TikTok banned the account that posted Dr Rajan’s video in April 2025 for breaching impersonation and misinformation policies. Meta also removed the deepfake content from their systems.
However, that does little to stop new accounts from popping up in the future or address and places a new burden on doctors seeking to educate on social media to protect the public.
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