FACT CHECK: Viral Image Claims To Show Technology Able To Diagnose And Cure Diseases In Minutes
A post shared on Facebook purportedly shows images of MedBeds, a type of body scanner that can “pick up any disease and cure it, in 2.5 minutes.”
“The Deep State keeps all the Goodies to themselves,” the caption reads.
Verdict: False
No body scanner able to diagnose and cure every disease in under three minutes currently exists. The images in the post come from the 2013 movie “Elysium.”
Fact Check:
The Facebook post features a collage of images that appear to show a young girl lying in a body scanner similar to an MRI machine that can allegedly scan “your muscles, skin, diagnose disease, all the way down to the micron level of your blood” and “pick up any disease and cure it, in 2.5 minutes.” One image supposedly shows the girl diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, while another shows the scanner reading “100% clear.”
“MedBeds have Artificial Intelligence (AI). The AI Is the computer. It operates kind of like an MRI only with a lot more intelligence,” text in the image reads. (RELATED: Did Hawaii Purchase 30 Suicide Assistance Pods?)
However, the photos of the alleged MedBeds actually come from the 2013 movie “Elysium” starring Matt Damon and Jodie Foster. The movie is set in the future where “the very wealthy live on a man-made space station while the rest of the population resides on a ruined Earth,” according to the film’s description on IMDb. In the film, the wealthy have access to “Med-Bays” capable of identifying and curing any disease, similar to what the Facebook post claims about MedBeds. The stills of the fictional “Med-Bays” that the Facebook post features can be seen in a clip of “Elysium” available on YouTube.
Check Your Fact found no evidence that MedBeds or any similar machines are in use or actually exist. Modern-day technology does not currently have the ability to diagnose and cure every medical ailment in minutes, according to Medical Plastics News.
While the technology shown in the film does not yet exist, the Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE Competition challenged teams to invent technology able to diagnose 13 medical conditions without a health care professional, per the competition’s website. The winning invention, the DxtER, was “designed as a device to prove the concept that illnesses can be diagnosed and monitored in the comfort of one’s own home by consumers without any medical training,” according to Basil Leaf Technologies.