A smiling, white-haired man rests his chin on his hand. Over the photo, a “retired doctor” tells readers to avoid doctors and hospitals, learn herbal medicine instead, and treat almost every medicine as a poison.
Advice that seems to come from a doctor who has seen the system from the inside is persuasive. It can push a sick person away from care that works. Below is the post that carried it.
Social Media Posts
A Facebook page shared the following Tamil text over the photo. In English, it read: “As a retired doctor, I can honestly say one thing: unless you have a serious accident, the best way to live healthily into old age is to avoid doctors and hospitals. Instead, you should learn about nutrition, herbal medicine, and other natural healing methods, or, if you are lucky enough to find one, use the services of a naturopathic physician. Almost all drugs are toxic; they are designed only to treat the symptoms of disease, not to cure a person completely.” The words were credited to “Dr. Allan Greenberg, MD”.
Many other users shared the same image and text on social media.
Fact-Check
The same quote has been circulating online since 2002
This is not a new claim. A Remedyspot forum post dated 25 December 2002 carried the same message under the name “Dr. Allan Greenberg, M.D.” It was a forwarded email, with a note saying that forwarding it did not imply endorsement. The text later reappeared on Facebook and Instagram. Remedyspot | Facebook | Instagram
The 2002 version was longer. It called vaccines highly dangerous and most surgery unnecessary. The Tamil post dropped those lines, but the message is the same: distrust doctors, drugs, and hospitals.
No primary source for the quote has been found
In July 2015, a discussion thread on the forum Metabunk asked where the quote came from. It appeared often on alternative health websites under the name Dr. Alan or Allan Greenberg. The person who started the thread could not find the source, and later replies produced none.
The words have carried Greenberg’s name online since 2002. We found no interview, article or publication showing that he said them.
The man in the photo is an architect, not a doctor
The photo is the post’s biggest problem. An online search showed that it is a portrait of Allan Greenberg, an American architect.
The University of Notre Dame’s Driehaus Prize page says he was the first American architect to win the Driehaus Prize for Classical Architecture (2006). The US State Department’s Diplomatic Reception Rooms website says he designed all 24 rooms on the building’s seventh floor. A University of Delaware profile says he was born in Johannesburg and studied at Yale. The Washingtonian reported in 2014 that Architectural Digest had placed him on its AD100 list for a third year.
His Amazon author page describes him as an American architect and uses the same photo as the post.
The photo therefore cannot be described as a photo of a doctor. We also found no reliable evidence that this Allan Greenberg made the statement.
Other men named Greenberg are not the source
The name appears as both “Alan” and “Allan”, and several people share it. Alan C. Greenberg was a Wall Street financier who became chief executive of Bear Stearns, according to the Horatio Alger Association. Alan E. Greenberg is a doctor and epidemiologist at George Washington University, with an appointment in its medical school. We found no evidence that either man made the statement.
A Maryland doctor with the same name is a possible link, but it is unproven
We then looked for another Alan Greenberg who may have used these words. An archived copy of a website that no longer exists, detoxscience.net, described an Alan Greenberg who practised conventional medicine for years and later moved into natural medicine. He is not the man in the photo.
Public records show that a physician of that name existed. The Winter 2001 newsletter of the Maryland Board of Physician Quality Assurance lists “Alan S. Greenberg, M.D.”, a neurologist in Jarrettsville, whose licence was summarily suspended on 24 May 2000. The board found that he was “not competent to practice medicine”. Licences can be checked in the board’s public practitioner search.
The Polish fact-checker Demagog examined the same quote on 14 November 2022. It reported that an Alan Greenberg who practised as a naturopath received his medical licence in 1970 and lost it after about 30 years, and that the photo belongs to the architect. Taiwan’s Cofacts community called the quote a long-circulating fabrication and said the doctor was not real. The Maryland record shows that a licensed doctor of that name did exist.
The link between Alan S. Greenberg and the quote is still circumstantial. It rests on the name, the “M.D.” label, the dates, and his later work in natural medicine. We could not open the board’s current record to see whether the suspension became a revocation, and we found no primary source in which he wrote or spoke these words. We therefore cannot say that he said them.
The medical claims in the post are not supported by evidence
Even if the quote were traced to a real doctor, the advice would still need to stand on evidence. It does not.
Medicines are tested for safety, and many treat the cause of disease
The World Health Organization (WHO) says essential medicines are those that “effectively and safely treat the priority health-care needs of populations”. Nor do medicines only treat symptoms. Direct-acting antiviral drugs can cure more than 95% of people with hepatitis C, usually in 12 to 24 weeks. Global efforts against tuberculosis, which is treated with antibiotics, have saved an estimated 83 million lives since 2000.
Some medicines control a disease rather than cure it. People with type 1 diabetes need insulin injections for survival, WHO says. That is not a failure of medicine.
Vaccines are trialled, monitored, and have saved lives
WHO says vaccines go through several phases of clinical trials and that their safety continues to be monitored afterwards. Like any medicine, they can cause side effects, which is why an independent WHO expert committee reviews safety reports. A WHO-led study in The Lancet estimated that vaccines against 14 diseases saved at least 154 million lives in 50 years.
Sri Lanka has its own example. WHO verified in July 2020 that the country had eliminated measles and rubella, with the last local measles case in May 2016.
Surgery and check-ups save lives, but doctors also warn against overuse
WHO says surgical and anaesthesia care treats conditions “from cancers and injuries to complications of pregnancy and infections”. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says check-ups, screening tests and vaccines help people stay well and catch problems early. Screening can find precancerous polyps so they can be removed before they turn into cancer.
The post’s caution has a grain of truth: not every test is needed. The Choosing Wisely campaign notes that “more care is not always better care”. The answer is to ask questions, not to avoid doctors.
Natural does not mean safe, and testing is what makes a remedy a medicine
The post treats “natural” medicine as the safe choice. The US National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health says natural does not always mean safer or better and cites kava, which may cause severe liver damage. Plants are not the problem, though. Artemisinin, a malaria drug from traditional Chinese herbal medicine, won a Nobel Prize in 2015 after it was tested. The difference is evidence.
Turning away from treatment for unproven alternatives can be deadly
A US study in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute compared 280 patients who refused conventional treatment and chose only alternative medicine with 560 matched patients who received it. Across four common cancers, they had about 2.5 times the risk of dying. The risk was about 5.7 times higher for breast cancer, 4.6 times for colorectal cancer and 2.2 times for lung cancer. For prostate cancer, the difference was not significant.
The study was observational, so it cannot prove cause on its own. But its lead author, Yale’s Dr. Skyler Johnson, said the therapies were not themselves causing death; the harm came from replacing effective treatment. His colleague Dr. James Yu said complementary medicine can help alongside prescribed therapy.
Surgical oncologist Dr. David Gorski noted that the study’s limits probably made the harm look smaller, not larger. The US National Cancer Institute’s Dr. Jeffrey White warned that patients who let cancer advance while trying unconventional approaches can lose the chance of effective treatment.
We found no reliable medical evidence that avoiding doctors and hospitals is the best way to live a long life.
A Sri Lankan Indigenous medicine expert warned against reading the post literally
We asked Dr. L. P. A. Karunathilaka, a former Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Indigenous Medicine, University of Colombo, about the claim. He said medicines are given to treat the damage a disease has caused in the body, not to harm it.
Even a safe substance can become a poison in a large enough dose, he explained, so every medicine has a safety margin. For some it is very narrow, and a small extra amount can cause serious harm. Natural medicine is no different: it too can cause side effects if the disease is not identified and treated in the right way and dose.
He said the claim could not be rejected entirely, but people had to understand it correctly and seek treatment accordingly. His comments support a limited point: medicines carry risks when misused. They do not support avoiding doctors and hospitals.
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Conclusion
The post credited the words to “Dr. Allan Greenberg, MD” but mixed up several people. The man in the photo is Allan Greenberg, an American architect, as confirmed by the Driehaus Prize page, the US State Department’s Diplomatic Reception Rooms site, and his own Amazon author page. He is not a doctor, and there is no reliable evidence that he said these words.
The quote has carried a doctor’s name online since at least 2002, and a neurologist named Alan S. Greenberg was suspended by the Maryland medical board in May 2000. No primary source shows that he said it, so it cannot be attributed to him with certainty.
The advice is unsupported too. WHO and the CDC describe medicines, vaccines, surgery, and check-ups as core parts of health care, and Yale and US National Cancer Institute doctors warn against replacing proven cancer treatment with alternatives. Dr. Karunathilaka said medicines must be used correctly, but he did not support avoiding doctors.
The post is therefore misleading: the photo is wrong, the source is unverified, and the health advice has no reliable scientific basis.
Title: Allan Greenberg ‘Avoid Doctors’ Quote: Photo Shows an Architect, Source Unverified
Fact Check By: Suji Shabeedharan
Result: Missing Context
