A Michael J Fox death hoax that started online over the weekend, spurring widespread devastation and anger among fans, picked up speed on Monday and Tuesday as more news sites reported on the story.
The news first appeared on a website closely resembling Yahoo.com, and it was not long before a screenshot of the article was being widely shared across social media, The Hollywood Life noted. By Tuesday morning the story had reached People magazine.
What made the report convincing was the detail in which it went to describe how Fox was admitted into Cedars-Sinai Medical Center on Aug. 2 with a bad case of pneumonia and how he later died.
Closer inspection of the URL, yahoonews-us.com, revealed that the website was fake but an outpouring of grief flooded social media before the news could be dismissed.
While some death hoaxes are obviously far-fetched, this particular one was a little too believable as Fox is a longtime sufferer of Parkinson's disease.
He was officially diagnosed with the illness in 1992 but only chose to go public with the news six years later, The Hollywood Life reported.
Fighting the disease inspired the actor to reach out to others going through similar experiences and he later decided to establish the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research to raise money for research of the disease.
His efforts have proved to be successful, with the organization going on to become one of the largest nonprofit funders of Parkinson's disease research.
To date, the foundation has invested over $650 million in research and last month it pledged $7.7 million to fund over 39 projects in 12 countries, The Express reported.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.