Disinformation is Bad for Your Health
Misinformation is when someone unintentionally spreads incorrect information without meaning to deceive. Disinformation is false or misleading information designed and spread for the purpose of deception. Unfortunately, the American public is currently facing a tsunami of health disinformation, sowing confusion and distrust that scientists have characterized as “unprecedented, alarming and an imminent threat to public health”.
The acceleration of health-related disinformation by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the Trump administration was anticipated by the more than 75 Nobel laureates, 80 health organizations, 15,000 physicians (including 400 from North Carolina), and members of Kennedy’s own family who publicly opposed his nomination for Health and Human Services Secretary due to his longstanding anti-vaccine activism, lack of scientific expertise, and long history of promoting (and profiting from) pseudoscience and conspiracy theories.
As feared, in the months since his appointment, Kennedy has elevated anti-vaccine activists, conspiracy theorists, and individuals lacking any medical, scientific or public health experience to positions at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration. He has also fired, furloughed and reassigned thousands of HHS staff while promoting disinformation about COVID, fluoride, vaccines, Hepatitis B, seed oils, autism, Americans’ health, measles, peer reviewed medical journals, mRNA vaccines, stem cell treatment, antidepressants, acetaminophen, and more.
In response, nine prior CDC directors, six prior surgeons general and more than 1,000 HHS employees have joined a growing bipartisan chorus of voices calling for Kennedy’s resignation, removal or impeachment, describing his actions to slash health budgets, suppress scientific data, purge government websites, dismantle the vaccine regulatory system, politicize advisory committees, and actively spread disinformation as “bewildering”, “rash, divorced from science, and perilous to Americans’ health,” and an “absolute failure of leadership.”
Medical ethicist Arthur Caplan characterized Kennedy’s September press conference on autism as “the saddest display of a lack of evidence, rumors, recycling old myths, lousy advice, outright lies and dangerous advice I have ever witnessed by anyone in authority in the world claiming to know anything about science.”
Kennedy’s misuse of the HHS bully pulpit has become so extreme that doctors, public health experts, and other advocates are building what the Wall Street Journal describes as a “public health universe outside the government.” Professional organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Psychiatric Association, and the Infectious Diseases Society of America have had to disavow CDC guidance, and states are banding together to develop their own health advisories.
In September, Governor Tina Kotek of Oregon announced a new West Coast Health Alliance, including California, Washington, and Hawaii. “We have to step up as governors to do this because the federal government is not a trusted partner right now,” she explained. In October, the initiative expanded to a 15-state Governors’ Public Health Alliance (which includes North Carolina) to facilitate data sharing and communication about health threat detection, emergency preparedness and response, public health guidance and policy, and deployment of experts.
In addition, new organizations have recently launched to counter health disinformation include the Vaccine Integrity Project, Grandparents for Vaccines, and Defend Public Health, an all-volunteer network of public health researchers, healthcare workers, advocates and allies. “We felt it was important not to let RFK Jr. set an agenda based on distortions and distractions,” said Elizabeth Jacobs, Ph.D., University of Arizona Professor Emerita of Epidemiology and a DPH founding member. DPH also published the Improving the Health of Americans Together report, designed to rebut Kennedy’s MAHA Report which fundamentally mischaracterizes or ignores key issues in U.S. public health.
Benedicte Callan Ph.D., spearheads the DPH “Whopper of the Week” column. When we spoke on October 15, she explained Brandolini’s Law: it takes 10 times more energy to refute disinformation than to produce it. “Secretary Kennedy has peddled a lot of disinformation over the years,” she noted. “Now he has a powerful platform from which to disseminate his bad ideas. But the public health community has thousands of people with decades of experience and data. With this column, we’re harnessing that broad scientific consensus to quickly refute these misleading or disingenuous claims.”
On October 10, I spoke with Professor Daniel Kreiss, Edgar Thomas Cato Distinguished Professor in the Hussman School of Journalism and Media at UNC Chapel Hill and the faculty director of the UNC Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life. (See our complete interview: https://www.orangedems.com/interview-daniel-kreiss/). Kreiss linked the current situation to the longstanding use of disinformation to delegitimize government regulation of industries by sowing doubts on issues as diverse as the links between smoking and cancer or fossil fuels and climate change. He also noted that some purveyors of health disinformation sell products like unregulated supplements that compete with proven medical treatments, while others are pursuing careers as influencers, incentivized to market their lifestyles by attracting followers.
Kreiss highlighted the importance of evaluating the people behind the health information you see. “We have to look at the sources that are providing information, to see if they have a commitment to the public interest, and not a larger political, partisan, or ideological agenda.”
“The great thing about science is that it’s public-interest oriented. It doesn’t serve a political party. It doesn’t serve an ideology. It doesn’t serve a partisan political interest. It doesn’t serve a money interest, at least at its most ideal. It’s governed by a set of professional ethics. In those terms, science looks very different than what is happening at CDC right now, which, in essence, has been captured by a set of political interests.”
Miriam Rabkin, MD, MPH is a retired physician; she was previously an Associate Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.