Dr Robert Califf has blamed misinformation online for America’s falling life expectancy
Online misinformation is responsible for America’s dwindling life expectancy, chief of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) claims.
Dr Robert Califf, who served in the role under both Obama and Biden, said the US was now in ‘last place’ when compared to peer nations such as the UK, Japan and Italy.
He said ‘snake oil salesmen’ sowing distrust in healthcare has always been a problem, but it has gotten worse in the internet and social media ages.
But, his response ignores surging gun crime and drug overdose deaths that have plagued America since the Covid pandemic began in 2020.
A record 107,000 Americans died from a drug overdose in 2021, with the synthetic opioid fentanyl at the center of 70 percent of them. Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revealed findings that gun homicides jumped 35 percent during Covid’s first two years.
America’s life expectancy has been falling from a high of 79 years in 2019 to now rank at 77 years. The FDA has blamed online misinformation for the decline
The graph shows how each G7 country fared in international life expectancy rankings from 1950 to 2020. While Japan climbed from 45th place to third, the UK slumped from 10th to 36th and the US plummeted from 13th to 53rd
America now has the lowest life expectancy among G7 nations, and falls outside of the top 50 globally.
The average American can expect to live about 77 years, whereas in the UK people live for 80 years on average. The average Japanese person lives to 84 years.
Staggering data even suggests that one-in-25 five-year-old children in America will not see their 40th birthday.
These early deaths are believed to be fueled by guns and drugs, as younger people will usually avoid the most common causes of death such as heart disease or cancer.
Younger deaths helped fuel the fall in US life expectancy, which sat at 79 years before the virus erupted.
But, speaking to CNBC this week, Dr Califf just blamed online misinformation.
He said: ‘We are essentially in last place and losing ground with a difference between three and five years compared to the average of other high-income countries.
‘This is not uniformly distributed, we have what I call the disparities that we’ve known for a long time.
‘[But] the big new one that we are seeing really emerging in a major way is rural status. People in rural areas are faring much worse health-wise.’
Asked what was driving the drop in life expectancy, he said rhetorically: ‘Why aren’t we using knowledge of diet? It’s not that people don’t know about it.
‘Why aren’t we using medical products as effectively and efficiently as our peer countries?
‘A lot of it has to do with the choices that people make because of the things that influence their thinking.’
Dr Califf warned misinformation online could ‘delude’ many into avoiding clinically-approved treatments that improve their health.
He said this was evident with Covid vaccines — with around 50million American adults still yet to get their first two doses.
The vaccination rate has also fallen for other diseases in recent years, with 40million children missing their measles vaccines last year and routine vaccine uptake among kindergarteners falling to a 10-year low.
‘The Covid vaccines and the antivirals give us an easy way to talk about it, but this is not limited to those areas.
‘In heart disease, so many people don’t take their medicines even though they are now generic and very low cost.
‘[They are] often deluded into taking things that are sold over the internet that aren’t effective.’
A map, showing the change in life expectancy between 1800, 1950 and 2015, illustrates the drastic global divide
He said misinformation over medicines had always existed, but the internet had given conspiracy theorists and skeptics a megaphone.
‘We can put out a statement about what we’ve determined based on the highest level of evidence,’ the FDA chief continued.
‘But within ten minutes someone else’s thought can [be put up] and reach about a billion people. There is nothing that restricts them from telling people things that aren’t true.’
Like other developed nations, America faced skepticism over Covid vaccines during the pandemic.
But the FDA and CDC have also been accused of fueling fears over misinformation and pushing many people to the fringes.
Last year the FDA became embroiled in a scandal over its decision to approve second bivalent boosters — or fourth shots — for all adults in August and then everyone over six months old in December.
At the time, the agency bypassed its expert panel to sign off on the additional shots.
This is not the first time Dr Califf has pointed to online misinformation to deflect the dropping US life expectancy.
In an interview with CNN last May he said: ‘We know so much about what to do to prevent bad outcomes from heart disease — but somehow the reliable, truthful message is not getting across.
‘It is being washed out by a lot of misinformation which is leading people to make bad choices that are unfortunate for their health.’
The FDA has set up a unit that seeks to battle misinformation circulating online and provide people with reliable facts.
It now runs short YouTube videos and long Twitter threads on new medications and posts clips that debunk misinformation, such as on bogus Covid remedies.
It also regularly shares memes referencing Scooby-Doo and Spongebob, urging Americans to keep up to date on their vaccines.
But these clips tend to have little reach, with almost all of the most recent clips posted on the FDA’s YouTube channel failing to reach even 1,000 views.
Experts have also raised concerns that the FDA’s poor reputation is hampering its ability to battle misinformation spreading online.
Dr Seema Yasmin, a medical misinformation expert at Stanford University, said last month: ‘The question I start with is, “are you a trusted messenger or not?”
‘In the context of the FDA, we can highlight multiple incidents which have damaged the credibility of the agency and deepened distrust of its scientific decisions.’
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