{"id":4210,"date":"2023-07-25T22:10:49","date_gmt":"2023-07-26T03:10:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=4210"},"modified":"2023-07-25T22:11:24","modified_gmt":"2023-07-26T03:11:24","slug":"fda-head-robert-califf-battles-misinformation-sometimes-with-fuzzy-facts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2023\/07\/25\/fda-head-robert-califf-battles-misinformation-sometimes-with-fuzzy-facts\/","title":{"rendered":"FDA Head Robert Califf Battles Misinformation \u2014 Sometimes With Fuzzy Facts"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/kffhealthnews.org\/news\/article\/fda-head-robert-califf-battles-misinformation-sometimes-with-fuzzy-facts\/\">KFF<\/a> Robert Califf, the head of the Food and Drug Administration, doesn\u2019t seem to be having fun on the job. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI would describe this year as hand-to-hand combat. Really, every day,\u201d he said at an academic conference at Stanford in April. It\u2019s a sentiment the FDA commissioner has expressed often.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What\u2019s been getting Califf\u2019s goat? Misinformation, which gets part of the blame for Americans\u2019 stagnating life expectancy. To Califf, the country that invents many of the most advanced drugs and devices is terrible at using those technologies well. And one reason for that is Americans\u2019 misinformed choices, he has suggested. Many don\u2019t use statins, vaccines, or covid-19 therapies. Many choose to smoke cigarettes and eat the wrong food.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Califf and the FDA are fighting misinformation head-on. \u201cThe misinformation machine is really causing a lot of death,\u201d he said, in an apparent ad-lib, this spring in a speech at Tufts University. The pandemic, he told KFF Health News, helped \u201ccrystallize\u201d his need to tackle misinformation. It was a \u201cblatant case,\u201d in which multiple studies gave evidence about very effective therapeutics against covid. \u201cAnd a lot of people chose not to do it.\u201d There were \u201clarge-scale purveyors of misinformation,\u201d he said, poisoning the well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Occasionally, though, Califf and the FDA have added to the cacophony of misinformation. And sometimes their misinformation is about misinformation.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>KFF Robert Califf, the head of the Food and Drug Administration, doesn\u2019t seem to be having fun on the job. \u201cI would describe this year as hand-to-hand combat. Really, every day,\u201d he said at an academic conference at Stanford in April. It\u2019s a sentiment the FDA commissioner has expressed often. What\u2019s been getting Califf\u2019s goat? [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misinformation-disinformation-and-conspiracy-theories"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4210"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4210\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4211,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4210\/revisions\/4211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}