FDA chief blames America’s abysmal life expectancy on ‘misinformation’ online

People spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories online are to blame for America’s tumbling life expectancy, the head of the Food and Drug Administration has claimed.

Dr Robert Califf, who has led the agency for two years, said the US was now in ‘last place’ for lifespans with Americans living up to seven years less than people in other affluent nations like the UK, Japan and Italy. 

Speaking in an interview at the FDA’s headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland, he claimed America had always faced ‘snake oil salesmen’ sowing distrust in healthcare.

But the problem was now becoming much worse, he said, driving by the internet allowing people to spread misinformation to a ‘billion’ others.

The cardiologist warned this could ‘delude’ many into avoiding clinically-approved treatments that improve their health.

He said this was evident with Covid vaccines — with 106million Americans, or one in three, still yet to get their first two doses. 

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 each year 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. It is based on data from academics from the University of Oxford and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who examined global life expectancy ratings

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.

America now has the lowest life expectancy among G7 nations and doesn’t even make the top 50 globally.

The average American can now expect to live about 77 years, whereas in the UK people live for 80 years on average while in Japan the tally is 84 years and in Italy 82 years. 

One in 25 five-year-olds alive today will also not make it to their 40th birthday, data suggests. 

US life expectancy has fallen from a high of 79 years just before the Covid pandemic, with experts blaming widening inequalities, the opioid crisis and deaths from Covid for the drop.

But speaking to CNBC this week, Dr Califf warned that online misinformation was also at play.

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.

‘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 theorests and skeptics a megaphone.

‘We can put out a statement about what we’ve determined based on the highest level of evidence,’ said Dr Califf.

‘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.’

America, like other rich countries, 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 actually bypassed its expert panel to sign off on the shots.

Experts were quick to slam the FDA’s move with some even resigning from the panel.

Dr Califf’s comments are similar to those he gave to CNN in May last year, when he also blamed misinformation online for lowering life expectancy.

He said at the time: ‘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.’