FDA Commissioners Say the Agency Needs Ways to Fight Online “Misinformation”

 

Former and current Food and Drug Administration (FDA) commissioners said that the agency needs partners to fight public health misinformation and that patient advocates, clinicians, industry, and academic leaders have a role to play. The commissioners made the comments at the 2023 Innovations in Regulatory Science Summit, an event that was organized by the UCSF-Stanford Center of Excellence in Regulatory Science and Innovation (CERSI). “I actually believe that misinformation is the leading cause of death right now in the US because whether we’re looking at COVID or chronic disease, people are making bad choices driven by the information that they get,” said FDA Commissioner Robert Califf, as reported by regulatory focus. “We were just not prepared for what broad access to the internet would do to communication channels.” Califf said that the academic community was not doing enough to combat misinformation and that their criticism of the FDA is having unintended consequences. “As a public agency, we need to be critiqued but I think often the people that are doing the critiquing assume that the agency’s going to be there in the future in the way that they expect it to be there,” Califf said. “So, they’re critiquing it to make it better. But to a lot of unsuspecting people that hear it, it just completely erodes their belief in the institution.”

Mark McClellan, who served as an FDA commissioner from 2002 to 2004 said, “Realistically, FDA needs help.” He acknowledged that there is currently a lack of trust in public health agencies and officials. However, people still trust their doctors, community leaders, and others that are “close to their experience.” Scott Gottlieb, a Pfizer board member who served as a commissioner from 2017 to 2019, said the fast response to misinformation is crucial and touted the idea of allowing the industry to counter misinformation about products. “We’ve seen FDA weigh in, admirably, around some dangerous disinformation on specific products,” he said. “But that can’t be the business of the FDA.” He suggested that the FDA should create a limited safe harbor to allow sponsors to directly counter misinformation. He added that the FDA would determine how and what the sponsors can respond to. “I think sponsors need to have the ability to defend their products in the marketplace of ideas when there’s true misinformation,” Gottlieb said. Gottlieb was under fire this week after it was revealed that Gottlieb had been flagging tweets to Twitter... https://reclaimthenet.org/fda-commissioners-say-need-fight-misinformation/

Reclaim The Net accepts no advertising and is funded entirely by the community. If you support free speech, the eradication of cancel culture and restoring privacy and civil liberties, please become a supporter here Twitter censored tweets after pressure from Pfizer director A newly released email from the Twitter Files has revealed that Twitter censored a tweet from Dr. Brett Giroir, a board member at the biopharmaceutical company Altesa Biosciences, after it was flagged by Scott Gottlieb, a board member at the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. Gottlieb and Giroir both currently serve on the boards of several pharmaceutical companies and have backgrounds in public health. Gottlieb is a former Food and Drug Administration (FDA) commissioner while Giroir is a former Assistant Secretary for Health and former acting Commissioner of the FDA. Pfizer produces Covid vaccines whereas Altesa Biosciences develops drugs to combat Covid. In the August 27, 2021 email, which was published by journalist Alex Berenson, Gottlieb complained to Todd O'Boyle, a senior manager on Twitter's Public Policy team, about a tweet from Giroir that claimed natural immunity to Covid-19 was superior to vaccine immunity. "This is the kind of stuff that's corrosive," Gottlieb wrote. "Here he draws a sweeping conclusion off a single retrospective study in Israel that hasn't been peer reviewed. But this tweet will end up going viral and driving news coverage." According to Berenson, O'Boyle forwarded Gottlieb’s email to Twitter's Strategic Response team — a team that was tasked with handling complaints from Twitter's most important employees and users. Berenson said that O'Boyle didn't mention that Gottlieb was a Pfizer board member in this email and instead wrote, “Please see this report from the former FDA commissioner.” An analyst from Twitter's Strategic Response team quickly found that the tweet didn't violate any of Twitter's "misinformation" rules, according to Berenson. However, the tweet was still slapped with a "Misleading" label and had its replies, shares, and likes disabled after Gottlieb's complaint. This label and the restrictions still haven't been removed, even though several high-ranking health officials, such as former White House Covid response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx, have since questioned the effectiveness of Covid vaccines when it comes to preventing infections. Berenson also claimed that one week later, on September 3, 2021, Gottlieb complained about a tweet from Covid lockdown and vaccine skeptic Justin Hart. The Hart tweet that Gottlieb reportedly complained about stated: "Sticks and stones may break my bones but a viral pathogen with a child mortality rate of ~0% has cost our children nearly three years of schooling." Berenson alleged that Gottlieb complained about this tweet when the Pfizer Covid vaccine "would soon be approved for children 5 to 11." However, Berenson said that this time, Twitter refused to act. Previous Twitter email releases have revealed that during the same month that Gottlieb was complaining about Giroir's tweet, he also flagged one of Berenson's articles to Twitter. Berenson was temporarily suspended from Twitter days after Gottlieb flagged his article. Gottlieb responded to the revelations about him flagging Giroir's tweet by claiming that the publication of this email was a "selective disclosure" of his "private communications with Twitter" and that it had stoked "the threat environment" and instigated "more menacing dialogue, with potentially serious consequences." Giroir accused Gottlieb of scheming with Twitter to "apparently put corporate interests first not public health."