https://reclaimthenet.org/fda-commissioner-calls-for-misinformation-regulation
In an interview with CNBC, FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf said that online misinformation was harming the life expectancy of people, there is a need for “better regulation” on how to handle health misinformation and that “specific authorities at FDA, FTC, and other areas are going to be needed.”
“We know more and more about misinformation. It relates back to this life expectancy,” Califf said. 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 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're now generic and very low-cost, often [they're] deluded into taking things that are sold over the Internet that aren't effective.”
According to the FDA commissioner, one of the solutions is telling the “truth is a louder volume.”
“In the good old days, when I was a practicing cardiologist, for the most part, people developed products, they got through the FDA, the label determined what was talked about, the Internet didn't exist, you advertised in medical meetings and journals. There was sort of a hierarchy of information that went through the prescriber or the implanter in the case of devices to the patient. Of course, the problem in that system is it left a lot of people out. We now know about that. Now, everyone's included because everyone's connected to the Internet. But we can put out a statement about what we've determined based on the highest level of evidence, within ten minutes, someone who's thought ten minutes about it can reach a billion people. And there's nothing that restricts them from telling things that are not true. This has always existed. … But they couldn't reach so many people,” he explained.