Online misinformation about vaccines harm patients, undermines trust in science, and places additional burdens on our healthcare system through reduced vaccine uptake. All in all, it is a barrier to protecting public health.
As physicians, we see the damages caused by vaccine misinformation firsthand, and we welcome conversations with our patients about vaccine safety and efficacy. However, the widespread proliferation of misinformation and disinformation has triggered higher levels of vaccine hesitancy and refusal, allowing a resurgence of vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles that we had nearly eradicated.
Preventing the spread of vaccine misinformation without infringing on free speech protections in the First Amendment is a thorny legal issue that is at the heart of a landmark case now before the U.S. Supreme Court, Murthy et al. v. Missouri et al. The nation’s leading healthcare organizations, including ours (the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association) and others — and the hundreds of thousands of physicians across the country who we represent — believe that vaccine misinformation poses a grave threat to public health. As outlined in an amicus brief we filed in this case, we seek to partner with the federal government to advance factual information.
In Murthy v. Missouri, plaintiffs including the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana argue that several federal agencies and the Biden administration engaged in censorship during the pandemic by urging private social media companies to stop the spread of discredited medical falsehoods from their platforms to save lives. Oral arguments took place last week, and a ruling is expected this summer.
At stake in this case is what tools the government and public health agencies have at their disposal to combat medical misinformation. Without getting into the legal arguments on both sides, one thing is clear: to strip away government power to raise the alarm about patently false information on life-saving vaccines — when illness and lives hang in the balance — would be a devastating outcome.
Vaccines have long been one of the safest and most powerful tools in protecting public health. Vaccines save lives by not only protecting vaccinated individuals against infection and reducing the burden of unnecessary hospitalization on our healthcare system, but also by helping prevent the spread of disease.
Medical misinformation that promotes non-scientifically validated remedies can and often does result in harm. Both the FDA and CDC warned of serious adverse effects from people taking ivermectin, an anti-parasitic, to prevent or treat COVID-19, even after numerous studies showed it was entirely ineffective against the virus.
Similarly, one recent study estimated that nearly 17,000 deaths occurred across six nations during the first COVID wave after people took hydroxychloroquine, an antimalaria agent that was wrongly promoted to treat and prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection. Although that was a time of crisis, drug repurposing with low-level evidence can be extremely hazardous and even deadly.
Stopping the spread of medical misinformation is an enormous task, and we cannot expect any single entity to accomplish this challenge. Those of us who have taken an oath to protect the health and well-being of patients share the responsibility to separate fact from fiction.
Anything less than a comprehensive effort to prevent the dissemination of medical misinformation — using the powers of the federal government, public health agencies, healthcare organizations, social media companies and media outlets, and even individual physicians — abdicates our responsibility and needlessly puts the health of our communities, and our nation, at risk.
Benjamin D. Hoffman, MD, is president of the American Academy of Pediatrics. Jesse M. Ehrenfeld, MD, MPH, is president of the American Medical Association.
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