Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf said in an interview Friday that “misinformation” is the leading cause of death in the United States.
Califf, who was confirmed as FDA Commissioner in February, spoke about his concerns that the United States now has a life expectancy five years lower than other rich countries in an interview with SiriusXM’s Doctor Radio Reports. He said that the real culprit behind ailments like heart disease, obesity and COVID-19 is misinformation.
“I have been telling Congress that misinformation is the leading cause of death now,” Califf said. “We now have a life expectancy five years shorter than the average of high income countries. And we’re in the negative spiral right now due to mostly common chronic disease, drug overdose and gun violence, mental health being a very important part of the problem.”
“If you think about the common chronic diseases we’re talking about, good old fashioned heart disease, diabetes, obesity, this is driven by day to day habits that people have driven largely by the information they’re ingesting and not driven by the information they should be getting about the measures that are effective,” Califf continued. “One, that we have a lot of control over is we now have generic medicines for most of this that are pretty inexpensive. A lot of people aren’t taking them. And so we gotta reach people with secondary prevention, but also make sure that we flood the airways and our personal interactions with positive, reliable, useful information.” (RELATED: Surgeon General Demands Tech Companies Hand Over Data On COVID-19 ‘Misinformation’)
Biden administration officials have repeatedly warned that misinformation in the healthcare space is killing people. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy released a “misinformation advisory” last year calling for Americans and Big Tech to do more to curb false information about COVID-19 and other healthcare issues. Now, President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security has a new “disinformation czar.”
The actual leading causes of death in the United States are heart disease, cancer, COVID-19, unintentional accidents and strokes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).