Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Robert M. Califf believes the news media plays a vital role in helping the agency's mission to ensure the protection of public health.
He said the U.S. is experiencing a “significant decline in life expectancy and health outcomes” that falls far behind all other high-income countries. “We also have a very high level of fetal and maternal mortality compared with other high-income countries and even middle-income countries now,” he told the audience at a National Press Club Headliners luncheon Feb. 14.
The news media’s role is to convey this information, Califf stressed: “What you publish, what words you use, and who you quote have tremendous implications for the area you discuss, perhaps nowhere as important as the area of public health.” This information “directly impacts the health of our nation.”
In opening remarks (see livestream), NPC President Emily Wilkins noted that the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments over an abortion drug next month that could undermine the authority of the FDA to regulate drugs.
Califf, a cardiologist who heads the FDA for the second time, declined to comment on that case and turned to the part journalists play in combating misinformation about medicine and science: “I believe in the free press as well as the power that comes with it,” he said, calling himself “a recovering former beat reporter for the Duke [University] Chronicle.”
“A free press is an essential element of a strong America. The first amendment is first for a reason,” he said.
On America’s health: “We’re gaining a pound a year as a society,” he said. “It starts in childhood, leads to diabetes, cancer etc. It seems like we’re creating obesity and then trying to reverse engineer it with an expensive anti-obesity drug.”
While applauding the growth of information sources in traditional and social media that create more space to share information, he sees the downside of that growth as increasing ways to spread half-truths and misinformation:
“The sensational is taking precedence over established evidence.”
As an example, Califf cited multiple media reports of a Florida surgeon general who called for a halt to the COVID-19 vaccine. “Only one or two reporters wrote about our FDA letter” to that official that factually disputed his position. The news media, he said, must compete with an incessant onslaught from people with huge online audiences.
In good medical news, Califf pointed to successful outcomes among over 1 billion doses of the COVID-19 vaccine. Europe and the United Kingdom recently published evidence, he said, of the “huge beneficial effects of the vaccine” and the “enormous number of lives being saved and hospitalizations prevented.” Babies born from vaccinated mothers had lower rates of death and other adverse events in infancy, according to a major study he cited from Sweden and Norway released last week.
The FDA commissioner said he’s working closely with cancer surgeon Dr. Monica Bertagnolli, the new director of the National Institutes of Health, on common concerns. “We have a strong FDA,” he noted.
Asked about working with the medical products industry, he said part of the FDA’s job is to make products more effective. “We’ve got to make it efficient to study large populations … and develop better treatments … in areas like chronic lung disease, the fourth leading cause of death in the world.”
“Everywhere I go people are envious of our creativity,” he said. “The American system is the envy of the world.”
Asked about artificial intelligence, he said he welcomes many developments after being skeptical for years. Those old enough to remember taking maps from your car’s glove compartment and arguing about what route to take, he said, can now “just talk to your car! That’s AI.”
“Does your doctor look at you when you go to the clinic?” he asked. They try, he said, but they’re under pressure to click into a computer: “AI can simplify with large language models … so users can spend more time using their brains instead of just using their computers to log in your information.”
