Children's Health Defense MedPage Today hosted Dr. Paul Offit, Dr. Jeremy Faust and social media personality “Dr. Mike” in a “debate” about physicians engaging with “misinformation spreaders.” The trio of pro-vaccine doctors lamented their lack of social media presence and said they needed to do a better job of promoting their views to a broader audience. According to OpenPayments, in 2023 alone, Dr. Mike took more than $1 million in consulting fees and other compensation from Abbott Labs, whose products include flu tests and a flu vaccine.
Should doctors engage with “misinformation spreaders?”
That’s the question Dr. Jeremy Faust asked vaccine promoter Dr. Paul Offit and social media personality “Dr. Mike” in a “debate” hosted Wednesday by MedPage Today.
Offit and “Dr. Mike” — whose real name is Dr. Mikhail Varshavski — discussed if and how they should engage with people who don’t share their pro-vaccine views.
Faust, who moderated the discussion, framed the debate this way: people like U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — “who really shouldn’t be” platformed — today have ways to reach a mass public. And defenders of mainstream vaccine policy have to figure out what to do about it.
“How do we fight that?” Faust asked the two doctors.
Defining the enemy — and how to fight them
Faust said misinformation comes from people like his neighbor, who hears something untrue and repeats it.
Dr. Mike said the line between misinformation and disinformation has become more blurred. The “average” person can’t tell the difference between misinformation and disinformation as easily as experts like them can.
The problem is that people like Dr. Mike and Offit haven’t been as successful at reaching a broad social media audience as the vaccine skeptics, he said.
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