Viral posts spread misleading claims about health authorities – Peter Gattuso

An image widely shared on social media contains several misleading and completely inaccurate claims about public health authorities, their funding and the pharmaceutical industry.

The articles make three specific claims:

“This is not 'science,'” the article continues. “This is business.”

The first claim—that the Food and Drug Administration gets 45 percent of its budget from the pharmaceutical industry—while true, misses important context. The FDA's annual “At a Glance” report, released in January 2024, revealed that user fees accounted for 47 percent of the agency's $6.7 billion budget in 2023. The FDA can collect user fees from pharmaceutical companies, for example when a company applies for FDA approval or review of a product. User fees are approved by Congress, and Congress sets the FDA's budget. The FDA also collects user fees from companies outside the pharmaceutical industry, such as tobacco producers.

The second claim – that the World Health Organization, a global health organization of the United Nations, receives about half of its funding from Bill Gates and “Big Pharma” – is completely false. “Contributions to the WHO come largely from public funds. Both mandatory and voluntary funding [U.N.] “Member States directly contribute almost 60 percent of the programme budget, and another 14 percent comes from other organizations of the United Nations system,” the WHO website states. “Almost 10 percent of WHO's funding comes from philanthropic foundations, primarily the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.”

According to the organization's 2023 financial statements, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation donated the most of any nongovernmental donor this year – a total of $356 million. The next largest nongovernmental WHO donor in 2023 was Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance – a public-private partnership that promotes vaccination efforts – which donated a total of $260 million. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's donation accounted for 10.7 percent of WHO's funding, while Gavi contributed 7.8 percent.

The third claim – that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is a “vaccine manufacturer” that owns 56 vaccine patents and distributes $4.6 billion worth of vaccines annually – is misleading and misses context. The CDC is a federal agency within the Department of Health and Human Services and is permitted to own or co-own patent licenses for vaccines the agency helps develop. When CDC researchers collaborate with private companies and academic institutions on vaccine research and development, the CDC is often listed as the patent holder on the patent.

“Yes, the CDC owns patents for vaccines,” Nicholas Spinelli, a public affairs specialist at the CDC, told the Fact check on shippingIn fact, according to the US National Institutes for Health, the CDC's parent agency, the CDC owns 206 patent technologies – and 84 vaccine patent technologies.

While the CDC distributes vaccines through its Vaccines for Children (VFC) program, it purchases the vaccines at a discounted rate and provides them to health care providers who distribute them to children. It is unclear where the $4.6 billion figure cited in the social media posts comes from. The Congressional Research Service – a nonpartisan federal government research agency – estimated the VFC budget in fiscal year 2024 to be $7.213 billion. Importantly, the VFC budget is not used exclusively for vaccine spending, but also contributes to state and local vaccination programs and employee payroll costs.