The minister responsible for health and access to care, Yannick Neuder, announced this Friday, April 18, the next creation of a “observatory” of misinformation in health matters.
In France, “we do not have an organization that allows us to combat medical misinformation,” Inter Inter this Friday said. Given this observation, the government’s response is “to create an observatory, which will not be another meeting.”
“I want to put this observatory on the way” so that it can regularly “indicate the whole False news Those who have spread in recent weeks on social networks, “said the minister, without giving a release date for this structure.
This will be accompanied by other French health organizations. “There will be the Institut Pasteur, there will be the Institut Curie, there will be the ha, there will be the insert, so that we can react collectively, that we can also address the platforms (…) to tell them attention, this information is false, verify its sources” and “to be able to understand the arc,” said Yannick Neuder.
A “exacerbation” of misinformation
With L’PomeHe explains that the “trigger factor” of this reflection on misinformation was the decision made by Donald Trump in January to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization, an UN Agency. This second mandate of the US President is remarkably marked by the presence, next to him as Minister of Health, by Robert Kennedy Jr., who has occupied numerous anti -vacinity positions.
“We have seen an exacerbation of health misinformation for the COVID crisis for five years, but has existed for a long time,” Professor Mathieu Molimard, head of the Bordeaux Pharmacology Service on Friday.
“Disinformation seriously harms health and, in the field of medicine, can kill,” said Yannick Neuder during the colloquium in the ministry, citing the example of cancer patients who stop their chemotherapy to obtain alternative methods with not scientifically proven efficiency.
Reports and a barometer
Specifically, this observatory announced by Yannick Neuder could “publish every month, each quarter, the False news that we find on social networks saying, be careful, that it is fake, warning“He suggested that the minister during a conference in Paris on medical misinformation on Friday.
This organization “will be responsible for registering reports and producing a misinformation barometer. If we want to fight against the False news Doctor, should be able to know who does them, how they are transmitted and what their objectives are, “he said in the Express.” The Observatory could, for example, lead awareness campaigns, with screens in bus panels, in the media, newspapers or television, where False news In health it would be clearly denounced, “he added.
Expected initiatives
However, the minister recognized, during his conference, that he has limited the means to this action. It will be a “national observatory, which is not a mega-structure that we will create with mega-media and mega-people”, but that “add all our data on health misinformation,” he said.
Yannick Neuder has defined other axes that will be explored by working groups, including the creation of a “National Program for Critical Health Education” in relation to national education and a decisive involvement “of digital platforms in this fight, while certain digital giants” assume the opposite and reduce their moderation policy. “
These initiatives were expected of the medical world. Some require even more firmness. Like PR Alain Fischer, who says that “often the false news begins from the scientific and medical environment, there are some examples, Raault and others illustrate it.”
“I think we are too lax, that is, the institutions on which these people depend immediately and when necessary, we should not hesitate to initiate legal procedures,” added the immunologist, who presided over the guidance council of the vaccination strategy during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Source: BFM TV
