The 66-year old man didn’t take the medication his cardiologist had prescribed. He had heard too many misleading, false or decontextualized things about it, on websites, in Facebook groups and YouTube videos. Only after he had a heart attack and a bypass operation did he start taking the medication.
(Read Full Fact’s full report about the case here.)
Health misinformation poses a threat not only to individuals’ health and wellbeing but also to public health more broadly, and it carries steep economic costs. In fact, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s 2025 State of the Union address last month explicitly called out the danger of health-related misinformation:
“As a medical doctor by training, I am appalled by the disinformation that threatens global progress on everything from measles to polio.”
Consequences of health misinformation
False claims have fueled hesitancy around life-saving vaccines such as the HPV vaccine and cause questioning of evidence-based treatments like chemotherapy in favor of unproven “cures”.
The consequences go further; health misinformation creates an economic burden, too. It fuels costly vaccine-preventable outbreaks, drains healthcare systems when individuals turn to harmful alternatives or delay treatments, and opens the door to opportunists who profit from misleading health products. One recent study estimates that vaccine hesitancy related to the COVID-19 vaccine led to additional $2 billion in health care costs.
Health misinformation also feeds into polarization and broad distrust of institutions. This vicious cycle erodes the capacity to respond to future public health emergencies.
Fact-checkers’ role
European fact-checkers stand on the frontlines of this challenge. By debunking false claims, exposing scams, and strengthening public trust in science, they provide an essential service: to individuals seeking reliable information, to societies striving to safeguard public health, and to economies which depend on efficient interventions.
Fact-checkers in our network address a variety of health-related misinformation in their numerous national contexts, ensuring reliable, evidence-based information is available to empower individuals to make their own decisions about their health, based on the facts.
Recent health misinformation
After querying our members their work on health misinformation, they shared some recent fact-checks and resources they’ve developed to address health-related false claims. Health misinformation covers a variety of topics, but some of the most common include:
Cancer-related misinformation is one of the most common types of health misinformation, and potentially one of the most dangerous, when it leads to cancer patients to delay treatment or opt for alternative “cures”.
Almost all fact-checking organizations have at least a few fact-checks related to cancer, and some even have dedicated sections to round-up the most common claims, like ViralCheck’s (Portugal) Cancer Portal and Medizin Transparent’s (Austria) Cancer section.
A top target, vaccine-related misinformation is varied and widespread. Fact-checkers stay on top of new claims about all kinds of vaccines. From an unsubstantiated claim about the HPV vaccine causing infertility, debunked by Science Feedback (France), to inaccurate evidence about the Hepatitis B vaccine, fact-checked by Viral Check (Portugal), and many others. This kind of misinformation spreads across the continent, where AFP (France) fact-checkers it in not only French, but also in Dutch, German, Polish, Romanian (and circulating in Serbian as well).
Misinformation about vaccines is also picked up by political actors, and fact-checkers hold these figures to account, for example, Demagog.sk (Slovakia) has corrected claims by politicians about mRNA vaccines, a claim which formed part of a situation which actually delayed Slovakia’s purchase of vaccines until it was discredited by Slovak Academy of Sciences.
Full Fact (UK) has also seen the interplay between health misinformation and politics, for example, recently covering COVID vaccine claims made at the Reform UK conference.
Health misinformation can take social media by storm, especially when amplified by influencers and the algorithm – a recent report by a consortium including several EFCSN members found that for a given number of followers, misinformers’ posts perform significantly better (up to 8x on YouTube) than those of high-credibility sources.
The exact claims vary, such as the ashwagandha pills popular on social media, which are said to have benefits for stress and anxiety, but lack evidence for these claims, fact-checked by Verificat (Spain), and a chemical called DMSO that some social media influencers have promoted in recent months as a cancer cure, which again, lacks evidence, fact-checked by Science Feedback (France). Other trends covered by AFP (France) range from pseudo-diets to “run faster” to posts promoting ineffective to even dangerous colon “detoxes” or hydrotherapies, which can target vulnerable users online.
Fact-checking organizations also try to address this kind of misinformation at the very place it popularizes – for example, Maldita’s (Spain) video debunk about a popular snack supposedly killing kids has been seen by over 2.4 million people on TikTok in the past three weeks alone.
