Viral Posts Share Misleading Claims About Health Agencies

An image widely shared across social media makes several misleading and outright inaccurate claims about public health agencies, the funding those agencies receive, and the pharmaceutical industry.

The posts make three specific claims:

“The FDA receives 45 percent of its annual budget from the pharmaceutical industry.”

“The World Health Organization gets roughly 50 percent of its budget from private sources, including Bill Gates and Big Pharma.”

“The CDC is a vaccine company; it owns 56 vaccines patents and buys and distributes $4.6 billion in vaccines annually through the Vaccines for Children program.”