The Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN) is one of the main anti-vaccination groups in the United States. Founded in 2016 by Del Bigtree, it spreads misinformation about the risks of vaccines and contributes to

vaccine hesitancy Vaccine hesitancy is a delay in acceptance, or refusal, of vaccines despite the availability of vaccine services and supporting evidence. The term covers refusals to vaccinate, delaying vaccines, accepting vaccines but remaining uncertain abou ...

, which has been identified by the

World Health Organization The World Health Organization (WHO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for international public health. The WHO Constitution states its main objective as "the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of h ...

as one of the top ten global health threats of 2019. Arguments against vaccination are contradicted by overwhelming

scientific consensus Scientific consensus is the generally held judgment, position, and opinion of the majority or the supermajority of scientists in a particular field of study at any particular time. Consensus is achieved through scholarly communication at confe ...

about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines.

Funding and activities

ICAN was founded in 2016 by television producer Del Bigtree, after the release of the movie '' Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe'', which he wrote and produced, with anti-vaccination activist

Andrew Wakefield Andrew Jeremy Wakefield (born September 3, 1956) is a British anti-vaccine activist, former physician, and discredited academic who was struck off the medical register for his involvement in ''The Lancet'' MMR autism fraud, a 1998 study that ...

directing. The national attention Bigtree gained with the movie and its promotion tour allowed the newly-formed group to quickly assume a leading role among the anti-vaccination movement. Scientists have countered many of ICAN's statements, arguments against vaccination being contradicted by overwhelming

about the safety and efficacy of vaccines. ICAN was established with a $100,000 grant from the Selz Foundation. Its budget ballooned to $1.4 million in 2017, with one million coming from the Selz Foundation, making ICAN the most well-funded anti-vaccination group in the United States that year. In 2019, the Selz had stopped their funding, but ICAN received $2.46 million funneled through the donor-directed charitable trust investment firm

T. Rowe Price T. Rowe Price Group, Inc. is an American publicly owned global investment management firm that offers funds, subadvisory services, separate account management, and retirement plans and services for individuals, institutions, and financial inter ...

, out of total revenue of $3.46 million. ICAN reported making $5.5 million in revenue in 2020, a 60% increase from the previous year. In 2019, ICAN paid a salary of $232,000 to Del Bigtree as its CEO, $162,000 to its Executive Producer Jenn Sherry Parry, $138,000 to its Chief Administrative Officer Catharine Layton, and 111,000 to Patrick Layton as Creative Director. An article in ''

Rolling Stone ''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner, and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. It was first kno ...

'' states that Layton stumbled upon the anti-vaccine movement on social media after her two sons were diagnosed with autism. Despite spreading misinformation about vaccines, the group received a federal loan of $165,600 through the

Paycheck Protection Program The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) is a $953-billion business loan program established by the United States federal government during the Donald Trump administration in 2020 through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES A ...

in 2020. It also holds Facebook fundraisers, this contributing $23,000 to its bottom line in 2021. Like other anti-vaccination groups, ICAN directs their

Instagram Instagram is a photo and video sharing social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. The app allows users to upload media that can be edited with filters and organized by hashtags and geographical tagging. Posts can ...

followers to a fundraising tool. In 2019, Bigtree was a keynote speaker at several anti-vaccination events targeting the ultra-Orthodox Jewish in Brooklyn and in Rockland County. He has been criticized by the

Anti-Defamation League The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), formerly known as the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, is an international Jewish non-governmental organization based in the United States specializing in civil rights law. It was founded in late Septe ...

and the

Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum ( pl, Państwowe Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau) is a museum on the site of the Auschwitz concentration camp in Oświęcim (German: ''Auschwitz''), Poland. The site includes the main concentration camp at Auschwi ...

for wearing a

Star of David The Star of David (). is a generally recognized symbol of both Jewish identity and Judaism. Its shape is that of a hexagram: the compound of two equilateral triangles. A derivation of the ''seal of Solomon'', which was used for decorative ...

at an anti-vaccination event, attempting to compare the treatment of those opposed to vaccination with the persecution of the Jewish people. Bigtree's anti-vaccine advocacy has been described by anti-vaccination movement critic

physician A physician (American English), medical practitioner (Commonwealth English), medical doctor, or simply doctor, is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through th ...

David Gorski David Henry Gorski is an American surgical oncologist, professor of surgery at Wayne State University School of Medicine, and a surgical oncologist at the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute, specializing in breast cancer surgery. He is an out ...

as "fear mongering based on misinformation". In 2020, Facebook and Youtube removed Del Bigtree's anti-vaccination show The Highwire from their social media platforms, as part of efforts to limit the spread of disinformation about COVID-19. ICAN sued them for that, alleging the audience of the videos have decreased by half since they had to relocate it on their own website, although it continued streaming on

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

. ICAN lost the court case in early 2022. Experts observing the anti-vaccination movement believe ICAN is crafting its communications in order to appeal to the segment of the population that distrusts expertise and government. Bigtree regularly appears in events that cater to those ideologies, including an event in October, 2020, at

Trump National Doral Miami Trump National Doral Miami is a golf resort in Doral in South Florida in the United States. It was founded by real estate pioneer Alfred Kaskel in 1962, with the name "Doral" coming from an amalgamation of the first names of Kaskel and his wife ...

, a Florida resort owned by Donald Trump, where several leading figures of the

QAnon QAnon ( , ) is an American political conspiracy theory and political movement. It originated in the American far-right political sphere in 2017. QAnon centers on fabricated claims made by an anonymous individual or individuals known as "Q". ...

movement also spoke.

Access to information lawsuits

ICAN spends a large part of its budget on legal fees, paid to Siri & Glimstad. The law firm has made a specialty out of challenging vaccine mandates during the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

. In 2018, ICAN filed

Freedom of information Freedom of information is freedom of a person or people to publish and consume information. Access to information is the ability for an individual to seek, receive and impart information effectively. This sometimes includes "scientific, indigeno ...

lawsuits to force the

Food and Drug Administration The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA or US FDA) is a List of United States federal agencies, federal agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Health and Human Services. The FDA is respon ...

, the

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late ...

and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to release administrative reports on childhood vaccine injury HHS is required to file with Congress. HHS replied that they could not find any such reports. While ICAN claimed the absence of these reports means that the federal government has neglected to properly study the effect of vaccines, scientists and the fact-checking site

PolitiFact PolitiFact.com is an American nonprofit project operated by the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida, with offices there and in Washington, D.C. It began in 2007 as a project of the ''Tampa Bay Times'' (then the ''St. Petersburg Times'' ...

pointed out a large number of in-depth studies were undertaken and their results shared with the public, even though HHS failed to file the required reports.

Dorit Reiss Dorit Rubinstein Reiss is a Professor of Law and the James Edgar Hervey '50 Chair of Litigation at UC Hastings College of Law. She has also worked for the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Israeli Ministry of Justice's Department of Public ...

, a Professor of Law at the

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, ...

, explained, "ICAN uses FOIA requests as a query, asking questions that likely do not have government records." She added, "when the government, predictably, says they do not have such records (because many of CDC's statements on scientific matters are based, for example, on scientific literature rather than government records), ICAN misrepresents that as showing there is no evidence - where all the answer shows is that there is no specific record."

References

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Funding and activities

Access to information lawsuits

References

See also