Have governments used (or currently use) propaganda to undermine health in hostile countries?

Question

Recently, there’s been claims that Russia has been fuelling anti-vaxxer sentiment in the US, and that one of the objectives is to undermine the health of the country - not the political health of the country, but the physical health of its people.

To be honest, while I don't doubt that Russia has been trolling the US with this content, I’m not completely convinced that undermining public health was a deliberate objective - if Russia was wanting to go down this route, I would have expected them to make sure that Russia itself was safe from vaccine-preventable diseases, but the country has the same problem many western democracies have.

However, it’s made me wonder if any attempts at similar propaganda is being done or has been done in the past. To count, they should involve either medical treatment being accepted or refused, or other bad lifestyle decisions, and they have to be done for purely malicious reasons. The USA encouraging Russians to drink excessive vodka, which financially benefits only Russian vodka producers, would count, but the US government encouraging a country to accept unsafe agricultural produce from the US to benefit US farmers financially wouldn’t count.

Answer 1

Russia has been fuelling anti-vaxxer sentiment in the US

Probably not for the main reason of subverting US health though. They probably did it for the same reason that they promote contradictory political positions, including their pseudo-promotion of "Black lives matter" etc. As CBS summarized

In the study, professor David Broniatowski and his colleagues say the Russian trolls' efforts mimic those used in the past. Such trolls ramp up controversial issues in the U.S. by inflating different viewpoints, the study says.

From the actual study, it looks like the Russian trolls hoped to disseminate a politically scary message similar to "they're gonna take your guns", but based on vaccines.

Thematically, the messages with #VaccinateUS [a tag mainly promoted by Russian trolls] mirror the general vaccine discourse on Twitter (the box on page 1383). Although the authors of these tweets have a fairly comprehensive understanding of the content of both pro- and antivaccine arguments, small differences set the messages apart. The authors of #VacccinateUS messages tend to tie both pro- and antivaccine messages explicitly to US politics and frequently use emotional appeals to “freedom,” “democracy,” and “constitutional rights.” By contrast, other tweets from the vaccine stream focus more on “parental choice” and specific vaccine-related legislation.

Like other antivaccine tweets, antivaccine messages with #VaccinateUS often reference conspiracy theories. However, whereas conspiracy theories tend to target a variety of culprits (e.g., specific government agencies, individual philanthropists, or secret organizations), the #VaccinateUS messages are almost singularly focused on the US government (e.g., “At first our government creates diseases then it creates #vaccines.what’s next?! #VaccinateUS”). In general, users of #VaccinateUS talk in generalities and fail to provide the level of detail commensurate with what is found in other vaccine-relevant tweets. For example, the author might summarize an argument (e.g., “#VaccinateUS #vaccines cause serious and sometimes fatal side effects”), whereas tweets from the vaccine stream would typically use as many specifics as possible to sound convincing.

#VaccinateUS messages included several distinctive arguments that we did not observe in the general vaccine discourse. These included arguments related to racial/ethnic divisions, appeals to God, and arguments on the basis of animal welfare. These are divisive topics in US culture, which we did not see frequently discussed in other tweets related to vaccines. For instance, “Apparently only the elite get ‘clean’ #vaccines. And what do we, normal ppl, get?! #VaccinateUS” appears to target socioeconomic tensions that exist in the United States. By contrast, standard antivaccine messages tend to characterize vaccines as risky for all people regardless of socioeconomic status.

Answer 2

This is a pretty old question, but it seems that with the recent events of COVID-19 pandemic and vaccination, the answer became definitely yes.

The following document is an research which is officially endorsed by European External Action Service (EEAS), EU's central diplomatic service and combined Foreign and Defense Ministry. The research literally contains a royal flush of various disinformation and propagandist narratives committed mainly by Russia and China.

Note that the research focuses on Russia/China government actors large involvement in the disinformation campaign, which makes the case significantly different to those discussed in existing answer and comments to this question (sometimes it is indeed hard to prove that trolls are controlled/financed/inspired by the government; that's what hybrid war's nature is).

EEAS SPECIAL REPORT UPDATE: Short Assessment of Narratives and Disinformation Around the COVID-19 Pandemic (UPDATE DECEMBER 2020 - APRIL 2021)

The documents includes more than 100 cases of most blatant fakes, all with prooflinks; here's a small excerpt:

• The EU and individual Member States have also been the targets of disinformation related to the handling of public health measures;
• pro-Kremlin media outlets […] have sought to undermine public trust in the European Medicines Agency;
• Foreign state actors have sensationalised and mis-represented information about the safety of Western-made vaccines and fuelled anti-vaccination movements within the EU;
• The official Twitter account of Sputnik V combines advertising of the Russian-made vaccine with amplification of pro-Kremlin disinformation narratives about an alleged Western bias against the Russian vaccine and, more specifically, “big pharma” and Western politicians conspiring against Russia;
• Both Chinese official channels and pro-Kremlin media have amplified content on alleged side-effects of the Western vaccines, misrepresenting and sensationalising international media reports and associating deaths to the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine in Norway, Spain and elsewhere. Selective highlighting of the potential vaccine side-effects and disregarding contextual information or ongoing research helps to present the Western vaccines as unsafe, has the potential to fuel anti-vaccination moods in Europe and beyond, and reinforces the promotion of Chinese and Russian vaccines as alternatives.