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 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 scientific consensus 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. ICAN pays a salary of $146,000 to Del Bigtree as its CEO and $98,000 to its Chief Administrative Officer Catharine Layton. An article in Rolling Stone states that Layton stumbled upon the anti-vaccine movement on social media after her two sons were diagnosed with autism. 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 and the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum for wearing a Star of David 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 physicianDavid Gorski as "fear mongering based on misinformation".
In 2018, ICAN filed Freedom of information lawsuits to force the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Health and Human Services 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 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.
