Kennedy orders his old NGO to take down a fake "CDC" vaccine / autism website after it is exposed by Substack's InfoEpi Lab
Independent web sleuthing with impact.
A quick missive amid my western road trip
Congratulations to
Li and for exposing an outrageous and dangerous set of web pages promoting a false autism link to vaccines using logos and the style of the CDC, the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Substackers focused on medical disinformation found links between the pages and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy’s old Children’s Health Defense organization.
Here’s the post:
The subheading says it all:
A CDC clone site with false vaccine claims is hosted by an NGO once led by the current HHS Secretary. With CDC logos, real social media links, and a near-identical design, it may violate federal laws.
The New York Times picked up the ball as the post spread on social media and the infamous anti-vax organization took down the page.
Here’s a paywall-free Times link - https://nyti.ms/4iXWgLj - and here’s the key section from The Times story:
The page had been published on a site apparently registered to the nonprofit, the anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense. Mr. Kennedy’s action came after The New York Times inquired about the page and after news of it ricocheted across social media.
The page was taken offline Saturday evening.
“Secretary Kennedy has instructed the Office of the General Counsel to send a formal demand to Children’s Health Defense requesting the removal of their website,” the Health and Human Services Department said in a statement.
“At H.H.S. we are dedicated to restoring our agencies to their tradition of upholding gold-standard, evidence-based science,” the statement said.
I’ve subscribed to
and hope you do as well. I’ll try to get E. Rosalie Li on a Sustain What webcast soon. Here’s their mission statement:The Information Epidemiology Lab (InfoEpi Lab) intersects public health, national security, information disorder, and countering malign influence. At the core of our ethos is the unwavering belief in every individual’s right to accurate information. We are dedicated to enhancing public health and fostering a resilient information ecosystem, both crucial in strengthening national security.
I dealt quite a bit with medical disinformation, particularly around vaccines and COVID-19, in the pre-Substack days of my Sustain What webcast. I’ll be talking about this with propaganda literacy professor Renee Hobbs of URI at the Bioneers conference in Berkeley, California, on March 28 and will mention the vital and invaluable work done by
.