Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s health secretary, on Saturday instructed leaders of the nonprofit he founded to take down a web page that mimicked the design of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s site but laid out a case that vaccines cause autism.
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.
It was not clear why the anti-vaccine group might have published a page mimicking the C.D.C.’s. The organization did not respond to requests for comment, and Mr. Kennedy has said he severed ties with it when he began his presidential campaign in 2023.
The fake vaccine safety page was practically indistinguishable from the one available on the C.D.C.’s own site. The layout, typefaces and logos were the same, perhaps in violation of federal copyright law.
While the C.D.C.’s own website refutes a connection between vaccines and autism, the impostor left open the possibility that one exists. At the bottom, it included links to video testimonials from parents who believe their children were harmed by vaccines.
Publication of the page was first reported on Substack by E. Rosalie Li, founder of the Information Epidemiology Lab. The nonprofit did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Kennedy has for years maintained that there is a link between vaccines and autism. He held to that stance during his Senate confirmation hearings, despite extensive research debunking the theory.
Under his direction, the C.D.C. recently announced plans to re-examine the evidence — a move that Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana and chairman of the Senate health committee, said was a waste of money.
The mock web page online featured the C.D.C.’s familiar blue banner across the top, and the agency’s blue-and-white logo along with the words “Vaccine Safety.” The headline read “Vaccines and Autism.”
The text laid out research both supporting and debunking a link between vaccines and autism, but left open the possibility — long ago refuted by scientists — that the shots were harmful.
It included a citation to a study by Brian S. Hooker, who is the chief scientific officer of Children’s Health Defense, and to other studies critical of vaccination.
“It’s a mixture of things that are legitimately peer-reviewed and things that are bogus,” said Dr. Bruce Gellin, who directed H.H.S.’s vaccine program in the Bush and Obama administrations.
“The footnotes give you the impression that it’s legitimate scientific work,” he added.
A series of testimonials at the bottom of the page featured videos with titles like “Mother of 3: I Will Never Vaccinate Again” and “We Signed His Life Away.”
This stands in stark contrast to the C.D.C.’s official website on autism and vaccines, which is largely devoted to debunking the idea of a connection and clearly states that “studies have shown that there is no link.”
Recently, Children’s Health Defense has taken a stand on the measles outbreak in West Texas.
The organization’s CHD.TV channel posted an on-camera interview with the parents of a 6-year-old girl who was declared dead from measles by the state health department, the first reported measles death in the United States in a decade.
The child was unvaccinated and had no underlying medical conditions, according to the health agency. But Children’s Health Defense claimed it had obtained hospital records that contradicted the cause of death.
The organization also interviewed Dr. Ben Edwards, who treated the girl’s siblings and who is one of two Texas doctors — both alternative medicine practitioners — to whom Mr. Kennedy spoke about the outbreak.
In response to the video, Covenant Children’s Hospital in Lubbock, Texas, released a statement this week saying that a “recent video circulating online contains misleading and inaccurate claims,” and noting that confidentiality laws prevent the hospital from providing information specifically related to the case.
