A fake website meant to look like a CDC webpage was put up sometime this month and quickly taken offline, but not before diligent information manipulation researchers noticed several signs that it was likely connected to Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine organization founded by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. The site falsely suggested a link between vaccines and autism, using “testimonial” videos made by CHD and long-debunked scientific disinformation. While the site has been taken down, the question remains: what, exactly, was the plan here?
“This episode should dispel any suggestion that anti-vaccine groups are simply interested in helping parents.”
The fake website, RealCDC.org, was first spotted in late January by intel threat researcher Kyle Ehmke. While the page displayed no content then, he noted it was hosted through the same Cloudflare web nameserver that hosts CHD’s website and other domains related to CHD. (That alone, as Ehmke noted, is inconclusive to prove CHD is behind it.)
By March 20, according to Ehmke’s later research, and as corroborated by archived versions of the site, the page was populated with content meant to look exactly like an official CDC website, replicating its fonts, links, and presentation.
But there was a crucial difference: the fake site included a series of papers and other purported evidence claiming “increased risks of various chronic conditions, including ASD [autism spectrum disorder]” from vaccines. It also included testimonial videos from parents claiming their children had been sickened by vaccines, with scaremongering titles like “MMR Vax Gave My Son Autism,” “We Signed His Life Away,” and “Mother of 3: I Will Never Vaccinate Again.” The videos featured on the site are all hosted by Children’s Health Defense.
The site also contained accurate information about the fact that vaccines don’t cause autism, making what Dr. Bruce Gellin, who previously directed HHS’ vaccine program, described to the New York Times as “a mixture of things that are legitimately peer-reviewed and things that are bogus.” Among the papers was one authored by former physician Mark Geier, whose license to practice has been suspended or revoked in every state where he once held one, and his son David, who has no medical training; both Geiers have a long history in the anti-vaccine movement and as witnesses in court cases attempting to link vaccines and autism.
The site was also independently investigated by E. Rosalie Li, the founder of the Information Epidemiology Lab, which studies information manipulation and malign influence, especially around the intersection of public health and national security, and who, in addition to the Cloudfare account, found further evidence linking it to Children’s Health Defense. Both Li and Ehmke found that RealCDC.org redirected to CHDstaging.org, which has been used by Children’s Health Defense to power projects like its community discussion forum and a site promoting Vaxxed 3, the latest installment in a series of CHD films promoting discredited claims about COVID-19 and vaccine safety. Overall, the CHD sites and RealCDC use “identical infrastructure,” Li says, “that would be unlikely if they were just random websites” unrelated to one another.
“You click on the videos and it goes to the CHD website,” she told Mother Jones.
The situation was another awkward one for Kennedy, who has maintained that he became chairman-on-leave of CHD during his presidential campaign and then left the organization entirely in December 2024. The Department of Health and Human services told the Times that Kennedy had “instructed the Office of the General Counsel to send a formal demand to Children’s Health Defense requesting the removal of their website.”
Li told Mother Jones that the fake CDC site went offline after she published her findings on Substack on Friday, and that her readers reported they couldn’t access the site on Saturday. Children’s Health Defense didn’t respond to a request for comment from Mother Jones, nor did Mary Holland, the organization’s president and general counsel.
“This episode should dispel any suggestion that anti-vaccine groups are simply interested in helping parents access information,” Li told Mother Jones. “Providing the public with health-related information carries a responsibility to ensure accuracy and completeness. What appeared on that website seemed to be a calculated effort to exploit public trust in the CDC to advance an ideology—weaponizing parental concern at the expense of public health.”
