Where to Find Accurate Health Information Recently Removed From the CDC Website
In my health reporting, I often link to the websites of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and others. Health care workers, scientists and others also rely on them . But information from these sites disappears.
There is no easy way around this. Some important information is missing. Some of them have been restored with subtle and not-so-subtle changes—like suggesting you search for adoption when you were actually searching for abortion , or replacing the phrase “pregnant people” with “pregnant women,” as if the word “people” didn’t already include women.
And we don’t know how future additions to the website might be hampered. The CDC’s weekly research publication, which operated more or less independently when it came to publishing research, was under “unprecedented scrutiny” from the Trump administration, CBS News reported . This publication, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, did not publish the January 23 or 30 issues.
In the midst of a avian flu epidemic that is driving up egg prices and threatening to spread far beyond farms, the administration has reportedly stopped publishing three avian flu studies, including one on wastewater, one on the effects of cattle veterinarians, and one whose data was accidentally published and then deleted , on the ability of avian flu to be transmitted between humans and farm cats.
There is no substitute for MMWR’s independence, and some information obtained from the CDC website has not yet been returned, including smallpox vaccination recommendations and other pages on sexually transmitted infections, including HIV, and LGBTQ+ health issues and disparities, according to the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy.
A federal judge has ordered the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to restore data on its website , but the Trump administration has ignored multiple court orders regarding its illegal activities in recent weeks, so forgive my skepticism. In the meantime, here are a few places to find missing health and medical information that the CDC would normally be able to provide.
Physician associations such as ACOG and AMA
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists made sure to publish its “approved guidance documents” developed in conjunction with the CDC . “Approved” means that these recommendations are fully supported by ACOG. As the name of the organization suggests, these documents relate to obstetrics and gynecology.
The American Medical Association has a YouTube series dedicated to weekly health reports and medical news—hardly a replacement for the MMWR, but it’s worth following if you want to keep up with current health issues in the US.
Good old Wayback car
If you find a broken link to something that used to be on the CDC website, check the Wayback Machine at archive.org . It may not have everything there, but I was able to find the missing content there. For example, a PDF that previously existed here called “An HIV Conversation Guide” is available in the December 2024 Wayback Machine snapshot .
Data Mirroring Projects
The project, called the End of Term Web Archive, has been downloading government websites at the end of each presidential term since 2008. Other organizations are trying to preserve information from the CDC and other government websites, Nature reports . The University of Minnesota has a collection of end-of-semester data repositories here .
The Internet Archive has several CDC data sets , including data from the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, which is no longer on the CDC website. (Its data explorer was here , but clicking that link currently just loads the “App is currently offline” message.)
Health agencies of other countries
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is perhaps the best known (or at least I think it was), but other countries have their equivalents. For example, the Public Health Agency of Canada has information on topics such as sexual health that may not be available on the CDC website.