In April, 2011, Dr. David Amaral, Director of Research in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, UC Davis MIND Institute, was interviewed for PBS by Robert MacNeil.

"... It's not to say, however, that there isn't a small subset of children who may be particularly vulnerable to vaccines. And in their case, having the vaccines, or particular vaccines, particularly in certain kinds of situations -- if the child was ill, if the child had a precondition, like a mitochondrial defect. Vaccinations for those children actually may be the environmental factor that tipped them over the edge of autism. And I think it is incredibly important, still, to try and figure out what, if any, vulnerabilities, in a small subset of children, might make them at risk for having certain vaccinations."

http://www.ageofautism.com/2012/06/autism-and-what-the-experts-are-saying-part-two-.html

On April 2, 2012 on WNYC, interviewer Kurt Andersen... did a segment on the ADDM numbers with Dr. Walter Zahorodny, assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in Newark. Zahorodny was the lead researcher on the New Jersey portion of the CDC study.

Kurt Andersen (Seth Mnookin's friend): “I guess we know what they (the causes of autism) aren’t, for instance childhood vaccines. Right?
Dr. Zahorodny: “Vaccines don’t play a significant role in autism increasing. Some small number of children probably do have autism because of an adverse vaccine reaction, but they don’t make for the overall rise.”

Starts at 13:20 (AUDIO LINK): http://www.wnyc.org/shows/bl/2012/apr/02/autism-rates-rise-new-jersey/

http://adventuresinautism.blogspot.com/2012/04/dr-walter-zahorodny-believes-vaccines.html

AUDIO (starts at 40:57): http://onpoint.wbur.org/2012/04/02/autism-numbers-skyrocket/player

Monday, April 2, 2012 at 10:00 AM
Autism Numbers Skyrocket

GUEST: Dr. Geraldine Dawson, chief science officer for the advocacy group Autism Speaks.

Ashbrook: "Dr. Dawson, here's a question online from Melrose, has the link between MMR vaccine and autism been completely discredited. I notice that the word 'vaccine' has not even come up so far in this hour. Is that...for some years that had a lot of attention, is that off the table now, Dr. Dawson?"

Dr. Dawson: "There is no evidence that the increase in prevalence that we're seeing in Autism Spectrum Disorder is linked to the MMR vaccine. You know, if vaccines play a role, and there has not been any evidence thus far to show that it has, it would be a very small minority of individuals who have an underlying medical condition where the vaccine may have triggered an onset of symptoms for an already existing condition or vulnerability. So we do not believe that vaccines are an explanation of the increase and we strongly encourage parents to get their children vaccinated."

http://adventuresinautism.blogspot.com/2012/04/dr-walter-zahorodny-believes-vaccines.html
http://onpoint.wbur.org/2012/04/02/autism-numbers-skyrocket

http://adventuresinautism.blogspot.com/2012/04/dr-walter-zahorodny-believes-vaccines.html

April 3, 2012
by Ginger Taylor

...Ashbrook, like Andersen, took the initiative of bringing the vaccine question into the interview, and in both cases it was merely an invitation to declare the vaccine hypothesis DOA. And neither Zahorodny or Dawson took the opportunity to do so!

They BOTH could have said, "Correct." And just moved on. But they didn't!

They both contradicted their interviewers presumptive statements, and said a version of, "Incorrect, vaccines do cause autism in some children, and it is a smaller number of cases than people think, but I don't see that vaccine induced autism could be playing a major factor in the increase."

IMHO... no way in h-e-double hockey sticks that these two didn't know exactly what they were doing. They had every chance to run from vaccine causation and they didn't. They confirmed it. Then they minimized it.

We have just witnessed the very quiet pushing of the envelope. Dr. Geri Dawson and Dr. Walter Zahorodny have just joined you and me and all our friends in taking our position that vaccines cause some cases of autism, just not all the cases of autism. Now we are only separated by the degree in which we believe the vaccine induced autism is a factor in the skyrocketing autism numbers.

<...>

Re: last year's CDC numbers from more rigorously designed study (with the 1 in 49 NJ stat),

Eighty percent of the children with autism in the New Jersey study were identified as having the most severe form of the disorder. Boys were more than five times as likely to be diagnosed as girls, both in New Jersey and in the rest of the country.

Read more at: http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-03-state-highest-autism-range.html#jCp

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-03-state-highest-autism-range.html

State with one of highest rates of autism turns out to be in normal range

March 26, 2013
by Mary Jo Layton in Autism spectrum disorders


When New Jersey reported one of the nation's highest rates of autism last year - doubling in six years to one in 49 children - researchers described it as "beyond an emergency." But a federal study released this past week indicated that the high rate appears to be the norm nationally. Autism spectrum disorder now affects one in every 50 children, well above the one in 88 previously reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.


"The good news is that the increase in autism isn't special to New Jersey," said Walter Zahorodny, an autism researcher at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. "The bad news is that it's a significant increase and it's registering everywhere."

The findings released this past week by the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration and the CDC are spurring debate: While experts attribute the increase to better reporting, it also suggests that the disorder is being diagnosed more frequently in children with milder symptoms.

According to the study, 1 million children nationally are diagnosed with autism, a complex disorder that affects brain development and a person's ability to communicate, learn and form relationships.

"The feeling all along wasn't that New Jersey has more cases of autism - New Jersey was just more rigorous in ascertaining the incidence," said Dr. Joseph Holahan, medical director of the child development center at St. Joseph's Children's Hospital in Paterson. "It's still one of the most common serious developmental disorders we see."

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"We still think one in 50 is an underestimate," said Michael Rosanoff, associate director for public health research and scientific review for the advocacy group Autism Speaks.

The real issue is we need to meet the demands of this public health crisis," said Rosanoff said. "This should be a wake-up call."

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http://www.fourteenstudies.org/history.html

...We genuinely believe that any parent, doctor, journalist, or scientist who takes the time to read this site, look objectively at the studies we analyze, and push themselves to understand if the right questions have actually been asked will reach the same conclusions we do.

One final point: the studies we are reviewing on this site are typically filled with fairly rampant conflicts of interest. Conflict of interest tends to corrupt and bias, which is why it's so important to understand.

So, who are we? We are parents of children with autism...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leslie-hatfield/our-melamine-theres-mercu_b_161334.html

...But as it turns out, the HFCS industry has been hiding some major skeletons in its closet -- according to the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) study (pdf), over 30% of products containing the substance tested positive for mercury.(For working link, search http://www.iatp.org/search/node/HFCS )

What makes this news truly shocking is not just that the manufacturers of high fructose corn syrup would put consumers' health at risk, but that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) knew about the mercury in the syrup, and has been sitting on this information since 2005.

Here's the connection, according to the IATP press release (pdf): The IATP study comes on the heels of another study, conducted in 2005 but only recently published by the scientific journal, Environmental Health, which revealed that nearly 50 percent of commercial HFCS samples tested positive for the heavy metal. Renee Dufault, who was working for the FDA at the time, was among the 2005 study's authors. In spite of Dufault's involvement in the study, the FDA sat silent on this one for three years, and in fact last August, allowed manufacturers to call the sweetener "natural."

See: http://www.ehjournal.net/content/8/1/2

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"Mercury is toxic in all its forms," said IATP's David Wallinga, M.D., and a co-author in both studies. "Given how much high fructose corn syrup is consumed by children, it could be a significant additional source of mercury never before considered. We are calling for immediate changes by industry and the FDA to help stop this avoidable mercury contamination of the food supply."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/mar/15/my-hero-noam-chomsky-charles-glass

My hero: Noam Chomsky

By Charles Glass
The Guardian, Friday 15 March 2013 12.00 EDT

"My heroes have always been cowboys," Willie Nelson sang, a sentiment I shared when I was a child in California. My hero in my teenage years, while most of my contemporaries were demonstrating against the US war in Vietnam, was the greatest cowboy star of them all, John Wayne. When I was 16, he gave me a job. I admired him, and I still do.

Things changed when I moved to Beirut in 1972 and saw the devastation wreaked by US weaponry on Palestinian refugee camps and Lebanese villages. The connections to other places, such as Vietnam and Chile, became clearer. In 1974, I read a book on US policy in the Middle East, which made sharp criticisms of the western press that I had by then joined. It was Peace in the Middle East by Noam Chomsky, whose books on language I had studied as a philosophy student.

I wrote to Chomsky, citing my reports on Israeli actions in south Lebanon, including the sinking of Lebanese fishing boats whose crews had to swim long distances to shore, that my editors either refused to publish or rewrote to change facts unflattering to the Israelis or critical of US policies. He wrote back, beginning a correspondence that continues to this day.

A year later, while I was visiting Cambridge, Massachusetts, we arranged to meet. He picked me up at my friends' place in a battered old car for lunch at his house in Lexington with his wife, Carol. We became friends. When you know some people better, you see their flaws. With Noam, it was the opposite. The closer I came to knowing him, the more I saw his heroic qualities. A scholar who has more or less defined contemporary linguistic analysis, he nonetheless engaged with the world, always on the side of the oppressed. The US establishment treats him as a pariah. Yet, at the age of 84, Noam produces books, essays and lectures (he will give the Edward Said Lecture in London on 18 March) at a rate that should shame the rest of us.

• Charles Glass's Deserter: The Last Untold Story of World War II is published this month by Harper Press

http://action.fooddemocracynow.org/sign/tell_hersheys_to_kiss_monsanto_goodbye

Tell Hershey's to Kiss Monsanto Goodbye!

Last fall, while Californians were working to support their basic right to label genetically engineered foods through Prop 37, the Hershey Company, the nation’s largest chocolate-maker, contributed $519,000 to defeat them and your Right to Know what’s in your food. Rather than stand with Californians, Hershey's joined with Monsanto, the world's largest biotech seed company, who dumped in $8.1 million to stifle democracy and transparency.

If you’re uncertain why Hershey’s chose to climb into bed with Monsanto to defeat GMO labeling, consider the fact that Hershey’s Kisses are chock full of GMOs! Unfortunately, Hershey's is caught in a huge pile of chocolate hypocrisy since Hershey’s sells GMO free chocolate in Europe, but keeps peddling GMOs in America.

This Valentine’s day, join Food Democracy Now! and say Goodbye to Hershey’s chocolate until they agree to sell GMO free chocolates in America.

Tell Hershey to Kiss Monsanto Goodbye!

Click here to download our Hershey's Valentine's Day graphic to remind you who supports GMOs and Monsanto and who's against your right to know!

(Right click and select 'save file as' to save the file and download the graphic)