Broke California will begin the new decade with crushing debt and wholesale elimination of human services. Meanwhile, President Obama has rankled Congressional Democrats with plans to earmark millions of dollars in NIH funds to find the causes and cures of autism.

Are these two things related? You bet they are.

On Wednesday, Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Rep. Christopher Smith (R-NJ) called on HHS Secretary Kathleen Sibelius to dedicate between 1.6% and 6.6% of the $300 million in federal stimulus funds earmarked for the purchase and distribution of vaccines to fund a major study of health outcomes -- including...

US Government officials are finally getting serious about studying all potential environmental factors in autism, and I for one applaud them heartily for leaving no etiological stone unturned.

Five years ago I wrote in the introduction to Evidence of Harm that "something in our modern world" was causing autism in...

On Tuesday, the Federal Government's leading immunization advisory panel unanimously approved a sweeping list of vaccine safety research recommendations for the US Department of Health and Human Services, including several that are directly or indirectly linked to the vaccine-autism debate. The endorsement, from the highly influential National Vaccine Advisory Committee,...

Last weekend, the Autism One organization held its annual conference in Chicago, attended by thousands of parents, doctors, educators and others, to discuss a wide array of autism-related issues. The New York Times labeled it an "anti-vaccine" conference and the Chicago Tribune portrayed it as a freak-show spectacle straight off...

The following letter was sent to the editors at Discover Magazine last week, regarding a recent article on vaccines and autism. The magazine claimed that the debate is over, but ignored the fact that federal and private support of research into a possible association continues.

I have seen a number...

In researching my upcoming book on factory farming for St. Martins Press, I have come across many warnings from our past about the looming threat of pandemic influenza emerging from large-scale hog operations.

It now appears that six of the eight genetic components in the currently circulating virus are...

Reuters agency, one of the most reliably business-friendly news outlets, today blasted "wild theories" about "evil factory farms in Mexico" being the cause of the current outbreak of "deadly swine flu."

"Dead pigs in China, evil factory farms in Mexico and an al Qaeda plot involving Mexican drug cartels are...

Mexican Health Secretary Jose Angel Cordova announced Monday evening that officials have identified who they believe to be the earliest known case of the swine flu outbreak: A four-year-old boy in the village of La Gloria, Veracruz, near the huge Granjas Carroll hog operation, which is co-owned by Smithfield Foods...

Large-scale swine producers in Mexico deny that their industry is the source of the deadly new influenza strain, saying the animals are all healthy, and that it is scientifically "not possible" for hogs to infect people with the illness. But lawmakers in the eastern state of Veracruz are now charging...

Officials from the CDC and USDA will likely arrive in Mexico soon to help investigate the deadly new influenza virus that managed to jump from pigs to people in a previously unseen mutated form that can readily spread among humans.

One of the first things they will want to...

Dr. Andrew Wakefield - the British physician who was accused in February by the Sunday Times of London of altering data in a 1998 paper on autistic children, bowel disease and the MMR vaccine - has filed a formal complaint against the freelance journalist who wrote the article.

Wakefield...

It is not accurate for members of the media to report that the link between vaccines and autism has been "disproven." This is especially true in light of recent news from the National Vaccine Advisory Committee - and a series of other news items from the Federal Court of Claims,...

A major health official within the United States Government today endorsed more research into possible links between vaccination and autism, saying that such studies are "legitimate."

The official, Dr. Duane Alexander, Director of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), an NIH agency,...

8:30 PM EST - UPDATE:

I have confirmed the following information:

Members of the US Justice Department's Office of Public Affairs have been caught somewhat off guard with the news that the MMR autism rulings would be released on Thursday.

Yesterday, I sent a letter to the Court of Federal...

Last night, thousands of parents and grandparents of children with autism sat in front of their TVs, mouths agape, as Keith Olbermann declared their national hero, Dr. Andrew Wakefield, Tuesday's "Worst Person in the World" on the popular Countdown show on MSNBC.

Quoting from a story in the...

If media accounts about Kirsten Gillibrand of New York are correct, then I am pleased to be the first to report that my new Senator is a supporter of research into possible connections between vaccines and autism.

The presumptive Senator, a moderate Democrat from the Hudson Valley, is sure to...

I have always said there may be a small percentage of people with autism spectrum disorder (perhaps those with Asperger Syndrome) whose symptoms are a result only of their genetic makeup, with no environmental factors involved at all.

But a new study out of UC Davis' MIND Institute says...

The Inter-Agency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC) has voted to recommend earmarking millions of dollars in research funds from the Combating Autism Act of 2006 to study the possible role of vaccines in the causation of autism.

The panel also proposed spending an additional $75 million to study a wide...

Yesterday, I received several emails from parents of children with autism who were concerned about an autism blog that they thought was posted at the official website of the Barack Obama Transition Team, www.change.gov. On the blog, it says that, "Recovery from autism is neither possible, nor desirable"

Shortly...