On Tuesday, the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC), Washington's leading arbiter for directing federal funds to autism research, unanimously voted to recommend studies that include investigations into possible links between autism and environmental triggers - including vaccines - in certain subsets of children.

The IACC has not yet posted details...

Part Two: White House Realities

(Note: This is the second part of an essay adapted from David Kirby's upcoming book Animal Factory. To read PART ONE, please click here).

In 2008, Barack Obama was swept to victory on a national wave of desire for change -- change that...

Part 1 - Campaign Pledges

Today, most Americans get their meat, dairy and eggs from hyper-productive, industrialized, anonymous "confined animal feeding operations" (CAFOs) located hundreds or thousands of miles away from their home. Will it always be this way?

No one can predict the future -- especially when it...

On Monday, the USDA reported that pigs in a commercial swine herd at an Indiana factory farm had tested positive for novel H1N1 influenza virus. It was the first time that pigs raised for meat in the US had been found with signs of the bug. Last...

On Saturday, Story Landis, PhD, director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, an agency of the National Institutes of Health, abruptly resigned from the federal government's premiere autism research panel - the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC) - citing embarrassing notes she had left behind at a...

Story Landis, PhD, director of the National Institute of Neurodevelopmental Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), an NIH agency, surprised many parents on Friday by stating that autism researchers should study "the children who have been most profoundly affected" by adverse reactions to vaccination.

On Saturday, Dr. Landis abruptly resigned from...

Last week, researchers from the University of Nevada, the National Cancer Institute and The Cleveland Clinic announced the startling discovery of antibodies to a little known retrovirus in 95% of patients with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS), a debilitating neuro-immune disease impacting more than a million people in the United...

It amazes me to see that the Obama Administration and mainstream media have been rather nonchalant about the startling news that 1-in-100 American children - and perhaps around 1-in-60 boys - have an autism spectrum disorder.

On Friday, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told listeners on a conference...

Washington loves to dump its bad news on a Friday afternoon, and on October 2 it confirmed that 1 percent of American children (and by extension, perhaps 1-in-58 boys) has an autism spectrum disorder.

On a hastily arranged telephone "visit" with US Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius...

"The science is largely complete. Ten epidemiological studies have shown MMR vaccine doesn't cause autism; six have shown thimerosal doesn't cause autism."-- Dr. Paul Offit, "Autism's False Prophets"

"16 studies have shown no causal association between vaccines and autism, and these studies carry weight in the scientific industry."-- Dr. Nancy...

A pair of federally funded studies on autism rates is about to make news -- big news -- and it isn't good: It would appear that somewhere around one percent of all US children currently have an autism spectrum disorder. The rate is even higher among six to 11 year...

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...