I am advocating BLUE LIGHTS on front porches for autism for the whole month of April. Everyone affected, any a call for Independent Research.

Haven't had time to listen to the whole thing, but caught some of Dr. Hertz-Picciotto's presentation and all of Lynn Redwood's. Thought Lynn Redwood did a very good job, especially when she pointed out that it isn't good enough to compensate vaccine injured children, that there needs to be a focus on preventing those injuries.

The briefing was every bit as disappointing as expected. SafeMinds simply should not continue to engage in congressional activities, especially with Beth Clay continuing to lobby for them. Vaccines just kept getting substituted for "environmental" except for a few token mentions, Lyn Redwood repeated all her usual demands to make the big, bad government even bigger, while asking for a singular hearing on vaccine safety (even though such a hearing was exactly what SafeMinds prevented from happening last November). Eric Uram wouldn't give any of the attending staffers printed materials in observation of Earth Day. However, that didn't stop Beth Clay from trying to woo potential clients with her hot pink business cards that listed her two email addresses, two websites, two phone numbers and Skype name. There were a few stacks of SafeMinds pamphlets, but they were outdated by several years.

Thank You Adam. I tried four of five times to rewind and catch the name but could not.

I wanted to read about her.

I might respect her afterwards -- I doubt it -- for all her background she is a epidemologist which means they keep their nose on a collum of numbers never coming up for air to see the real world.

I see things like this and I wonder -- HEY: I could be smart enough to have her job--
but then I think of Dr. Wakefield and know that the reason she has the job is -- she would sell her soul for it.

Sometimes it feels like some want to try cleaning up everywhere but the vaccine schedule, and hope to see significant improvement. When I look back at my daughters' regression history--even my NT daughter lost some words post well-baby visits--I'm not sure that perspective appreciates the risk to health & development of these injections of bolus dosed pollutants or perhaps the combination of those pollutants with the immune challenge generated by the antigen and other contaminants?

My list of suspect non-vaccine exposures that may have increased nation-wide (or worldwide) as the epidemic started in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s is still not long and none seems nearly as likely to be "bad actors." If anyone has more to suggest, please feel free (note: mostly just personal speculation below, but in case anyone wants to add to my perspective...):

I didn't know before watching this hearing that ultrasound technology changed in 1992 increasing the exposure (I think it was said by 8-fold?), though I had two ultrasounds with my "NT" daughter and only one with my daughter on the spectrum, and 1992 is also after the observed 1988-89 global autism epidemic trajectory kicked in.

I suspect a generation of mothers with higher levels of high-copper amalgam, in use starting around 1977, may be a factor.

I wonder about wifi as I'm increasingly intolerant of it now, and some research suggests it weakens BBB integrity, but my family didn't have any wifi in our household until the past few years.

Global mercury air pollution: We moved to the west coast after the birth of my NT daughter, before the birth of my affected daughter, and may have been subjected to a difference living more downwind from China. But it seems to me that if autism was significantly contributed to/caused by Hg air pollution or other air pollution, it would have been associated more with urban living or living in the shadow of industrial areas before the epidemic years.

I don't know if mercury levels in fish has increased. I think I kept about the same dietary fish intake I grew up with.

I think tylenol given in conjuction with vaccination is probably a factor, but likely only an exacerbating one.

With pesticides constantly changing but in use for decades, it's hard to see how they can be more than another exacerbating factor.

I also wonder about GMOs, but supposedly those didn't enter the U.S. market in 1995--I do wonder how much GMO has entered into vaccine manufacturing. Would GMO molecules make a vaccine more reaction prone? I know very little about how prevalent in the U.S. diet GMO is or has been, or if there is any global correlation autism rates.

Cleaning products--we were frequently moving when both my daughters were infants and I was cleaning a lot, but I'm not sure how different that exposure was from earlier generations.

Pharmaceutical use--I didn't take anything during my pregnancies, though I'm pretty certain the use of birth control for a time significantly reduced my health prior to having my daughters and possibly raised their risk for autism. Oh, and additionally, I developed allergy to thimerosal through using thimerosal containing contact solution in my late teen years.

Cumulative multigenerational vaccine and other chemical exposure effects: I rather doubt it, but I do wonder if we had stuck to the 1983 vaccine schedule if the rates might have still crept up a little bit. I know my maternal grandmother never felt the same post-vaccine as a young married woman. Watching the generations on that side of my family I'm suspicious that there is a disadvantage from having such exposures continuing on in the family history. Sometimes I wonder if that inheritance is simply a greater toxic load prenatally and/or through breastfeeding. But nationwide, since we have been working on reducing lead exposure, I also think we could have expected to see LDs/NDs reduce overall in the U.S. if the vaccine schedule had not exploded.

Irva Hertz-Picciotto -MIND INSTITUTE U.C. DAVIS I believe.