The Garden State Just Keeps Growing Autism
Thank you to our Anne Dachel who is one of the few people in media asking why no one seems alarmed by the ever increasing autism rates everywhere, and especially in New Jersey, where experts have been studying for decades. The fiddling has only grown louder over the last twenty five years, as families, school districts, services burn to the ground. It's a travesty. We matter. Our kids matter. Their futures matter. Life is more than Covid and identity politics or pitting American against American for $omeone'$ agenda. There are countless people with autism who will be LOST when their parents are gone, because no one seems to give a sh*t. Money and funding has gone to genetics and disability advocates have willfully shunned severe autism while fighting for pie in the sky methods that simply DO NOT WORK for much of the autism population. Here's a filthy secret - ABA is a nightmare come adulthood. It ends with school. Day program staff have no training. Job coaches and employers don't know what ABA is. The grocery clerk has no training. Dentists have no training. ABA lives in a tiny exclusive school based bubble. Once you age out? 80% accuracy isn't enough. ABA is a liability at age 22. Prompting ceases to exist. Community based living? An apartment? A condo? Ha! My daughters have no voice control. NONE. They weigh 120 pounds and walk like beautiful mastodons. They melt down. They scream. They sing Sesame Street at the top of their lungs. One says HELLOOOOOOO over and over because it is ALL she can say. They wake up every - single - day - at 4:30am and begin their raucous joy. My kids. My 3. Multiply that by your kids, your grandkids, all the kids. We need to be less polite about all of this. Rattle cages. Maybe even pick up pitchforks.
By Anne Dachel
Twelve percent of boys in Toms River, NJ have autism and no one can figure out why
More on the 200 percent increase in autism in New Jersey.
Listen to this 3 minute video on autism in New Jersey, featuring Dr. Walter Zahorodny, who casually cites horrific autism rates among boys and says it’s all a mystery.
June 18, 2021, NJ Spotlight News: Responding to New Jersey’s high and rising rates of autism
New Jersey, where autism has been on the rise for decades, the rate is now the highest in the nation. New research from Rutgers University pinpoints the startling increase. It climbed from roughly 1% in 2000 up to 3% and even 5% today in some parts of the state, prompting questions about whether there will be enough resources and services to keep up with demand.
In May, First Children Services opened a new center in Roselle Park to provide a continuum of services starting with diagnosis. Matt Hess, CEO of First Children Services, said the goal is to continue opening such centers as the demand in New Jersey continues to increase.
REPORTER: The goal at …First Children Services ...is to do activities in a natural group setting while being paired with individual behavior technicians providing Applied Behavioral Analysis or ABA services. …
This center …opened in May and CEO Matt Hess says it provides a continuum of services starting with diagnosis. …
Hess says the plan is to open more centers as the demand in New Jersey continues to increase.
WALTER ZAHORODNY: It’s very unusual to find a disorder, a disability, some health problem increasing so dramatically in a brief period of time.
REPORTER: Associate professor of pediatrics, Walter Zahorodny, has been tracking autism in school districts in four New Jersey counties since 2000
ZAHORADNY: Autism has increased from about one percent to this new range which is somewhere between three and five percent, in some districts.
REPORTER: Ocean County, for example, had an overall rate of five percent.
ZAHORODNY: Boys are much more likely to have autism than girls, so when you’re talking about a five percent rate overall, what you’re really revealing is a prevalence of autism among boys of eight percent.
Newark has that. Toms River has a rate among boys approaching twelve percent.
REPORTER: Reasons are still unclear as to what may be causing these spikes, but Zahoradny’s research shows New Jersey’s rate of autism is higher than anywhere else in the U.S. where it’s tracked by the CDC.
ZAHORODNY:Maternal age, paternal age, prematurity, ow birth weight, prenatal exposure to certain drugs [has been shown] to affect autism prevalence, that is to increase the risk at little bit.
But none of those little changes are enough to explain a 200 percent increase.
So I think we still have some important risk factor, trigger or triggers left to discover.
MATT HESS: Some will say it’s due to the fact that we’re better at diagnosing it and treating it and kind of identifying children that are on the spectrum. …
Let me add…
I have written about Walter Zahorodny a number of times over the years. He has looked on with amazement at the stunning increases in New Jersey. Today he’s talking about a 200 percent increase in autism. Back in 2014, it was a 43 percent increase.
Back in April, 2012, Zahorodny was featured on the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC radio. During the interview, the host brought up research on the possible causes for autism and he made this comment: "I guess we know what they aren't, for instance, childhood vaccines, right?"
This was Zahorodny's stunning response: "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. …
So a "small number of children" have autism because of their vaccines. Shouldn't we all be concerned?
While Zahorondny's claim that thimerosal was removed by 2000 is clearly wrong, his admission that yes, some kids really do become autistic after vaccinations, was alarming.
So how much of the rate increase is because of the vaccines children receive?
More from Walter Zahorodny:
In this current publication Zahorodny, the autism expert from Rutgers University, warns us that the horrible numbers from New Jersey are probably the same all over the country, and we should expect things to get worse. He adds that we should do something.
This from a man who has been monitoring autism in New Jersey since 2000.
June 18, 2021, NJ.com: More N.J. kids are being diagnosed with autism. That will likely strain schools
…The rate was much higher in some districts. In the Toms River Regional School District, the autism rate was more than 7%, the highest in the state, the research shows. Newark’s rate was about 5%. NorthJersey.com was the first to publish the findings.
Walter Zahorodny, the researcher who conducted the study, said larger communities — Toms River being the largest suburban school district in the state — could see higher rates because their school districts have better resources for kids with autism….
The New Jersey Department of Education did not answer specific questions about its plans to address this growing need. In an emailed statement, spokesman Shaheed Morris said, “The NJDOE and its sister agencies have also made a variety of resources available to support families of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.”…
But as autism cases rise — Zahorodny expects the trend to continue — the state Department of Education and school districts will have to figure out how to meet the complex and unique needs of more kids.
Buchanan said districts in the state are generally equipped to handle the majority of kids with autism who do not have intellectual disabilities, but that those who do require more care and resources. She also said the ability of districts to meet educational needs varies wildly….
Zahorodny said his research has long indicated that New Jersey has the highest prevalence of autism in the U.S. But he said the state likely doesn’t have a significantly higher autism rate than other densely populated areas of the country. New Jersey is just better at identifying cases.
In fact, he added that the autism rate across the country is probably more like New Jersey’s 3.6% and less like the CDC’s national average of 1.9%.
“The rate in New Jersey is based on our ability to identify true cases, based on true quality information from educational and clinical sources,” Zahorodny said. “In reality, I suspect that the rate of autism is higher in places with lower estimates. That’s an underestimate of autism prevalence.”
Statistics from the state Department of Education show that just 1.7% of students — 23,369 students in total — were classified as having autism in 2019, meaning there could be thousands of kids not getting the education they require.
Regardless of the precise autism numbers, Zahorodny said his research makes one thing clear.
“The alarming signal is that we need to do something ... pay attention and consider this a real phenomenon and make plans to serve the children,” he said.
Eileen Shaklee said she feels the state’s system does well when kids with autism are young, but starts to falter as they get older.
“It seems to me once they start aging out of elementary and they’re not cute anymore” they don’t get the services they need, she said. “We have a huge problem on our hands when these kids get older.”
Anne Dachel is media editor for Age of Autism.
Merck's (main vaccine manufacturer for U.S.) NEW JERSEY headquarters looks like a corona virus from the air!
https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ToPP27LOheA/Two7ib_YipI/AAAAAAAACuA/IS4OhxzHTzs/s1600/0003.jpg
Coincidence?
I find it compelling that the one "independent" ONGOING study of autism statistics is in New Jersey.
Why are ZAHORODNY's statistics more accurate than the CDC's? Who REALLY pays for the studies? Has anyone traced the vaccine lots of those with an autism diagnosis for New Jersey and California since 2000? In South Africa's exposed apartheid plot to reduce black fertility via vaccines, it was stated that they could control distribution of "special " vaccines via delivery when attempts to target via bioengineering failed.
Also, the children, (including blacks) used in the 2000 CDC case control study (VAXXED: the movie was based on this) were all from the Atlanta area- HOME OF THE CDC.
@Laura Hayes
I appreciate your comment. Perhaps one day he will change from a Saul to a Paul.
Posted by: Emmaphiladelphia | June 23, 2021 at 01:50 PM
Revision to my first comment to this post:
I regret calling Dr. Zahorodny a despicable man. I have been feeling convicted as a Christian about passing judgement. I will leave that to God, and focus on his actions/inactions.
What I should have written is that I find Dr. Zahorodny's consideration and investigation of vaccines as a/the major causal factor in that which is labeled "autism" insufficient and inexplicable. To that end, I hope he will further consider and investigate vaccines as a/the causal factor of autism thoroughly and immediately.
Posted by: Laura Hayes | June 23, 2021 at 12:04 PM
Revision to my first comment to this post:
I regret calling Dr. Zahorodny a despicable man.
What I should have written is that I find Dr. Zahorodny's consideration and investigation of vaccines as a/the major causal factor in that which is labeled "autism" insufficient and inexplicable. To that end, I hope he will read the comments here on AoA and feel compelled to further consider and investigate vaccines as a/the causal factor of autism thoroughly and immediately.
Posted by: Laura Hayes | June 23, 2021 at 10:21 AM
The colossal increase in autism,
Our disgusting new national ‘holiday’ - Juneteenth - being full of deadly shootouts, looting and riots,
LGBTQIA+ being normalized and celebrated.
What do these all have in common?
Posted by: anonymous | June 22, 2021 at 09:48 AM
Stop using the term, “autism”—as it is cryptic, and designed
by the Medical Mafia to deflect from t-h-e CAUSE : a TOXIC
Vaccination Schedule ( TVS ) and a Corrupt Medical System
( CMS ).
So, simply begin using this four-letter designation, to focus
the nation‘ attention on the PRIMARY (root) cause :
V C B D—for: Vaccine Caused Brain Damage.
As for the root cause of why all the deflection away from VCBD,
consider the Cold War never ended :
Cloward and Piven :
“Cloward-Piven is a political strategy of calculated chaos first described in 1966, by two Columbia University sociologists, Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven. Their theory was published appropriately in the far left The Nation, the oldest continuously published news magazine in the country. Cloward-Piven’s goal was the creation of chaos so that: ‘A political crisis would result that could lead to legislation for a guaranteed annual income and thus an end to poverty.’” :
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/03/president_cloward_vice_president_piven.html#ixzz6pNDY8Odr
-Rick
Posted by: JungianINTP | June 22, 2021 at 03:57 AM
Instead of being negative about Greta's message, which is valid, lets hope another wonder or two emerge, perhaps a sibling of a severely autistic child.
Let's help that teen/young twenty be heard and honored for sounding the alarm.
Generation Z is amazing, and smart, and kind. We need you! And we need to amplify your voices.
I've read some siblings on these very pages --their power blew me away! They know that their sibling is not some quirky math whiz. They know that their sibling might never escape the world of silence.
I know the MSM does not actually want to hear you. But we do. And we can turn this around.
Posted by: Anita Donnelly | June 22, 2021 at 12:01 AM
Kind of to the tune of Grease's Sandra Dee
Look at me, I'm New Jersey
Lousy with the ASD
Won't go outside til my heart has been fried
By a Vax--I'm New Jersey
I am still on vaccine fence,
All injury's -- coincidence
I'm a good girl, I can't bear the truth,
And I have no common sense.
Look at me, I'm New Jersey
Allergies, and ADD
We just don't know why, we just have to sigh . . .
And our genes must be the key!
Autism has skyrocketed
with vaccines, co-incidentally
But it can't be true cuz it makes me feel blue
So I'll attack you for telling me.
Posted by: Sandra Dee | June 21, 2021 at 11:56 PM
Let’s not forget a mother noticing a “cluster” of “autism” cases in Brick Township, NJ in the mid-1990s. Likewise, across the country where I lived at the time, in Granite Bay, CA, we parents there also noticed a “cluster” of “autism” cases in our area. The rates were 1 in 150 in BT, NJ, and 1 in 132 in GB, CA at the time. The cities were 3000 miles apart, one was blue collar, the other white collar, one was industrial, the other suburban, YET, both cities were experiencing what could only be described as a new and dire surge in cases of “autism” in young children. It didn’t take long for savvy parents, who had noticed their children’s health and development nosedive after vaccinations, to suspect that the cause behind the surge, and the unifying factor between these two divergent locations, was the vaccines their children had received.
What did the CDC do once alerted? They descended upon Brick Township, NJ, and began to assess all of the young children there. Then in the dark of night, they vanished, without a word to any of the parents, resurfacing more than a year later with a study composed of manipulated and meant to deceive data…and it has been mostly crickets, interspersed with occasional and additional fraud and lies, from the CDC ever since. Mark Blaxill gives a brief 9-minute summary here:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tff7kXPoNxY
And in gross violation of every job-related and moral duty they are charged with, the CDC never made their way to Granite Bay, CA.
Our Congressmen and Congresswomen, with one or two exceptions, also turned a deaf ear to a number of powerful testimonies provided to them regarding the new and dire “autism” epidemic, including this 1999 speech by Granite Bay resident, Rick Rollens:
http://www.whale.to/v/rollens2.html
What is perhaps the saddest of all is how hard it is to effectively warn parents about the dangers, inefficacies, and lack of need for vaccines. Seems most continue to learn too late, after their own children have been harmed or killed.
Posted by: Laura Hayes | June 21, 2021 at 03:56 PM
When I first saw this excellent talk by Andrew Wakefield, speaking at the Boulder Public Library, I thought to myself "oh-oh." I feared that a media pile-on would commence because Wakefield would have to be shut up. I wasn't wrong. So here's Dr. Wakefield's dangerous talk. I am amazed at how timely it still is.
At 35:35 he discusses MMR and the rise of autism in Japan. At 40:50 he discusses early MMR and autism risk. But I recommend watching from the beginning:
https://www.screencast.com/users/JerryZimmer/folders/Autism/media/4918a2cb-40eb-4522-aca3-a534585d07eb/embed
Posted by: Carol | June 21, 2021 at 03:21 PM
Thanks Anne great reporting. Money means more than life to the Pharma phaithful..totally inhuman.
Pharma For Prison
MMR RIP
Posted by: Angus Files | June 21, 2021 at 03:16 PM
Kim knows, I know, we all know that what happens in New Jersey is happening all over the United States.
My old highschool boy friend has a son with autism. He has built his son a chicken house, and now trying to sell eggs over facebook.
I built both of mine two - chicken houses, and using all of my eggs with this keto stuff.
Up the road is a girl with autism. She loves the outside, her cell phone and her little dog. She is walking a lot on the road. I had to stop dead in the road the other day, she was unaware of my van. Maybe the guy in the riding mower drowned out my approach? At any rate he pointed to me and she got out of the way.
Posted by: benedetta | June 21, 2021 at 02:43 PM
"Lets put some brakes on this!"
Elijah Cummings, what was it 2012, "investigating" Federal Response to Rise in Autism Rates
CDC failure, HHS failure, NIH failure, House Comittee-failure of oversight
Time to take the train off the tracks, there are no brakes.
Posted by: greyone | June 21, 2021 at 02:39 PM
You make a good point, Barry Stern. Vaccines aren't the only industry protected by governments and universities choosing not to undertake the studies you suggest. No large corporation or powerful industry can have its products linked to a massively expensive disease, so no investigations will ever be done into environmental exposures of the types you mention.
As for looking at the differences among children (methylation, mitochondria, etc.), that is a blind spot for much of science. I spoke with a neurologist last summer who was frustrated beyond belief that his field has not attacked dementia (in all its varieties) the way breast cancer research has attacked that disease: by breaking down the people who have it into different groups with different disease etiologies and different treatments that will succeed. It is a field of very smart people, very few of whom have any imagination.
And then of course there are the very strange things that happen when it seems as if someone might actually look at brain pathology: Freezers fail in the middle of a holiday weekend, and no alarms sound.
But Kim and Anne are right: Folks in government, who may be dead when the bill comes due, can pretend it isn't coming, but families should get loud and let the public know the truth. Maybe the kids in their 20s can stop being so moved by Greta Thunberg's predictions for beachfront erosion 100 years from now and do the very easy math of what SSDI payments will cost them in 10 or 20 years. It's past time to start making a plan.
Posted by: TOB | June 21, 2021 at 01:59 PM
Industrialized nutrition, junk food, vaccines, alumninum, antibiotics, public school indoctrination, LGBTQIA+, behavior and seizure meds, IEPs, adult dependents…
Is this what childhood has come to?
Not just America, it’s worldwide. Ireland. England. Scotland. South Africa. South Korea. Japan. Philippines. India. Singapore. Malaysia. Australia. Canada (especially Ontario). EVERYWHERE.
We must create much more WAPF chapters, not less. Proper nutrition for proper health. We must stop making excuses to let the USDA, CDC, etc destroy us.
Posted by: anonymous | June 21, 2021 at 12:45 PM
Dr. ZAHORODNY seems to fit my favorite definition of expert: "X" as an unknown quantity and "spert" as a drip under pressure.
Yet it is actually governmental incompetence and lack of political will to say after 20 years that the state cannot find the reason for NJ's top ranking in percent of children with autism. Has any NJ governor even tried to get to the bottom of this dilemma? Has anyone done an analysis of chemicals in the blood and urine of these children and compared it with children who don't have the disease? or who've never been vaccinated? What about comparing neurological make-ups and brain scans? or relative amounts of exposure to different degrees of electro-magnetic radiation? Or the types of common co-morbidities with autism such as mitochondrial dysfunction, methylization cycle impairment and leaky gut? Or the percentage of parents who moved with their child(ren) with autism to NJ because of its schools' reputation for having pretty good autism programs? With such a database and high end analytics, it would seem possible to at least develop some hypotheses about why NJ leads the country in the rate of autism.
Posted by: Barry Stern | June 21, 2021 at 12:19 PM
Great intro, Kim.
Superb reporting, as always, Anne.
Despicable man, Dr. Zahorodny, spouting willful ignorance and lies, year after year, in a seemingly unconcerned monotone, and being part and party to the continuance and escalation of the “autism” epidemic.
Please explain, Dr. Zahorodny, in great detail, and with definitive proof, that vaccinations are not THE driving force behind the unacceptable and inexcusable “autism” epidemic. Can’t? Then resign, and repent. Make yourself available to be publicly challenged by those who contend that vaccinations are the primary cause of autism in many/most cases. Won’t? Then resign, and repent.
Watching the 3-minute clip above, 30+ years into the “autism” epidemic, is surreal. No meaningful progress by “the experts” in stopping the “autism” epidemic. And talk about a fox guarding the henhouse…an associate professor of pediatrics being “the expert” studying and reporting on the epidemic? The only thing pediatrics and pediatricians are expert at is harming and killing our children via vaccinations, and subsequent pharmaceuticals, then denying it.
Lies, lies, and more lies, told to continue the cover-up that vaccines are not the leading cause of disability, chronic illness, and death in our children. Shameful. Disgraceful. Sinful.
Posted by: Laura Hayes | June 21, 2021 at 08:06 AM
Ad the BAND PLAYS ON AND ON .. ON AND ON .. WITH BANDLEADERS LIKE DR ZAHORODNY LEADING IT FORWARD .. MUMBLING THIS OBVIOUSLY INDIFFERENT: "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. …"
This man as been "studying autism's rise" in New Jersey for almost TWELVE YEARS and still has absolutely no clue as to what is causing autism's ever-increasing numbers to rise .. but .. he knows "vaccines do not play a significant role in autism increasing". Please DOCTOR .. tell me what EVIDENCE YOU HAVE INDICATING VACCINES HAVEN'T PLAYED A ROLE IN AUTISM'S RISE???
As bad as our public health career bureaucrats (DR FAUCI) in WHO and CDC have mishandled Covid PANDEMIC .. it pales when compared with those very same career bureaucrats ..(Dr ZAHORODNY) who have mishandled .. DELIBERATELY .. our autism PANDEMIC.
Please .. the world needs a completely INDEPENDENT scientific study of VACCINATED V UNVACCINATED populations … this is MADDNESS GONE AMOK … DECADES OF DELAY, DENY AND HOPE THEY DIE policies .
Posted by: Bob Moffit | June 21, 2021 at 07:56 AM