Olmsted also interviewed Dick Warner, who has a water purification & natural health business and has been in Amish households all over the country. "I've been working with Amish people since 1980.  I have never seen an autistic Amish child -- not one," he told Olmsted. "I would know it. I have a strong medical background. I know what autistic people are like. I have friends who have autistic children," he added. (http://aboutautism.blogspot.com/2005/06/age-of-autism-glimpse-of-amish.html)

Olmsted did find one Amish woman in Lancaster County with an autistic child but as it turns out, the child was adopted from China and had been vaccinated. The woman knew of two other autistic children but here again, one of those had been vaccinated.

On June 9, 2005, Olmsted reported on the autism rate in the Amish community around Middlefield, Ohio, which was 1 in 15,000, according to Dr. Heng Wang, the medical director, at the DDC Clinic for Special Needs Children. (http://aboutautism.blogspot.com/2005/06/age-of-autism-one-in-15000-amish.html)

"So far," according to Olmsted, "there is evidence of fewer than 10 Amish with autism; there should be several hundred if the disorder occurs among them at the same 150 to 1 prevalence as children born in the rest of the population."

On December 7, 2005, ?Age of Autism? reported that thousands of children cared for by Homefirst Health Services in metropolitan Chicago have at least two things in common with Amish children, they have never been vaccinated and they don't have autism. (http://www.washingtontimes.com/upi/20051204-060313-6829r.htm)

Homefirst has five offices in the Chicago area and a total of six doctors. "We have about 30,000 or 35,000 children that we've taken care of over the years, and I don't think we have a single case of autism in children delivered by us who never received vaccines," said Dr Mayer Eisenstein, Homefirst's medical director who founded the practice in 1973.

Olmsted reported that the autism rate in Illinois public schools is 38 per 10,000, according to state Education Department data. In treating a population of 30,000 to 35,000 children, this would logically mean that Homefirst should have seen at least 200 autistic children over the years but the clinic has seen none.

In Olmsted?s most recent article (http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/56227.html#) he pinpoints the location where many of the first cases of autism were concentrated before the disorder exploded nationwide.  He points out, ?Ground zero was the nation's capital, in particular the Maryland suburbs where cutting-edge government research in the 1930s and 1940s exposed families to the chemical that first triggered the baffling disorder.?

The U.S. Agriculture Department?s Beltsville research center in suburban Maryland, just outside the nation?s capital, was experimenting with plant fungi and ways to kill them using ethyl mercury fungicide -- the exact kind also used in the vaccine preservative Thimerosal.

Ethyl mercury was patented in the 1920s through the work of Morris S. Kharasch. Kharasch was a chemistry professor at the University of Maryland in College Park, which is next to the Beltsville research center.

In 1943, Johns Hopkins University child psychiatrist Leo Kanner first diagnosed autism in 11 children born in the 1930s. Olmsted has found that these children seemed to have a parent either linked to cutting-edge research involving mercury or had exposures to ethyl mercury fungicides which were used to treat seeds, saplings and lumber in the 1930s.  Olmsted concludes, ?To sum up: the first cases of autism seem to radiate outward from a central point -- as big bangs tend to do. As those exposures expanded, so did autism. This suggests a new and deeply disturbing truth about the Age of Autism: our fate is not in our genes, Dear Brutus, but in the chemicals that increasingly pollute our world and our children.?

Olmsted is to be commended for his research and investigation into the cause of autism. He has done a tremendous service for the planet. He did what the CDC should have done, but again they didn?t need to do the research as they already know mercury is at the root cause of the autism epidemic.  The CDC has acted as a dissembler in this epidemic. 

What did the government know, and when did they know it? 

An FDA panel in 1982 said Thimerosal was ?toxic, caused cell damage, was not effective in killing bacteria or halting their replication? and that Thimerosal is ?not generally recognized as being safe or effective.? (1982 Vol. 47, No. 2 Federal Register)   

Learning disabled and autistic children are living the burden of proof of what the FDA panel concluded in 1982.  So, what happened?  Where was the precautionary principle? When something atrocious is done there always seems to be the justification that it was for a greater good. 

As the evidence continues to mount on what may be the largest iatrogenic (physician caused) public health disaster to affect this nation, so too does it appear that the apparent justification for deliberately allowing this to continue was about protecting the vaccine program?s viability (or profitability).  Such rationalizations however, have propelled matters down a slippery slope. What little altruism there is in this justification belies individuals protecting careers, status and reputations. This disaster did not come out of nowhere, and ultimately it will be found that it could have been mitigated if not for the irresponsible use of power and influence by an unholy alliance between corporation and state. It also calls into question whether this public health fiasco is an isolated scenario  

In 1999, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) issued a joint statement that said because ?any potential risk is of concern, the Public Health Service, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and vaccine manufacturers agree that Thimerosal-containing vaccines should be removed as soon as possible.?  They would admit only ?that some children could be exposed to a cumulative level of mercury over the first six months of life that exceeds one of the federal guidelines on methyl mercury,? and they reassured the public that ?there are no data or evidence of any harm caused by the level of exposure that some children may have encountered in following the existing immunization schedule. Infants and children who have received Thimerosal-containing vaccines do not need to be tested for mercury exposure.?   

A report several years later didn?t sound so convincing.  In 2003, a report complied by the Staff of the Subcommittee on Human Rights and Wellness Committee on Government Reform (United States House of Representatives) was presented to then Chairman, Dan Burton. It was entitled, ?Mercury in Medicine -Taking Unnecessary Risks.?   The report concluded that:

?given the importance of vaccination in our overall public health strategy, it is imperative that the Department of Health and Human Services adequately addresses the concerns of families of whose children have possible vaccine-induced autism. The continued response from agency officials that ?there is no proof of harm? is a disingenuous response. The lack of conclusive proof does not mean that there is no connection between Thimerosal and vaccine-induced autism. What the lack of conclusive proof indicates is that the agency has failed in its duties to assure that adequate safety studies were conducted prior to marketing. Furthermore, in the last two decades, after determining that Thimerosal was no longer ?generally recognized as safe? for topical ointments, the agency did not extend their evaluation to other applications of Thimerosal, in particular as a vaccine preservative.?