On Tuesday in Washington, members of the Elizabeth Birt Center for Autism Law and Advocacy (EBCALA), along with parents and children who received federal vaccine injury compensation, are having a press conference "to unveil an investigation linking vaccine injury to autism."

For the past two decades, according to the group,...

The vaccine-autism debate is far from over. If anything, it is just getting started.

As the following comments, funding decisions, research priorities and published papers suggest, the U.S. government and many scientists will be researching and discussing this topic for years to come. Here are some reasons why:

I) Federal...

Once again, our industrial food production system has come to bite us back -- this time in the form of drug-resistant staph bacteria detected in one-half of supermarket meat samples tested in one study, with one-half of the resistant samples found with bacteria that were resistant to...

Arsenic from industrialized chicken manure is a possible source of a cancer cluster identified in Arkansas, according to a new report that was featured at a Senate environmental committee hearing on Tuesday.

The report, "Cancer Clusters, Disease, and the need to Protect People from Toxic Chemicals," identifies at...

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention wants to study autism as a possible clinical outcome of immunization, as part of its newly adopted 5-year research agenda for vaccine safety, the agency said on its website.

The CDC will also study mitochondrial dysfunction and the potential risk...

SeaWorld is likely to petition an administrative judge to close hearings into the death of senior trainer Dawn Brancheau, who was killed by an orca last February at SeaWorld Orlando, according to a statement issued by the group, The Orca Project. SeaWorld also reportedly wants all testimony...

I have been speaking to young parents in my neighborhood of Park Slope, Brooklyn lately about vaccines and autism, which science and the media have once again pronounced as completely debunked for what I believe is now the sixth or seventh time.

These are highly educated, affluent and politically progressive...

This has been a rotten Christmas season for the American pork conglomerate Smithfield Foods.

Last week the Humane Society of the United States released a grisly report and undercover video on the disgusting treatment of pregnant sows at one of its industrial swine facilities in Virginia. And...

Pork shoulder at my local supermarket costs 99 cents a pound, but zucchini cost $1.99 a pound. Why? Because American factory farms mass produce swine with such efficiency that the cash value of a pig's life has dwindled downward.

The only way to produce that many pigs that quickly...

Last month, the former head of safety at Sea World Orlando made headlines and rocked the marine mammal industry when she accused company officials of blocking a federal investigation into the death of senior trainer Dawn Brancheau, who was killed in February by a six-ton orca with a bloody past.

Last week, I wrote a column about the disturbingly high rate of MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or drug-resistant staff bacteria) found in samples of fresh pork, beef and chicken purchased in North American supermarkets.

More than 5 percent of the pork sold in supermarkets in Baton Rouge...

Interstate egg baron Austin "Jack" DeCoster offered an apology this afternoon during a congressional hearing into the mass recall last August of 550 million factory-farmed eggs contaminated with salmonella.

"We were horrified to learn that our eggs may have made people sick," DeCoster told the panel. "We apologize to everyone...

Next week, Congress will hold hearings on the recent recall of more than half a billion eggs infected with salmonella -- all of them from two factory farms in Iowa.

That recall, though voluntary, was essential: Salmonella can make you very sick, though if treated on time, it is rarely...

Americans currently "enjoy" the cheapest animal protein in history. Such a monumental achievement could only have been attained through the industrialized mega-production of meat, milk and eggs -- which now cost about $1.56 on average for a large white dozen in the nation's supermarkets.

At just 13 cents apiece, even...

Last month, a camera crew from the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) came to my home to interview me about Animal Factory: The Looming Threat of Industrial Pig, Dairy and Poultry Farms to Humans and the Environment (St. Martin's Press 2010).

Today, a brief part of...

Grand Lake St. Marys -- Ohio's largest inland body of water and a treasured recreational area -- is dying. And if you barbecued some supermarket pork over the holiday weekend, you helped contribute to this disaster, however indirectly.

The lake's 13,000 acres of water surrounded by parkland, cabins and campgrounds,...

When it comes to all the addictions that plague our society, there are two that rarely get enough attention, let alone a badly needed intervention: our factory farms' addiction to low-dose antibiotics, and our politicians' addiction to high-octane cash from mega industries like Big Ag and Big Pharma.

On Monday,...

If President Obama really wants to champion a bipartisan issue, one that might appeal to tea-partying conservatives and -- in the wake of the Gulf spill -- jittery eco-liberals alike, he should consider tackling the worst excesses of industrial animal agriculture, better known as factory farming.

It's true that imposing...

I don't know what the editorial policy is toward factory farming at the very conservative Washington Times, but the paper apparently gives free rein to its book reviewers, even when covering politically controversial hot-button issues

On April 23, The Times ran a very favorable account of...

If it seems like most of the people you know with autism are 22 or younger, that's because most people diagnosed with autism were born after 1987. A recent US EPA study has found a distinct "changepoint" year - or spike - in autism in California and elsewhere...