https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=726173224093767&set=a.160060797371682.34863.110806432297119&type=1&stream_ref=10

Protect

Yesterday

251 children rescued in 39 states and 5 foreign countries! That’s the count so far in Operation Roundtable, according to Homeland Security officials. The still-unfolding operation—which smashed a criminal ring operating in the dark shadows of the Internet—was announced yesterday. This is not just crime news—it’s 21st century child abuse prevention—REAL prevention.

Members of our H.E.R.O. Child-Rescue Corps (trained at the Weiss Child Rescue Center) were among the Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) troops that made this rescue operation happen. And if you support PROTECT financially (www.protect.org/donate), you backed this operation too, by helping build HSI’s growing strength, through both our lobbying and charitable arms. This is what it’s all about!

Links:

Articles: http://bit.ly/1gGqK1w
DHS Press Conference Footage: http://www.dvidshub.net/unit/ICE#.UymVp5GsklM

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http://whut.pbslearningmedia.org/collection/globaldiplomacy/

Take a Virtual Trip to China with the First Lady

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VIDEO AT LINK - Welcome ( 中国欢迎您 ) from the First Lady

From March 20th-26th, the First Lady will travel to China. Grab your passport and travel across the globe to learn more about China’s unique culture and how international trips help foster global diplomacy. Check out:

NEW Resource Collections & Top Resources

First Lady Blog & Videos: http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/foreign-policy/first-lady-china-trip

Virtual Event

Michael Pollan ?@michaelpollan Mar 18
"First Lady Has Food Industry in a Frenzy" - http://NationalJournal.com http://bit.ly/Otchvo

http://www.nationaljournal.com/outside-influences/first-lady-has-food-industry-in-a-frenzy-20140316

First Lady Has Food Industry in a Frenzy
Michelle Obama's push for better nutrition is bringing sweeping changes to agriculture, manufacturing, commerce, schools, and American homes.

By Jerry Hagstrom
March 16, 2014

By many accounts, the Obama administration is leading the most aggressive campaign to improve the nation's eating habits in many decades. If the President and first lady have their way, the American people will cut down on sugar and sodium and eat more whole grains, lean meat, low-fat dairy products, and fruits and vegetables by the time he leaves office and in the years to come.

Many of those changes could result in multibillion-dollar shifts in how the government and consumers spend their money on food. Perhaps just as important, the efforts to reduce sodium, sugar, and fat will force companies to make changes in how they prepare, store, and ship food. But many of those initiatives are under pressure from food companies and from members of Congress.

On Friday, in a speech to the Partnership for a Healthier America—a private-sector group set up to push the administration's nutrition objectives—the first lady said:

"Because of what we have all done together, today, 32 million kids are getting healthier school meals. Tens of thousands of schools are removing junk food ads from their classroom. Fifteen thousand child-care centers will be providing healthier snacks and getting those cute little kids up and moving. Food and beverage companies have cut 6.4 trillion calories from their products. We will soon have better nutrition labels on 700,000 food items. Hundreds of new or renovated grocery stores are reaching millions of people in underserved communities."

But the very same day, at a House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee hearing on Capitol Hill, the opposition surfaced.

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http://whut.pbslearningmedia.org/collection/globaldiplomacy/

Take a Virtual Trip to China with the First Lady

[img][/img]

VIDEO AT LINK - Welcome ( 中国欢迎您 ) from the First Lady

From March 20th-26th, the First Lady will travel to China. Grab your passport and travel across the globe to learn more about China’s unique culture and how international trips help foster global diplomacy. Check out:

NEW Resource Collections & Top Resources

First Lady Blog & Videos: http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/foreign-policy/first-lady-china-trip

Virtual Event

http://www.forbes.com/sites/larryolmsted/2012/11/19/the-dark-side-of-parmesan-cheese-what-you-dont-know-might-hurt-you/

Most Parmesan Cheeses In America Are Fake, Here's Why

by Larry Olmsted
11/19/2012 @ 7:56AM (73,397 views)

My last column was full of praise for Parmigiano-Reggiano. This great cheese is worthy of all that praise: it is very natural, very healthy, very delicious and very consistent. It is wonderful by itself in chunks, shaved over or grated into foods, cooked or uncooked. It has been so good at doing so many things for so long – over 800 years – that it has earned the nickname in the dairy industry, “The King of Cheeses.”

But there is one big problem. As good as the cheese is, and as famous as it is, you rarely actually get to eat it – even when you think you are. The English translation of the cheese is Parmesan, and when you buy it in England you get Parmigiano-Reggiano. It’s the law. The American translation is also Parmesan, but when you buy it here, you could be getting almost anything – except usually Parmigiano-Reggiano.

I noted in my last column that by law, Parmigiano-Reggiano is allowed to contain only three very simple ingredients: milk (produced in the Parma/Reggio region and less than 20 hours from cow to cheese), salt, and rennet (a natural enzyme from calf intestine). Three other ingredients, Cellulose Powder, Potassium Sorbate, and Cheese Cultures are not found in Parmigiano-Reggiano – they are completely illegal in its production. Yet all three are in Kraft 100% Grated Parmesan Cheese (I’m not sure if that means it is supposed to be 100% “parmesan” or simply 100% grated, which it certainly is). It’s far enough from the real thing that Kraft was legally forced to stop selling its cheese labeled Parmesan in Europe.

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Ultimately it is you, the consumer who is the victim. It is not like you are being fed rat poison, but you may well be eating things you didn’t intend to eat and don’t consider healthy. After all, one of the major appeals of Parmigiano-Reggiano is its highly protected purity, plus its high levels of calcium, protein, many other vitamins – it is considered so healthy that is the cheese of choice in space, chosen as an especially good food for astronauts to eat by both the U.S. and Russian space programs. It contains nothing artificial, absolutely no additives and furthermore, the provenance of the milk used to make it is well known: it contains no antibiotics, no steroids and no growth hormones. It is always ultra-fresh for cheesemaking. Even what the cows eat is well documented, with no silage, ever, a diet consisting primarily of vegetation grown in the same carefully delineated Parmigiano-Reggiano region.

When people who care what they put into their bodies eat Parmigiano-Reggiano, they know exactly what they are putting in their bodies. This is often not the case with Parmesan, Parmigiana, Parmesano, or whatever you want to call it from myriad other producers not subject to these regulations. Many have laundry lists of chemicals and additives and even if they list only the same three ingredients, there is no knowing what’s in the milk used, where it came from, how old it is, or how the cheese is actually made. As we are increasingly discovering in the form of a global health epidemic linked heavily to diet, there is a lot of truth to the old saying “You are what you eat.” There is a similar saying attributed to high-level athletes looking for maximum performance: “Garbage in, garbage out.”

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http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pcbi.1003518#s3

DISCUSSION EXCERPT

Our results have implications for the ongoing scientific quest for the etiology of neurodevelopmental disorders.

We provide evidence that routinely expanding the scope of inquiry to include environmental, demographic and socioeconomic factors, and governmental policies at a broad scale in a unified geospatial framework.

It appears that detailed documentation of environmental factors should be recorded and used in genetic analyses of ASDs and failure to do so risks omitting important information about possibly strong confounders.

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/scientists-link-child-autism-air-pollution-1440465

Women living in the top fifth of areas with high levels of air pollution were more than twice as likely to give birth to a child with autism than those in less polluted areas. Those with the greatest exposure to these pollutants were another 50 times more likely to have a child born with autism.

"The environment may play a very significant role in autism, and we should be paying more attention to it," Rzhetsky wrote in the study, which was published in the journal PLOS Computational Biology.

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/03/17/3414061/vaccine-truthers-autism/

By Tara Culp-Ressler on March 17, 2014

We don’t know everything about autism, but research in this area continues to advance. Most experts believe that autism is caused by some combination of genetic and environmental factors that varies from one child to another. Over the past several years, we’ve learning more about just how influential those environmental factors can be.

A large study published this month, which relies on the data from 100 million medical records here in the U.S., found a significant association between autism and “harmful environmental factors.” University of Chicago researchers studied genital malformation in boys, a type of birth defect that’s already been linked to exposure to pesticides, and found a strong link with autism rates. A one percent increase in those defects corresponded to a 283 percent increase in autism.

“This gives an indicator of environmental load and the effect is surprisingly strong,” Andrey Rzhetsky, a professor of genetic medicine and human genetics and the lead author of the study, said in a statement. Rzhetsky wants to use data from the Environmental Protection Agency to do follow-up research into the potential link between autism and toxins.

Rzhetsky’s study adds to a growing body of research that suggests the environment could play some sort of a role in autism rates. Previous work in this field has found that kids who live in areas with high pollution rates are two to three times more likely to be diagnosed with the disease. Kids with autism are more likely to have been born to a mother who lives with 1,000 feet of a freeway, and tend to have unusually high levels of exposure to air-pollutant chemicals. Researchers are quick to clarify that this doesn’t mean pollution single-handedly causes autism — it’s just one of the complex factors that can contribute to a kid’s risk of developing the disease, and something that should be investigated further.

Plenty of other evidence has already linked air pollution to a host of health issues, like heart damage and respiratory disease. This past fall, the World Health Organization officially classified it as a carcinogen. “The air we breathe has become polluted with a mixture of cancer-causing substances,” Kurt Straif, the head of the WHO department that ranks cancer-causing agents, explained at the time.

Martha Herbert ?@marthaherbertmd Feb 20
MT - Beyond Hopelessness: Autism as a complex, chronic, whole-body disorder (not a permanent, brain-based trait)

Retweeted by Autism Revolution
Healthy U NOW ?@HUNFoundation May 15
New detailed article on diet and autism in Journal of Child Neurology- by Drs. Martha Herbert and Julie Buckley! pic.twitter.com/2poXsb3TIJ

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Retweeted by Autism Revolution
Martha Herbert ?@marthaherbertmd 25 Jul 2012
Synapses, glial cells, brain energy & more: all highly environmentally vulnerable–to many things. #ASD @marthaherbertmd @AutismRevolutio

Retweeted by Autism Revolution
Martha Herbert ?@marthaherbertmd 25 Jul 2012
Probably won’t find a single enviro culprit for #autism – many env agents, fewer physiological pathways. @AutismRevolutio @marthaherbertmd

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-01/niom-sdt011413.php

Public release date: 15-Jan-2013
NIH/National Institute of Mental Health

Study documents that some children lose autism diagnosis
Small group with confirmed autism now on par with mainstream peers -- NIH-funded study

Some children who are accurately diagnosed in early childhood with autism lose the symptoms and the diagnosis as they grow older, a study supported by the National Institutes of Health has confirmed. The research team made the finding by carefully documenting a prior diagnosis of autism in a small group of school-age children and young adults with no current symptoms of the disorder.

The report is the first of a series that will probe more deeply into the nature of the change in these children's status. Having been diagnosed at one time with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD), these young people now appear to be on par with typically developing peers. The study team is continuing to analyze data on changes in brain function in these children and whether they have subtle residual social deficits. The team is also reviewing records on the types of interventions the children received, and to what extent they may have played a role in the transition.

"Although the diagnosis of autism is not usually lost over time, the findings suggest that there is a very wide range of possible outcomes," said NIMH Director Thomas R. Insel, M.D. "For an individual child, the outcome may be knowable only with time and after some years of intervention. Subsequent reports from this study should tell us more about the nature of autism and the role of therapy and other factors in the long term outcome for these children."

The study, led by Deborah Fein, Ph.D., at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, recruited 34 optimal outcome children, who had received a diagnosis of autism in early life and were now reportedly functioning no differently than their mainstream peers. For comparison, the 34 children were matched by age, sex, and nonverbal IQ with 44 children with high-functioning autism, and 34 typically developing peers. Participants ranged in age from 8 to 21 years old.

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Dr. Martha Herbert RT: http://www.thinkingautismguide.com/2012/08/why-autistic-students-need-autistic.html

http://www.news.wisc.edu/22637

Study suggests potential association between soy formula and seizures in children with autism

March 13, 2014 by David Tenenbaum

A University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher has detected a higher rate of seizures among children with autism who were fed infant formula containing soy protein rather than milk protein.

The study found excess seizures among girls and in the total sample of 1,949 children. The soy-seizure link reached borderline significance among boys, who comprised 87 percent of the children described in the database under study.

Seizures — caused by uncontrolled electrical currents in the brain — occur in many neurological disorders including epilepsy, Alzheimer's disease, Down syndrome and autism.

About 25 percent of infant formula sold in the United States is based on soy protein.

Study author Cara Westmark, a senior scientist in the UW-Madison Department of Neurology, says her investigation was sparked by mouse studies of a drug that, it was hoped, would inhibit seizures by blocking signals that excite nerve cells. "It was pure serendipity that we happened to look at soy," she says.

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olddad56
8. New study says _____ MAY be caused by _______________.

fill in the blanks. There are lots of studies that suggest lots of things.

This one is a good example. What it is saying is a condition may be caused by poison. You think?

http://www.ageofautism.com/2014/01/katie-wright-on-autism-speaks-science-department-a-year-in-review.html

Katie Wright on Autism Speaks' Science Department: A Year in Review
By Katie Wright
Posted by Age of Autism at January 08, 2014

Part 1

Almost a year ago Dr. Rob Ring became Autism Speaks new Chief Scientific Officer. I was told that this would be a new era at AS science. Dr. Ring would be introducing more innovative, original research, reducing the amount of learn the signs studies and prioritizing underserved, severely affected people, biomedical interventions and meaningful here and now treatment for all. Sounds good right?

Well first the good news. AS funded an excellent $120,000 study on wandering prevention and another really terrific study on vocational training for young ASD adults. Earlier this year, thanks the very dedicated work of an AS board member, AS also funded a highly innovative study on $100,000 study on PANDAS. .

I allowed the entire year of 2013 to pass without any public comment because I wanted to give Dr. Ring the opportunity to follow through with his proposed reforms. However, we are now eight months into Dr. Ring’s tenure, looking at the most recent slate of grants, the third grant cycle under Dr. Ring’s authority. These grants are largely disappointing and so painfully conservative in nature that I cannot remain silent. I have tried, very hard, behind the scenes, for years, to lobby for better research. No one at AS science is listening. Our ASD children and young adults deserve so much better.

In 2013 virtually ALL the Weatherstone Predoctoral Fellowships were either genetic, early intervention or brain imaging in nature. It is my understanding that Weatherstone was intended to draw innovative young investigators into the field of autism, with special emphasis on the GAP areas in ASD research. AS has saturated the field early intervention and learn the signs research with money. There is absolutely no need to continue to subsidize growth in this area. To a large degree the same problem applies towards the fields of genetics and brain imaging.

Imagine if the NIH were to subsidize more research into the dangers of smoking cigarettes, which is what is happening here.

There are already 1,295 studies on autism and brain imaging/ fMRI and at least 1,000 more in the pipeline. Simons, Cold Springs Harbor and the NIH are MORE than happy to fund this area of research, AS needs to move on. Brain imaging is all about looking at brain inflammation, we need to know what environmental triggers are CAUSING this to happen. There are over 5,000 published studies on autism and genetics. Naturally some genetics research is indeed valuable but why are most AS grants still genetic in nature? Dr Ring knows this is NOT what AS families want. There are 11,000 published studies on the signs of autism. That is e-n-o-u-g-h; there are over 6,000 studies on early intervention. Additionally there are p-l-e-n-t-y of geneticists and brain imagers in the field or autism research. Weatherstone should be subsidizing predoctoral students in the biomedical and environmental sciences fields, neglected by AS and the NIH. Weatherstone could also be supporting researchers to study the biological functions of autism via GI, autoimmune and food allergies. How refreshing that would be!

Let’s take a look a the biggest Autism Speaks grants of 2013: MORE AT LINK.

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Katie Wright is Contributing Editor to Age of Autism. (Her parents founded Autism Speaks)

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