Olivia was born perfectly healthy. Now 19 years old, she began having seizures at the age of 18 months following the MMR vaccine. ​Her mother, Kelly Johnson, shares her daughter's difficult and painful journey, as well as her own, in her beautifully written, touching, and often heart wrenching "Restoring Olivia" blog posts. As Kelly shared recently...

Growing up and going to school in the 50's and 60's, our class sizes were quite large with one teacher per class. In my case, going to Catholic school, the teacher was always a woman and often, that woman was a nun. We didn't have classes for children with special needs and I didn't know anyone with autism or anyone who would now be considered on the autism spectrum. When I started researching vaccines in the 80's, there was very little mention of autism in the many books and articles I read; and it wasn't until 2007 that I met a woman whose little boy displayed autistic like behavior and was later diagnosed with autism. His mother believes that his autism was triggered by a flu shot she received during pregnancy. That little guy's picture is on my desk and continues to inspire me each day to keep sharing information so that parents can make well informed vaccine decisions.

On April 27th, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released its latest autism spectrum disorder (ASD) estimates. According to their new figures, as of 2014, 1 in 59 eight year olds has been identified with autism spectrum disorder with ASD being about four times more common in boys than in girls. (Read more here and here.)  According to the CDC's own figures, In the year 2000, that number was 1 in 150. In 1970 that number was 1 in 10,000.

Watch the brief video below from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the World Mercury Project; then scroll down to the end of this post for a series of brief videos, "Treating Autism: Where to Begin."