Conventional medicine can't turn its collective backs on autism any more, as it has for a long, long time, after a sobering report by the CDC concluded many more children suffer from an autism disorder than ever acknowledged before.

Tracking the incidence of autism among 8-year-olds, the average rate among sites in 14 states alone was about 1 out of every 150 children (those numbers could be worse due to education records not being available in four states). New Jersey leads the pack with an average of more than 10 children out of 1,000 with autism, while Georgia, Utah, Missouri and West Virginia all averaged more than 7.

Despite the evidence, however, CDC Director Julie Gerberding remains skeptical autism rates are really rising, citing "better studies" as a possible reason for the uptick, although the results of each successive study are grimmer than the previous ones, experts say.

The most important number parents need to remember when it comes to vaccinating your children is 27. Children were 27 times more likely to develop autism when given three vaccines containing thimerosal, the mercury-based vaccine preservative, and far less so when it was removed from them, according to studies posted here three years ago.

If you remain skeptical about the vaccine-autism link, I urge you to review a pair of interesting reports that go far toward explaining why the Amish haven't experienced autism like the rest of America.