Oddly enough, they don't seem able to actually back up those claims.

Then keep on consuming HFCS. I quickly googled for the lazy you and it's not too hard to find stuff on the subject like [0]. I am personally staying away from all sugars except those naturally found in fruits and honey.

[0]: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01...

That's production faults, not inherent to HFCS.

I try to stay away from added sugars too, but there is no reason to demonize HFCS specifically.

I didn't say contamination is specific to HFCS, but any large-scale low-cost process is prone to contamination. There was another point that the fructose part in HFCS is less stable than in table sugar, and affects the gut worse in some ways.