Category: Autism

Shirley S. Wang
Also: price transparency for health-care costs; production woes at drug manufacturing plants; the genetics of autism.
Read more this great post here

Katherine Hobson
Also: guidance on ordering scanning tests; C. diff can float, but handwashing is still the way to prevent infection.
Read more this great post here

Katherine Hobson
Also: child mortality in developing nations declines; will the FDA’s “Bad Ad” program work?
Read more this great post here

noreply@blogger.com (RCoffield@fsblaw.com)
Tomorrow’s mental illnesses went online today: The American Psychiatric Association posted a draft version of the DSM-V. Read it for yourself.
The DSM (full name: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) is the book that defines mental illness in America, so it’s not surprising that revising the thing is a contentious process […]

James A. White
It’s been more than a decade since the Lancet published a study that looked at 12 children and suggested a possible link between autism and the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella.
Today, the Lancet formally retracted the paper, a few days after a British panel said the lead author’s conduct was […]

JGrimes
We think of autism as a childhood syndrome, and treatment for the disorder is largely centered in pediatrics. But kids with autism grow up to be adults with autism, which raises a complex set of issues.
So we were interested to learn that Mass. General, one of the nation’s most famous hospitals, is about […]

JGrimes
The National Institutes of Health is trying to kickstart autism research with $60 million in grant funding from the stimulus bill. It is the largest-ever funding opportunity for research into the neuro-developmental disorder, says the NIMH, the NIH’s mental-health arm.
The CDC estimates that autism now strikes 1 in 150 U.S. children, and the […]

JGrimes
A federal vaccine court ruled today against parents who argued that vaccines had contributed to their children developing autism. Here’s are reports from the Associated Press and Washington Post.
The cases before the vaccine court are complex, and some are yet to be decided. Today’s rulings focused on the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) […]

Jacob Goldstein
If some people are using a treatment that most doctors think doesn’t work and may involve some real risks, should public health officials study the intervention to get clear answers? That’s an ethically tricky question.
The National Institute of Mental Health had proposed a study (described here) of a therapy called chelation to […]

JGrimes
More people have been becoming infected with measles lately, at the same time as more parents are refusing to vaccinate their kids. A concern among such parents is their belief that the vaccine is linked to autism.
Researchers at Columbia University and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sought to allay some of […]