Editorial writers at the Wall Street Journal hail the recent court rulings that dismiss allegations of a link between vaccines and autism in children. An excerpt:

The rulings follow the same court’s judgment last year against claims that measles-mumps-rubella shots in combination with other thimerosal-containing vaccines cause autism. And they reinforce many comprehensive scientific studies, including one from the Institute of Medicine, that have ruled out any causal link.

Autism is a frightening diagnosis that puts enormous burdens on families, but blaming vaccines without evidence only harms other families who might be frightened enough not to immunize their children. The fate of children with autism would be far better served if the activists who have devoted their resources to lawsuits would support research to discover its true causes, and to helping those children realize their full human potential.

Vancouver Sun columnist Miro Cernetig reacts to the decision by CTV not to broadcast the opening ceremonies of the Paralympic Games across Canada. The Canadian television network subsequently reversed itself and broadcast the ceremonies, but only in British Columbia.

Cernetig urges network executives to “rectify their unfortunate slight of the world’s Paralympians” by broadcasting the closing ceremony. Excerpts follow:

If the job is to shoot yourself in the foot, look hard-hearted and show you don’t quite get the true spirit of the Olympics, CTV’s bean-counters take the gold.

… We don’t put the Olympic cauldron on half-burn for Paralympians.

Nobody is pretending the Paralympics is a TV mega-event on the scale of the Olympics. There are no celebrity Paralympians raking in the millions or pro athletes dipping their toes into amateur sport to go for the gold.

But when it comes to stories of human tenacity, athleticism and sheer grit, most of us agree the Paralympians deserved — even for a half-hour of prime time — the national spotlight as they marched into BC Place.

Some video coverage of the Paralympic Games can be found at Paralympic Sport TV here.

(Reuters photo of the opening ceremony from the Vancouver Sun)

New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof examines the question of whether chemicals in the environment may be partly to blame for the proliferation of autism diagnoses across the country. He cites an article by Philip J. Landrigan, just posted online in the peer-reviewed journal Current Opinion in Pediatrics, that says the “likelihood is high” that many environmental chemicals “have potential to cause injury to the developing brain and to produce neurodevelopmental disorders.”

An excerpt:

Frankly, these are difficult issues for journalists to write about. Evidence is technical, fragmentary and conflicting, and there’s a danger of sensationalizing risks. Publicity about fears that vaccinations cause autism — a theory that has now been discredited — perhaps had the catastrophic consequence of lowering vaccination rates in America.

On the other hand, in the case of great health dangers of modern times — mercury, lead, tobacco, asbestos — journalists were too slow to blow the whistle. In public health, we in the press have more often been lap dogs than watchdogs.

At a time when many Americans still use plastic containers to microwave food, in ways that make toxicologists blanch, we need accelerated research, regulation and consumer protection.

Chicago Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg says the word “retarded” may have started out as a clinical term, but it has been twisted into a taunt over the past half century and should be put to rest.

Were developmentally disabled people secure in the mainstream alongside the Irish and accountants, we could happily debate the cultural desirability of mocking them. But given that recognizing their full humanity is a fairly recent development, it seems that we should at least acknowledge that ridicule, though funny in entertainment, is destructive on a personal level.

…In 1953, Dale Evans, wife of cowboy star Roy Rogers, penned a book, Angel Unaware, about their daughter Robin, who was born with Down syndrome. Doctors told her to have Robin institutionalized. Instead Evans, inspired by her deep Christian faith, posed the little girl in family publicity photos. The book sold 400,000 copies in the mid-1950s, and parents who otherwise never let their children out of the house felt comfortable bringing them to Roy Rogers rodeos, because of his wife’s book.

They felt safe there.

I believe that any person with a heart, facing this complex issue, would rather err on the side of those children, would want them, not merely to get out of the house to see a cowboy show, but to also go to school with other kids and work at a job, if they could, still safe and accepted, without their lives being made a hell by would-be wits looking for someone to abuse.

Lennard Davis, writing at Huffingtonpost.com about the flap over “Family Guy,” says Sarah Palin misrepresented the show’s meaning in an effort to “attack the left in any form.” Far from being a slight on people with disabilities, Davis said, the episode “serves to show us that we can’t and shouldn’t underestimate people with Down syndrome.” An excerpt:

Tellingly, she didn’t mind Rush Limbaugh use the R-word, saying is was just “satire.” Satire? What is Family Guy? Greek tragedy?

The moral of this story isn’t that Family Guy is an insensitive show; it’s that Palin is using Trig as a hostage to shield her from the shoot-out of the last election. With Trig in tow she’s not the incompetent former governor of Alaska or the incendiary anti-wonk, she is simply the good Mom protecting her child and all people with disabilities.

If Palin really cared about people with disabilities, she would be supporting health care legislation and stronger enforcement of the Americans with Disabilities Act. But then that would be more of that “hopey changey” stuff she ridicules.

Lennard Davis is professor of English, disability studies, and medical education at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

(Photo from www.lennarddavis.com)

Writing on CNN.com, San Diego Union editorial board member Ruben Navarrette Jr. says the ‘Family Guy’ dig at Sarah Palin was just about as funny as “showing President Clinton, one of their icons, having a heart attack.” It’s not funny, he said, because Trig Palin “already has a hard life in store — filled with intolerance, prejudice and limitations imposed by others.”

An excerpt:

Wanna take Palin down a peg? Fine. But don’t use her child to do it — especially this child.

Arthur Caplan, writing at MSNBC.com, reacts to a report by the Associated Press that genetic testing is leading to the birth of fewer and fewer children with Down syndrome and other genetic diseases in the United States. An excerpt:

On a trip to Ireland a few years ago, I was struck by a number of faces among the crowds. They were children with the tell-tale look of Down syndrome.

What struck me was the realization that I hardly ever see these young faces out on the street in the United States.

… Reducing the burden of disease is obviously a good thing. But genetic testing of parents, and, as is now happening with increasing frequency, embryos, raises some difficult ethical challenges as well.

… As some families with a Down syndrome child have noted, fewer kids with Down may mean fewer public programs, fewer resources in schools and for housing and less political clout. If some genetic diseases begin to fade away, will society’s willingness to provide support for the diminishing numbers of those born with such diseases fade as well? And are we headed to a time when parents who choose not to be genetically tested find themselves condemned as morally irresponsible parents?

Caplan is director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania.