From The Washington Post:

Peter Hotez, a vaccine researcher whose daughter Rachel has autism, grapples with her condition against the backdrop of the escalating controversy surrounding vaccines and autism. Hotez is president of the Sabin Vaccine Institute and chair of George Washington University’s department of microbiology, immunology and tropical medicine.

The notion that a vaccine expert would deliberately cover up the cause of a growing public health problem cuts Peter Hotez to the quick. That narrative suggests that someone like him — with firsthand knowledge of the devastation autism can cause a family — would stand by idly as medical science knowingly allowed thousands of Rachels to be put through the suffering that she and her family have endured

While the experts continue to examine the links between autism, mitochondrial disorders and vaccinations, Hotez expresses increasing frustration with the tendency of society to “point fingers and find blame” instead of urging Congress to help families with simple things such as respite care.

From ABC News, the Boston Globe:

A Massachusetts woman has been charged with reckless child endangerment amid claims that she failed to provide appropriate care for her son who has cancer. Court documents say eight-year-old Jeremy Fraser, who also has autism, is near death because his mother, Kristen A. LaBrie, postponed his chemotherapy appointments and failed to administer the appropriate chemo at home.

Eric J. Fraser, LaBrie’s ex-husband and the boy’s father, said he did not know why she would withhold treatment. The pair had been battling over Jeremy’s care, with LaBrie contending in court papers that Fraser had abandoned his son before the cancer was discovered.

Child protection experts say there may be many reasons why a parent does not make sure a child gets followup cancer treatment, from not understanding the seriousness of the situation to problems with logistics and stress.

From the [UK] Times, video on MSNBC:

A woman has conceived Britain’s first baby guaranteed to be free from hereditary breast cancer.

Doctors screened out from the woman’s embryos an inherited gene that would have left the baby with a greater than 50 percent chance of developing the cancer.

The woman, who wishes to remain anonymous, said her husband has a strong family history of breast cancer that was caused by the BRCA-1 gene. The couple used in vitro fertilization to create 11 embryos, then used preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) to select embryos that did not have the gene. Of the 11 embryos, six carried the gene. Two embryos that were free of the gene were implanted, resulting in a pregnancy.

The couple’s doctor said the technique allows parents to avoid “the potential guilty feeling of passing on this genetic abnormality to a child.”

Related post here.

Claudia Meininger Gold, writing in the Boston Globe, offers an alternative to psychotropic drugs for children. She says parents need help accepting and understanding their children with attention and behavior problems. If parents can manage their own frustration with their children, she says, they can better help children manage their behavior.

Too often, she says, children are put on medications for reasons having to do with pharmaceutical marketing, time constraints on primary care doctors, and “our society’s expectation of a quick fix.”

Studies have shown that a parent’s capacity to think about and understand a child’s experience from the child’s perspective is associated with a child’s increased cognitive resourcefulness, greater social skills, and better capacity to regulate emotions. Healthcare policy, and the education of pediatricians and mental health professionals, must move toward giving our full support to parents of young children in this way. Only then can we hope to improve the mental health of the next generation.

Claudia Meininger Gold is a pediatrician in Great Barrington, MA

From The Detroit News:

School districts across Michigan are raising special education class sizes above legal limits, drawing protests from parents.

[Child advocates] say the process for overriding state rules is too easy, making special education programs vulnerable to spending cuts as costs skyrocket and state funding is stagnant.

School officials say special education funding is limited, and some standards outlined in state law are outdated, expensive and unnecessary. They say the rising number of autistic children is taxing the system, and they can’t afford to keep classes small unless children really need it.

(Detroit News photo)

Editors at the Newport News [Virginia] Daily Press support proposed state regulations that would allow educators to end a student’s special education services without the approval of parents. The changes are needed, they say, to bring special education spending under control.

… in some ways, the pendulum may have swung too far. Burdensome federal laws put a huge load on public school budgets. Even when disabilities are so profound there’s no expectation of real educational gains as we usually think of them, all children are accommodated, never mind the expense.

… Without challenging the validity of any testing or identification, it is nonetheless clear that the special education boom has skewed the ability of schools to serve all children well.

… While including parents is important, and something special education is, in fact, particularly careful about, parents can’t be the last say.

From KCRA TV, the NBC affiliate in Sacramento; News10, the ABC affiliate; and MSNBC:

A couple in Placer County, California, says their children and others with special needs were left out of the Quail Glen Elementary School yearbook. Darla Granger, who searched in vain for photos of her sons Holden and Hunter, said she thought the omission was intentional.

“I do have a hard time understanding how they could have not noticed that every autistic child from their campus was missing,” Darla Granger said. She and her husband have filed a complaint with the Placer County Board of Education.

School officials said the omission was a mistake, and said the yearbook had been coordinated by a parent volunteer

(Graphic: screen capture from KCRA video.)