From the New York Times:

Edward S. Klima (left), an eminent linguist who was one of the first scholars to pay serious attention to sign languages, and in so doing helped them win long-denied recognition as languages in their own right, died on Sept. 25 in the La Jolla section of San Diego.

… At his death, Dr. Klima was emeritus professor of linguistics at the University of California, San Diego. He was also an adjunct professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego and the associate director of the institute’s laboratory for cognitive neuroscience.

Much of Dr. Klima’s work was done in collaboration with his wife, Ursula Bellugi, a professor at Salk and the laboratory’s longtime director. They were known in particular for their long, painstaking unraveling of the grammatical structure of American Sign Language, and for using what they found to illuminate the workings of all language, signed and spoken, in the brain.

… Their work is widely credited with helping American Sign Language gain broader acceptance as a language of instruction for deaf people and, by extension, with helping kindle the Deaf Pride movement, which began in the late 1980s.

(University of California photo from the New York Times)

From Florida Today, tcpalm.com:

A survey commissioned by the Florida Institute of Technology found that 24 percent of Americans believes autism is caused by vaccines, even though no scientific evidence supports such a link.

Sixty percent of those polled said the presidential candidates should include a plan for curing autism in their platforms, and eighty-three percent said that finding the cause and cure for autism should be a national priority. The survey was based on telephone interviews with 1,000 randomly selected adults across the country, conducted by GDA Education Research of Mount Pleasant, S.C.

Results of the survey were released to kick off Florida Tech’s second annual autism conference, “The Many Faces of Autism.”

Mary Beth Kunkel, dean of Florida Tech’s College of Psychology and Liberal Arts, described the finding as a surprise given the number of federal studies exonerating the mercury preservative thimerosal, once used widely in children’s vaccines, but rarely, if ever, included in vaccines today.

See also: Press release from Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Florida.

From the New York Daily News:

An article in the magazine Spectrum has reignited sparks in a debate between two popular actresses over the alleged link between childhood vaccines and autism.

In a recent interview, Amanda Peet had labeled anti-vaccine parents as “parasites,” a word she subsequently retracted. Peet is the spokesperson for Every Child By Two, a non-profit group co-founded by former first lady Rosalynn Carter that is seeking universal vaccination of all children under the age of two.

Now McCarthy has responded in the Spectrum interview, saying, “I am so proud to be a parasite.” McCarthy, who has a son with autism, has a new book out raising alarms about vaccines. The mainstream medical community has dismissed McCarthy’s concerns as unfounded.

See also an overview of autism with Dr. Timothy Johnson on ABC News here. Includes interviews with doctors and celebrity parents.

Writing in The Lancet (subscription required), Kelly Morris says life expectancy for people with Down syndrome has improved dramatically over the past half century, yet research to improve health, cognition and learning among people with Down syndrome has not kept pace. Many in the field say such research has been neglected and underfunded.

Morris says NIH funding for Down syndrome research stands at $17 million this year, down 26 percent from $23 million in 2003. Experts say the NIH is focusing its immediate attention on mouse models, rather than on studying ways to improve the lives and cognitive function of people who have the disorder. “Many would argue that these priorities are the wrong way round,” says Frank Buckley of Down Syndrome Education International.

Writes Morris:

… A shift in focus towards studying variables in people with Down syndrome, especially those that affect learning and cognition, would be most welcome. Such research could also point to differences in the biology of Down syndrome that can promote further useful, straightforward interventions, which is important since specific drug treatment can require years of further investigation.

The article appears in Vol. 372, September 6, 2008.

From the International Herald-Tribune, CNN:

More than a dozen of the world’s first ladies gathered at the UN Friday to call for a global effort to improve research, treatment and acceptance for people with autism.

“Not too long ago, those affected by autism-related disorders were set aside, placed in institutions, or dismissed as untreatable lost cases,” said Ban Soon-taek, wife of U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. “Today, sadly this reality is still prevalent in some parts of the world.”

From Associated Press, CNN, company press release, Fox News:

Shares of Sequenom Inc., a San Diego biotech company, rose sharply in premarket trading today after the company announced new results on a prenatal test for Down syndrome that relies on a sample of the mother’s blood.

The company announced yesterday that its SEQureDx test detected Down syndrome accurately in the first and second trimester of pregnancy in about 200 tests with no false positives or false negatives, matching earlier data from another 200 samples.  The company said it hopes to bring the test to market next summer.

Shares jumped $3.39, or 16.5 percent, to $23.95 from $20.56 during premarket training.

Presently available noninvasive prenatal screening methods for Down syndrome can only tell women the statistical risk that their fetus has Down syndrome, but do not offer a conclusive diagnosis of individual pregnancies. Presently, women must undergo amniocentesis or chorionic villus sampling in order to know for sure whether the baby they are carrying has Down syndrome. Amnio and CVS are invasive techniques that both carry a small but significant risk of miscarriage.

Analysts hailed Sequenom’s announcement, with Lazard Capital Markets analyst Sean Lavin raising his price target to $44 per share, up from $34. The company’s stock was trading at around $5 before the announcement of the new technology earlier this year.

The market for prenatal testing is estimated to have multi-billion dollar potential.

See earlier posts here.

See the company’s share price here.

From NPR:

Scientists at MIT are studying Fragile X syndrome, a genetic mutation that can cause intellectual disabilities and autism. They say they may have identified a way to use medication to regulate brain cell connections in people with Fragile X. So far the drugs have only been used in mice, but they are now being tried in humans. One small study found that a single dose of a drug had an effect.

“It’s a dream come true to think that we have the prospect of having gone from really basic science discovery to a potential treatment,” says Mark Bear, who directs the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT.

The research has been funded in part by a group that was started by parents of a young man with Fragile X.