Autism Blog - May « 2010 « Left Brain/Right Brain

Archive for May, 2010

Autism and mental retardation – genetic overlap

Sunday, May 30th, 2010

Post taken from Medical News Today Researchers working with Professor Gudrun Rappold, Director of the Department of Molecular Human Genetics at Heidelberg University Hospital, have discovered previously unknown mutations in autistic and mentally impaired patients in what is known as the SHANK2 gene, a gene that is partially responsible for linking nerve cells. However, a [...]

Posted in Autism, Genetics, News, Science | 7 Comments »

Polls show vaccine refusers are mainstream?

Saturday, May 29th, 2010

This is the claim put forth in a recent “vaccine choice” rally. You’ve probably already read about the rally in Kev’s piece The American Rally for Personal Rights – bit of a damp squib. In his piece on the rally, Is the anti-vaccine movement fizzling?, Orac has videos courtesy of Bruce Critelliplus. The rally started [...]

Posted in Autism, Wakefield | 2 Comments »

Social influence and the autism epidemic

Friday, May 28th, 2010

Prof. Peter Bearman at the University of Columbia has spent considerable effort studying the autism data from the California Department of Developmental Services. I wrote about Prof. Bearman’s paper Social influence and the autism epidemic before. It just popped up in pubmed. When I checked the website for the center where Prof. Bearman’s team works, [...]

Posted in Epidemiology, Science | 6 Comments »

Death better than autism says Andrew Wakefield

Friday, May 28th, 2010

When I first got involved in this, 15 years ago, I got a call from a parent in the North of England who said ‘Dr Wakefield please do not judge me harshly but when I die I’m taking my child with me, because I’m the only one who loves him’ and I didn’t judge that [...]

Posted in Autism, Katie, Wakefield | 16 Comments »