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A four-year-old, who is autistic, easily was becoming , resulting in tears and temper tantrums. Then into the child’s life came a special friend. That’s friend’s name was Billy. Billy had a rough start in life, abandoned by his owners and left to his own means. Since their first […]
While devastating for severely afflicted children and their families, autism has long been assumed to be relatively uncommon, appearing in perhaps 1% of all kids. But that figure was a rough estimate at best, based largely on the population of children who have already received a diagnosis of the disorder.
What happened to little, red-haired Hannah Poling is hardly unique in the world of autism. She had an uneventful birth; she seemed to be developing normally — smiling, babbling, engaging in imaginative play, speaking about 20 words by 19 months.
In 1998, Andrew Wakefield, a gastroenterologist at London’s Royal Free Hospital, published a study in the prestigious medical journal Lancet that linked the triple Measles, Mumps and Rubella vaccine with autism and bowel disorders in children. The study — and Wakefield’s subsequent public statements that parents should refuse the vaccines — sparked a public health panic that led vaccination rates in Britain to plunge.
Charlie Lamb was barely 2 years old when he was diagnosed with autism.
Few medical conditions rival autism as a magnet for controversy. Practically everything about the disorder — its cause, its treatment, the way it is diagnosed, how it is studied — is subject to bitter dispute, sometimes to the point of death threats.
At the Eating Disorders Unit at the Maudsley Hospital in London, anorexia is not seen as a social disorder — or even primarily a psychological one. While most American treatment providers blame perfection-seeking parents and the media’s idealization of hollow-cheeked actresses for eating disorders , researchers at Maudsley believe the root cause has little to do with social pressure.
Show the average 14-month-old baby a sealed jar of cookies, and you get some pretty predictable behavior. The child will reach for the treats and, when thwarted, look beseechingly at the nearest adult.