autism

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has made autism services a priority in his proposed budget for the 2012 fiscal year. But some services may still suffer cuts: nonprofit Autism NJ says it's set to lose a state contract -- and Medicaid cuts also could reduce autism services, activists say.

Vaccine makers such as Pfizer are breathing easier now that the Supreme Court has ruled they can't be sued for defective vaccine designs. The majority opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia was unequivocal: Congress has barred lawsuits over the rare but unavoidable side effects of vital vaccines.

The 1998 study linking the MMR vaccine to autism has been utterly debunked. So 13 years later, how many lives have been lost and how much money has been wasted treating the preventable illnesses that fear-mongering led to? Here are some answers.

Aside from the embarrassment, researchers know deceptions like the autism research fraud can have much larger consequences, both for the parents of autistic children and for the future of their studies. Says one prominent scientist: "It taints a lot of very good work that goes on."

Having an autistic child can present seemingly nonstop challenges for families. Among those are thousands of dollars spent in the hopes, fleeting as they may be, of finding a cure for the exasperating illness. And lining up a qualified doctor can be a full-time job.

Every weekday, Betsy Langston makes a 90-minute drive with her son to Myrtle Beach, S.C. Then, after about three hours there, she drives the same 90 minutes back home to Florence. That's $20 a day in gas, not to mention the wear on her station wagon and herself. "It gets really tiring,'' Langston...

AMC Theatres has won a large tub of good will with extra butter for its low-priced series of "sensory friendly screenings" for autistic children -- the next is "How to Train Your Dragon" at 10 a.m. on Saturday, April 10, at participating theaters. The program also helped recent AMC missteps fade...

I distinctly remember how cowed I felt when I visited the house of another family from my birthing class. It was my first child, and the classmates from our birth preparation series were all we could see of our "peers" as new parents. We had one Baby Einstein video. They had the entire...