recovery

Way back in the day, when I was a newbie at countering the mass of hysterical pseudoscience that is the antivaccine movement, particularly the myth that vaccines cause autism, a blogger by the 'nym of Prometheus taught me that autism and autism spectrum disorders (particularly by antivaccinationists and believers in the quackery known as "autism biomed") are conditions of developmental delay, not developmental stasis. Autistic children can and do exhibit improvement in their symptoms simply through growth and development. However, parents who subject their children to "autism biomed" quackery…

Three news items were posted on our site today. The first is on two papers by a group in Spain. Normally we don't publicize papers that are not written by Institute scientists, but these are a special case. They appear to have clinched the claims of a Weizmann scientist that one can treat stroke and head trauma without trying to get drugs into the brain. The treatment would consist of upping the levels of a naturally-occurring enzyme in the blood; one of these papers showed that levels of this enzyme in the blood tests of stroke patients were the best predictor of their chances of recovery.…

Quick news on Memorial Day (in the US at least): Ash soaked by rain from Tropical Storm Agatha on the roofs of homes in Guatemala after the late May eruption of Pacaya. Sixteen scientists were evacuated from islands in the northern Marianas due to the eruption of the unnamed submarine volcano south of Sarigan Island. The eruption is continuing to be monitored closely by the USGS and National Weather Service as the plume - which is most steam with minor ash - could disrupt air traffic in/around Saipan. The latest USGS CNMI update:Seismicity at a single nearby station on Sarigan Island declined…

I caught this story (with an accompanying video) over at Mind Hacks and Neuron Culture about this poor woman from the UK who fell unconscious from a viral infection in her brain stem. Using fMRI, a doctor at Cambridge named Adrian Owen showed that she still had residual brain functions such as response to light. The woman has since recovered from her condition and can interact, though she still faces substantial impairment. The thing is that people are continuing to use the term persistent vegetative state to describe her condition. I think this is misusing the term. A better description…