Music interventions are evidence-based with positive results — so why don’t we use them more often? My son is practicing the piano as I write this and it’s the sweetest sound. He’s spent two years working slowly through the same level, but it doesn’t matter; he’s improving and the benefits of both music therapy […]
Genetics will save the day — at least that’s the message you see pretty much everywhere in the media, and sometimes even in the academic literature.
Over a year ago, I was invited to celebrate World Autism Awareness Day on Parliament Hill. It was attended by a dozen or more Senators from both major parties, political staffers and invited guests mostly from an assortment of autism non-profit organizations. I expected a somewhat predictable ‘feel good’ event about how far we’ve come and how far we have still to go. But an hour later there weren’t many dry eyes in the chamber.
Canadian governments have done little to address the crisis faced by autism families across the country. This sentiment was true in 2007 when it was put forward in the cross-party Senate report on the state of funding for the treatment of autism in Canada, aptly titled, Pay Now or Pay Later. And until recently, this sentiment could be used to sum up the role of the federal government which has largely left the crisis up to provincial ministries to manage.
Every week a new study on autism seems to surface, and too often, there are errors or critical omissions in some of the media coverage on the topic.
Is there any link between the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism?
