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 […]
More resources in the community and better training for emergency services are needed Canadians routinely complain about the long wait times at hospital emergency rooms across the country — and health policy experts have long flagged the high costs associated with emergency services and the impact it has on the finances of our publicly funded […]
Inappropriate prescribing of antipsychotic medications — drugs like Risperdal, Zyprexa and Abilify — to seniors, especially those in long-term care with conditions like dementia, has been a hot topic of discussion across Canada in recent years. We have also increasingly heard about the high numbers of these medications being prescribed to children and youth with […]
Il faut accroître les services de proximité et améliorer la formation des intervenants Une version de ce commentaire est parue dans Le Huffington Post Quebéc La population canadienne se plaint régulièrement des longues périodes d’attente à l’urgence. Et il y a longtemps que les experts des politiques de santé attirent notre attention sur le coût élevé […]
It’s time we do something about it Summer is almost upon us, so yesterday I spent $418 on 11 half-hour swimming lessons for my nine-year old son at the local rec centre. Why so costly? Because my son has autism, the most commonly diagnosed neurodevelopmental disorder in Canada. He’s not able to take regular swim […]
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?
