The Government Assesses Autism In Three Different Ways, So Rising Number Of Cases Doesn’t Necessarily Signal A Trend

The Associated Press: How Many Kids Have Autism? US Government Measures 3 Ways
How many American children have autism? The U.S. government answers that question at least three different ways and says the latest estimate — 1 in 40 kids — doesn't necessarily mean the numbers are rising. The new number, published Monday in Pediatrics , is from one of three periodic surveys the government uses to assess autism rates. It's higher than a different survey's estimate published earlier this year, but the surveys use different methods and measure different populations of kids so the results aren't really comparable. (11/26)

The Washington Post: In The United States, Right-Wing Violence Is On The Rise
As a Republican, Mitchell Adkins complained of feeling like an outcast at Transylvania University in Lexington, Ky. “Hardcore liberals” made fun of him, he wrote, and he faced “discrimination on a daily basis.” He soon dropped out and enrolled in trade school. But his simmering rage led him back to campus one morning in April 2017, when Adkins pulled out a machete in the campus coffee shop, demanded that patrons state their political affiliation and began slashing at Democrats. (Lowery, Kindy and Tran, 11/25)

The Washington Post: Dispelling Deadly Myths About The Flu Vaccine
Every year as flu season emerges, so too do myths and misconceptions about the flu shot. Some people avoid getting the vaccine because they don’t think it works well enough to be worth it. Some think they are too healthy to need it. And some worry it will make them sick, possibly remembering a time when they got the shot and fell ill soon after. (Sohn, 11/24)

NPR: C. Diff Infections Crop Up Outside Hospitals And Nursing Homes
Named from the Greek kloster, for spindle, a class of bacteria known as Clostridia abounds in nature. Staining deep violet under the microscope, they appear as slender rods with a bulge at one end, like a tadpole or maple seed. They thrive in soil, marine sediments and humans. They live on our skin and in our intestines. And sometimes, they can kill you. (Dalton, 11/25)

USA Today: Makeup's Maligned Ingredients: Are Goop, EWG Right About Chemicals?
Skincare sets wrapped in millennial pink and eco-green are already filling Instagram ads this season, and with their pore-refining promises these would-be stocking-stuffers also draw attention to “toxic chemicals" that’ve been canceled by clean-living proponents in the last few years. Face masks with parabens? Don’t even think about it, the gospel of Goop preaches. Body lotions with mineral oils? Definitely not on Beautycounter’s “nice” list. (Kelly and O'Donnell, 11/21)

Stat: Inside A Stanford Study On Virtual Reality Aimed At Helping Pediatric Patients
Virtual reality is often confined to the usual Silicon Valley crowd — mostly white and mostly wealthy. But at Stanford University, a new clinical trial is testing the technology in an underserved population: Spanish speakers with limited proficiency in English. The idea for the trial was dreamed up by a 24-year-old researcher who noticed that Spanish-speaking parents of pediatric patients undergoing medical procedures were showing more anxiety than is typical in those cases, often because of language and cultural barriers. That parental anxiety could sometimes trickle down to their kids, making them more anxious about their own procedure. (Robbins, 11/21)

Columbus Dispatch: To Their Detriment, Millions Falsely Think They're Allergic To Penicillin
Did you know that more than 29 million people in the United States — a little more than the population of Texas — unnecessarily avoid taking penicillin antibiotics? ...Earlier this year I learned the following statistic: 10 percent of people in the U.S. report penicillin allergy, but 90 percent of them aren’t truly allergic. (Roth 11/25)

Stat: Purported Birth Of First Gene-Edited Babies Proclaimed On YouTube 
In a promotional video posted on YouTube on Sunday, the Chinese researcher He Jiankui revealed new details about the two babies that he claims to have genetically modified as embryos using the gene-editing technology known as CRISPR. He said in the video that the twin girls — named Lulu and Nana — were born a few weeks ago after a normal pregnancy. They are now at home with their mother, a woman named Grace, and their father, Mark, a man who is HIV-positive and did not want to pass along his infection to his offspring, He said. (Robbins, 11/26)

The Washington Post: Teenage Sleep And Brain Health May Improve With A Better Pillow
Healthy sleep leads to healthy brains. Neuroscientists have gotten that message out. But parents, doctors and educators alike have struggled to identify what to do to improve sleep for teenagers. Some have called for delaying school start times or limiting screen time before bed to achieve academic, health and even economic gains. Still, recent estimates suggest that about half of adolescents in the United States are sleep-deprived. These numbers are alarming because sleep is particularly important during adolescence, a time of significant brain changes that affect learning, self-control and emotional systems. (Galvan, 11/24)

The Washington Post: Why You Should Carefully Read Medical Consent Forms You're Given Before Surgery And Other Treatment
Do you think you own your own medical data? Your hospital and doctor records, lab and radiology tests, genetic information, even the actual tissue removed during a biopsy or other surgical procedure? Well, you don’t. It’s a good bet that the fine print of the consent form you signed before your latest test or operation said that all the data or tissue samples belong to the doctor or institution performing it. They can study it, sell it or do whatever they want with it, without notifying or compensating you, although the data must be depersonalized in their best effort to make sure you are anonymous. (Petrow, 11/25)

San Francisco Chronicle: DNA Testing Companies Get Into The Black Friday Game 
If you’ve noticed a flood of ads on TV and social media for DNA test kits featuring smiling families gathered around a dinner table, you’re not alone. Consumer genetic testing companies like Burlingame’s Color Genomics and Mountain View’s 23andMe are trying their hand at Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotions, adopting marketing tactics of more traditional retailers and playing up a familiar theme that resonates with many during this time of year. (Ho, 11/23)

The New York Times: Excess Weight Increases Asthma Risk
Children who are overweight or obese are at increased risk for asthma, researchers report. A retrospective study, published in Pediatrics, included 507,496 children followed for an average of four years. None of the children had incidents of asthma before the start of the study. The researchers divided the children into three groups: overweight, defined as the 85th to 94th percentile for weight; obese, the 95th percentile or higher; and normal weight, the 25th to 64th percentile. (Bakalar, 11/26)

The Washington Post: How An ‘Outbreak Culture’ Worsened The 2014-2016 Ebola Epidemic In West Africa
When Ebola broke out in West Africa in 2014, it spread with dizzying speed — and outwitted responders. By the time the epidemic ended in 2016, more than 28,000 people had been infected and 11,325 had died. It didn’t have to be that way, write Pardis Sabeti and Lara Salahi. In “Outbreak Culture: The Ebola Crisis and the Next Epidemic,” they uncover the chaos behind the world’s response to the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak, and posit how it could have been avoided. Sabeti, a genetic researcher, was on a team that determined when and where Ebola first jumped from animals to humans. (Blakemore, 11/25)