In the years since, Janna and her husband, Rik, have tried everything short of witchcraft to get their child back. Russell follows a special diet and takes dozens of supplements each day. He’s had speech therapy and behavioral therapy and made his way into special-ed classes at a local elementary school. His parents are thrilled by his progress—”Any little improvement is a victory,” Janna says. But drop in as Russell gets home from school, and you see what the family is up against. Pushing the door open, he flaps his arms and makes a guttural sound before accepting a hug from each parent. He doesn’t seem to notice the stranger in the room until his mom urges him to say hello. He honors the request, yet his clear blue eyes reveal no hint of engagement. “He tests in the normal range for intelligence,” his dad says. “But he can’t tell me how his day was, or what hurts.” “Any little improvement is a victory,” — JANNA

Although the criteria state no significant delay in the development of language milestones, what you might see is a "different" way of using language. A child may have a wonderful vocabulary and even demonstrate hyperlexia but not truly understand the nuances of language and have difficulty with language pragmatics. Social pragmatics also tend be weak, leading the person to appear to be walking to the beat of a "different drum". Motor dyspraxia can be reflected in a tendency to be clumsy.

Experts caution parents, though, not to overreact at the onset of such symptoms, which can be caused by a virus. B O S T O N, Oct. 17 — New questions have been raised about how anthrax affects children, after the disease was diagnosed Monday in the 7-month-old boy of an ABCNEWS employee The symptoms of infection with the bacterium in children older than 2 months are virtually identical to those in adults. The disease begins with warning signs that look like a viral respiratory illness, including fever, cough and body aches.

A 3-year-old Rohnert Park girl died after being infected with a rare organism that destroyed her brain as she lay in a coma for two days, it was revealed yesterday. Just how Aletha Leigh Willis contracted amoeba Balamuthia, which is so unusual scientists discovered it only 11 years ago, remained a mystery last night. Doctors and health officials are scrambling to answer that question.

One of medicine's biggest success stories has been the conquering of many childhood cancers. More than 250,000 children, teens and adults in the United States have survived cancer, and today nearly 75 percent of children can expect to beat their disease, up from 25 percent 30 years ago. But now some survivors are beginning to see the delayed effects of the very treatments that cured them.

PORTLAND — A coalition of law firms went to court across the nation yesterday, trying to force the pharmaceutical industry to study whether vaccines containing a trace of mercury cause autism and other brain damage in young children. The lawsuits were filed as class actions and led by an Oregon woman who says her 3-year-old son, William, became autistic after getting vaccinations containing mercury in a preservative, thimerosal. "We had a happy, healthy little boy until that last set of shots," Tory Mead said. "It's been devastating. Our lives have been shattered."

The controversial idea that the dramatic upsurge in autism over the last two decades was caused by the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine--a concept embraced by many parents--is wrong, according to a new report released today by the California Department of Health Services. The new study, like two others recently conducted in England and Finland, found that the rate of autism has been rising dramatically as the number of children vaccinated has remained virtually constant... "I don't know why anyone would believe information that comes out of a branch whose sole purpose is to promote immunization in California," said Rick Rollens, a parent advocate who was instrumental in creating the MIND Institute for researching autism at UC Davis. The studies in England and Finland are equally questionable, he added, because vaccine makers funded them.

CHICAGO--Older fathers are much more likely than younger ones to have children with schizophrenia, a study suggests, adding mental illness to the list of diseases linked with advancing paternal age. While previous research has suggested children of older fathers are at risk for certain cancers and birth defects, the study is the first to make the link with a psychiatric illness, said Dr. Dolores Malaspina of Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute. In the study, men who fathered children at ages 45 to 49 were twice as likely as those under 25 to have schizophrenic children, and men 50 and older were three times more likely. The researchers, led by Malaspina, reviewed data on 87,907 people born in Jerusalem from 1964 to 1976. Their findings appear in April's Archives of General Psychiatry. "I would guess that our study is just the tip of the iceberg," said co-authorDr. Susan Harlap of New York University School of Medicine. "Eventually it would seem that the father's sperm is going to turn out to be just as important as the mother's egg."

Parents wishing to test their children's response to diet will seek to identify and remove irritants in foods (and other products) that cause behavioral symptoms. This is done by eliminating certain foods (and vitamins and drugs) from the (unmedicated) child's diet for several weeks to see if his or her behavior is improved. In some cases, dietary changes by themselves may adequately reduce behavioral problems. If not, amphetamines or another medication could be tried in addition to, or instead of, a restricted diet. The goal is to identify the specific foods or additives, if any, that affect your child.

The study by the Environmental Working Group and the US Public Interest Research Group concludes that as many as one in four pregnant women could endanger the long-term development of their children if they follow the dietary guidelines issued by the Food and Drug Administration at the start of this year. The groups also identify 13 fish that pregnant women should not eat - three times the number currently identified by the government. The report, which drew criticism from the government and from food processors, was also critical of federal and state government monitoring of mercury in fish. The study cited Massachusetts as one of two states with sufficient notifications in place regarding mercury levels in fish. ''If American women ate this varied diet of FDA's recommended 12 ounces of fish per week, more than one-quarter of all pregnancies every year, or about a million pregnancies, would be exposed to potentially harmful levels of methyl mercury for over a month of the pregnancy,'' said Jane Houlihan, the Environmental Working Group's research director.