xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office"
xmlns:w="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word"
xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40">
FEAT DAILY NEWSLETTER
Sacramento, California http://www.feat.org
Healing Autism: No Finer a Cause on the
Planet
December 2, 2001
News Morgue Search www.feat.org/search/news.asp
EDUCATION
·
Special Education Bill Killed
RESEARCH
·
Stem Cells, Forged Into Neurons, Show Promise For Brain
Repair
CARE
·
Boys Airport Injury Still A Mystery
Special Education Bill Killed
[By Greg Toppo, AP Education Writer.]
http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/wire/sns-ap-congress-education1201dec01
.story?coll=sns%2Dap%2Dpolitics%2Dheadlines <-- address
ends here
Democrats blasted a successful Republican effort to block
billions in guaranteed funding increases for disabled students but say theyll
come up with a new proposal next week.
Congress had found tens of billions of dollars to bail
out the airlines, help energy companies and give tax breaks to profitable corporations
in the last few months, said Rep. George Miller, D-Calif. But when children
with special needs show up, we shut the door.
He commented after House Republicans on Friday defeated a
proposal that would have guaranteed annual $2.5 billion increases over the next
six years in federal funding for special education.
Saying they want to fund the program, GOP lawmakers
worried that the money could wind up coming from a program aimed at helping
economically disadvantaged children. Why would we want to pit poor children
against disabled children? said Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio.
Boehner offered an alternative -- $2 billion in additional
annual aid, but subject to the annual spending debates that Congress conducts
each year. Democrats rejected that.
The clash came on one of a few issues remaining on the
education bill, a priority on President Bushs domestic agenda.
The bill is expected to require annual math and reading
tests for all students in grades three through eight, with proposals to give
federal money for tutoring or transportation to families whose children attend
schools with persistently low test scores.
The bill also is expected to give states and school
districts more freedom over how they spend federal dollars.
Fridays meeting of the House-Senate conference committee,
which is producing the final bill, was packed with disabled students
advocates. As lawmakers debated, a sign-language interpreter translated the
proceedings.
Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who cosponsored the funding amendment
with Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., said he had talked to several parents waiting to
get into the hearing. You think life is tough? Harkin said. Go and talk to
those people out there.
The Senate last spring approved the special education measure,
which would have guaranteed an annual $2.5 billion increase for the Individuals
with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, specifying that the money be kept safe
from the yearly appropriations process.
It included $8.8 billion next year for special education
programs; funding would reach just over $21 billion in 2007, the last year of
the guaranteed increases.
Bush asked Congress to increase IDEA spending by $1
billion. House appropriators raised that to $1.4 billion, but the money is not
guaranteed to increase each year. Opponents of the guaranteed money said it
could lead schools to place more students in special education classes instead
of getting them help in regular classrooms.
Boehner said the debate should wait until next year, when
the special education legislation is due for revision in Congress. He and
others also said the system should be overhauled before more money is poured
into it. A presidential commission on special education is due to report to
Bush in April.
School systems have long complained that the federal
government requires them to educate children with disabilities but doesnt give
them enough money for expensive evaluations, equipment and services.
IDEA, enacted in 1975, called for Washington to provide 40
percent of funding for disabled youngsters education. This year, the federal government
provided about 16 percent, or $6.3 billion. States and school districts share a
much larger burden.
We have failed to meet that guarantee, and we have failed
year after year, said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.
About 6 million children receive special education
funding, which pays for school instruction and help for everything from
dyslexia to paralysis.
>> DO SOMETHING ABOUT AUTISM NOW <<
Subscribe, Read, then Forward the FEAT Daily
Newsletter.
To Subscribe go to www.feat.org/FEATnews
No Cost!
* * *
Stem Cells, Forged Into Neurons, Show Promise For Brain
Repair
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2001-11/uow-scf112801.php
In a set of meticulous experiments, scientists have
demonstrated the ability of human embryonic stem cells to develop into nascent
brain cells and, seeded into the intact brains of baby mice, further develop
into healthy, functioning neural cells.
In a paper published in the journal Nature Biotechnology
(December, 2001), a team of scientists from the University of
Wisconsin-Madison, along with colleagues from the University of Bonn Medical
Center, show that the blank-slate stem cells taken from early human embryos
can, in a laboratory dish, be guided down the developmental pathway to becoming
precursor brain cells.
Transplanted into the brains of baby mice, the precursor
cells subsequently showed their ability to further differentiate into neurons
and astrocytes, the cell species that populate the different regions of the brain
and spinal cord.
The work represents a critical step toward a high-stakes
payoff for human embryonic stem cell technology - an inexhaustible supply of transplantable
neural cells and tissue to repair everything from spinal cord injuries to the
ravages of Parkinsons disease. The new work was conducted largely at the
WiCell Institute in Madison, Wis., and is now being continued at the UW-Madison
Waisman Center.
This is a very important step. The cells work as they
should, says Su-Chun Zhang, a UW-Madison professor of anatomy and neurology and
the lead author of the Nature Biotechnology paper. Co-authors include James A. Thomson and Ian D. Duncan, also of
UW-Madison, and Marius Wernig and Oliver Brustle of the University of Bonn Medical
Center.
The newly published work is critically important for two
reasons: One, it establishes the fact that human embryonic stem cells can be
guided down the developmental pathway to becoming brain cells and, two, it
shows that they can be transplanted into animals and further develop into the
more specific types of cells necessary for normal brain function.
The neuron that were seeing after transplant is almost
identical to what the neuron should be in the healthy brain, says Zhang. These
are the cells that will be used, ultimately, to treat Parkinsons and other
central nervous system disorders. The
human stem cells were transplanted into the brains of newborn mice to co-opt
the developmental cues that occur as the animal grows and the brain develops.
These transplanted cells had no experience in the brain,
and we wanted to see if they would mirror the development of the mouse brain, Zhang
says. And they do. Zhang stressed
that the work, in essence, is a demonstration of a system for directing the
cells to become the specific types of cells needed for repairing the damaged or
ailing brain. Key steps yet to be performed before the technology can be
attempted in humans is to assess function and actually treat a condition such
as Parkinsons in an animal model such as primates.
We are nowhere near clinical application, Zhang says. It
will still be some years before we can even try this in people. However, the new work is strong evidence
that human stem cell therapies are likely to live up to their billing as
revolutionary treatments for a host of heretofore intractable cell-based
diseases.
Moreover, the work performed by Zhang and his colleagues
exhibited an important ancillary result: the complete absence of teratomas or
tumors in the mice that received the cell transplants. Of concern in any
potential stem cell therapy is that tumors may arise from contamination of
precursor cells by undifferentiated cells.
We put a lot of cells, in one instance half-a-million, in
a mouse, says Zhang. The more cells you put in, the more likely you are to
have a tumor. The absence of tumors shows our methods for purifying the
precursor cells are pretty good.
* * *
Boys Airport Injury Still A Mystery
Police seek clues from medical records
[By Eric Firpo News-Press, Santa Barbara,
Calfornia.]
http://news.newspress.com/topsports/1130airport.htm
Thursdays showers probably washed away key blood stains,
so police now hope medical records will provide clues as to how a 6-year-old
autistic boy was injured after he wandered onto a runway at the Santa Maria
Public Airport.
Tucker Sheller is in Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital, and
his condition was upgraded Thursday from serious to fair. He suffered a head
wound and a broken elbow in the unexplained incident Monday night.
The boy lived in a trailer park on airport property. He
slipped away as his mother, Theresa Sheller, was in the process of moving out
of her mobile home on Blosser Road.
There is a chain-link fence between the trailer park and
the runways. But the boy, who is unable
to speak due to his autism, may have squeezed through the bars of a gate
loosely chained shut.
Or he may have entered through a nearby vehicle gate at
the end of Blosser Road by walking in behind an unsuspecting driver who had
punched a code to get inside.
There is speculation that the boy may have been drawn to
the airport by the presence of Monster.coms orange blimp, lit up that night
like a huge pumpkin.
What police do know for sure is this: Just before 6 p.m.
Monday, a Marine Corps pilot practicing take-offs and landings radioed the air
traffic tower that he had flown over a child just as he was about to touch
down.
Then, about 6:30 p.m., Tuckers mother checked him into
the emergency room at Marian Medical Center. He had a broken left elbow and a
jagged inch-long vertical gash in the middle of his forehead, and his face and sweatshirt
were covered in blood.
At first, the pilot thought he may have hit the boy. He
told investigators he was about 10 feet off the ground when he glimpsed Tucker off
to his left. He was close enough to see that it was a child and that he was
wearing a green sweatshirt, said Lt. Mike Cordero of the Santa Maria Police
Department.
The pilot landed to check out his plane on a well-lit ramp
and found no sign that the aircraft had struck the child, nor did a more
thorough aircraft inspection later by military investigators at the pilots
home base, the Marine Corps Air Station Miramar.
Investigators from the Federal Aviation Administration
looked at the boys wounds, took into account the twin-engine turbo-prop flown
by the pilot, and fairly quickly discounted the possibility that the plane had
hit the boy, police said.
Investigators assume that the plane, traveling at about
100 mph, would have killed Tucker had it struck him.
The FAA right now does not believe the plane hit
him, said Lt.
Cordero. But if the plane didnt hit Tucker, what
happened? He could have been knocked
off his feet by the blast of the engines as the plane passed him, flight safety
experts said. Or the same force could have kicked up a rock that cut his head,
police surmise.
But its the absence of blood that has authorities most
puzzled. Doctors say Tuckers head
wound could have been caused by a fall onto a hard surface, said Lt. Rad
Mawhinney, and that it would have bled profusely and, in fact, it did.
In another tough-to-explain twist, its a perfectly clean
wound. There was no dirt, grass, sand, pebbles, pieces of asphalt or debris of
any kind in the cut or near it, or anywhere else on the boys body, Lt. Cordero
said.
Three times before Thursdays rain fell, crime scene
experts combed the area between where Tucker was seen by the pilot and where he
was found by two young men who were helping the boys mother move.
There is plenty the boy could have tripped on in the dark,
police say. Metal electrical boxes lie
on uneven, grassy ground. Theres asphalt and some concrete. A stack of steel
girders is piled along the fence line not far from the trailer park.
Not a speck of blood was found anywhere. Weve
checked them all, Lt.
Mawhinney said.
On Wednesday, police finally found traces of blood on the
chain-link gate Tucker and the two young men squirmed through after the boy was
found, but that doesnt explain how he got hurt.
Nor is the blimp believed to be involved. It was under
24-hour watch and has since left the airport, though police still want to
interview the guard on duty that night.
Police next want to more closely examine the boys X-rays
and bring in a forensic specialist to give them a better idea of exactly what
could have caused the boys cut.
I think the medical records and the doctors opinions are
going to really help us a lot, Lt. Mawhinney said.
Meanwhile, airport officials are trying to deflect the
suggestion that lax security contributed to the boys injury. The fence along
the airport perimeter is checked twice a day, said airport General Manager Gary
Rice.
Its eight feet high and topped with three strands of
barbed wire, which Mr.
Rice said meets FAA regulations.
If regulations were not followed, the airport could be
fined, said FAA
spokesman Jerry Snyder.
Kids in the trailer park knew one of the codes to open the
vehicle gate. That has since been changed, Mr. Rice said, as have other codes.
And signs will be placed asking drivers to make sure no one sneaks in behind them.
A tighter chain now closes the gap that police suspect
Tucker slipped through.
Weve clamped that up and clamped up the gate thats down
from it. I dont know what else to do, Mr. Rice said. I had our insurance guy
out here the next day and he said, Youve taken every precaution. You dont have
a breach of security. I think it would be a tough concept to put forward that
theres some negligence on the airport. Its an issue FAA and police officials
said is a legal question that might take a civil court to answer.
Whether that will happen is uncertain. Tuckers mother has
declined, through hospital spokespeople, to speak to the press. Mr. Rice said
some blame lies with Ms. Sheller, who told police Tucker was missing for
perhaps 20 minutes before he was found.
A trailer park resident and
neighbor of Ms. Sheller said she mostly kept to herself and usually stayed
inside with Tucker. But she said the boy did slip away once before, when Ms.
Sheller was moving in about two months ago. Sara Ortiz said the boy got on his
bike and rode into Orcutt. His family found him at a shopping center about a
mile away, she said.
Lenny Schafer, Editor@feat.org CALENDAR EVENTS@feat.org
Michelle Guppy
Catherine Johnson PhD
Ron Sleith
Kay Stammers Edward Decelie
UNSUBSCRIBE: FEATNews-signoff-request@LIST.FEAT.ORG
ALL
INFORMATION, DATA, AND MATERIAL CONTAINED, PRESENTED, OR PROVIDED HERE IS FOR
GENERAL INFORMATION PURPOSES ONLY AND IS NOT TO BE CONSTRUED AS REFLECTING THE
KNOWLEDGE OR OPINIONS OF THE PUBLISHER, AND IS NOT TO BE CONSTRUED OR INTENDED
AS PROVIDING MEDICAL OR LEGAL ADVICE. THE DECISION WHETHER OR NOT TO
VACCINATE IS AN IMPORTANT AND COMPLEX ISSUE AND SHOULD BE MADE BY YOU, AND YOU
ALONE, IN CONSULTATION WITH YOUR HEALTH CARE PROVIDER.