Rae Sonnenmeier, clinical associate professor of communication sciences and disorders at the University of New Hampshire and staff member at UNH's Institute on Disability, is available to discuss the announcement yesterday (Feb. 2, 2010) by the medical journal The Lancet regarding the retraction of a paper that caused a 12-year international battle over the links between the three-in-one childhood vaccine MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) and autism.
"Many families have refused to have their children vaccinated because of the concern that the vaccines were not safe. Unfortunately, such decisions have placed children at unnecessary risk for contracting measles, rubella and mumps which are serious diseases that can be prevented by immunization," says Sonnenmeier, whose research concerns augmentative and alternative communication systems to support education for students with disabilities like autism. "The Lancet is to be commended for acknowledging the unethical behavior and formally retracting the original article."
UNH has additional resources and information on autism spectrum disorders at the New Hampshire Resource Center of Autism Spectrum Disorders at the Institute on Disability (www.iod.unh.edu/autism.html) and the Seacoast Child Development Clinic (www.seacoastclinic.unh.edu).
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