Mental Retardation

The Supreme Court agreed Monday to decide whether the Constitution bars a state from forcibly confining mentally retarded adults in state homes without giving each a full hearing. The decision will come in a widely watched Kentucky case, which could clarify the rights of the nation's retarded persons. Until 1988, Kentucky officials had kept retarded adults in state facilities based on a request from their parents. These confinements were deemed "voluntary."

Despite Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann's recent charge that the HPV vaccine can cause "mental retardation," ongoing safety studies on the vaccine reveal no surprises, health officials said Tuesday. "We have no evidence" that HPV vaccination causes mental retardation, said Dr. Eileen Dunne, an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at a hearing of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, a panel that advises the CDC. The committee voted 13-0 to recommend routine human papillomavirus vaccination for boys ages 11 and 12. The vote included a review of the safety of the vaccine, which has been in use among girls in the United States since 2006.

Gov. Bob Holden signed into law a bill that made Missouri the 16th state to ban the execution of mentally retarded inmates. The bill defines mentally retarded people as having "substantial limitations" and "significantly subaverage" intelligence that harms their ability to communicate, work or take care of themselves. It does not specify an IQ. To be spared the death penalty, an inmate must be diagnosed as retarded before the age of 18.

Republican presidential contender Michele Bachmann, whose gaffes have made her a favorite punching bag for Jay Leno and other late-night comedians, paid Leno a visit Friday. In her first appearance on "The Tonight Show," Bachmann tried to show her lighter side -- even making a joke about Christian anti-gay therapy, but Leno challenged her on gay rights, the HPV vaccine, her opposition to raising the federal debt ceiling and other conservative positions. The comedian's gentle persistence could not budge Bachmann from her talking points.

Concern was mounting Tuesday about the welfare of a mentally retarded Los Angeles resident, as authorities began the second week of their search for the missing elderly man. James Robinson, 70, has been missing since Christmas Eve, when he attended services at the Pico-Arlington Christian Church on the 3400 block of West Pico Boulevard. Robinson is described as white, 5 feet, 6 inches tall and 180 pounds, with gray hair combed straight back and cut to just below his ears.

China's first province to approve a mandatory sterilization law for the mentally retarded has performed 5,500 operations in the 14 months since the law took effect. Officials in the northwestern province of Gansu said their goal is to sterilize most of Gansu's 260,000 mentally retarded by the end of next year, the People's Daily said Sunday.

Federal authorities are pressing for more reforms at Agnews Development Center, to the bafflement of California officials who say changes at the state facility for the mentally retarded are on track. The Justice Department has written Gov. Pete Wilson, saying that Agnews does not provide an environment that meets residents' needs, fosters their growth and well-being and allows contact with mainstream society.

Marc Nachtman, 38, welcomes customers from behind the big glass display case in the chocolate shop with a beaming smile and a cheery greeting: "Don't be hasty, our chocolates are really tasty. What you see is what you get, real chocolates, you won't forget." Nachtman is mentally retarded. For six years, he has lived and worked at The Lambs, a unique, heart-warming 63-acre home and workplace for 181 mentally retarded adults.

Add Michele Bachmann's former campaign manager to those who believe the presidential candidate went too far in linking a cervical cancer vaccine to mental retardation. Ed Rollins, in an interview Wednesday evening on MSNBC, said Bachmann's attacks on Texas Gov. Rick Perry's mandatory vaccination program for young girls in Texas had been effective -- until she brought up the possibility of “dangerous side effects” in television interviews. “She'd had been better if she stayed on issue,” Rollins told Chris Matthews on “Hardball,” the issue was the governor's executive orders, and whether he made a mistake.

A 2007 executive order by Texas Gov. Rick Perry has become the latest post-debate headache for the Republican presidential front-runner, who was accused of "crony capitalism" Tuesday by Rep. Michele Bachmann. The fight over requiring vaccinations for young girls — which surfaced in Monday's Florida debate — involved government prerogatives and cancer. But it also had a strong moral subtext: Bachmann and other social conservatives objected to forcible inoculations against a disease spread by sexual activity, while Perry defended himself with the language of the antiabortion movement.

Understanding how certain genes function is a key to finding treatments that could reverse disease processes and abnormalities including, perhaps, mental retardation. In a study published Tuesday, researchers detailed the workings of a single gene that is linked to severe mental retardation and several other brain disorders. The gene is called WRP. Previous research revealed that when WRP is disrupted, severe mental retardation could occur. In the new study, researchers conducted experiments with brain cells and found that cells enriched with WRP developed the fingerlike protrusions that nerve cells use to make connections in the brain.

Eunice Kennedy Shriver, whose advocacy for the mentally disabled helped bring people with special needs into the mainstream of American life, has died. She was 88. Shriver, the sister of President Kennedy and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and the mother of California First Lady Maria Shriver, died early today at Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis, Mass., her family said in a statement. In a speech last year at the Women's Conference in Long Beach, Maria Shriver said her mother had had several strokes.

For more than six hours Tuesday, as a parade of witnesses testified about the severity of Aaron Hart's mental retardation and his inability to understand his legal rights, the 18-year-old defendant with an IQ of 47 sat silent and shackled in a chair, alternately fidgeting, daydreaming and making faces.

Sky Walker watches recordings of "The Price Is Right" over and over again on a TV outside his jail cell, a calming ritual for the autistic teenager, who is prone to erratic behavior swings when his routine is changed. He also gets his favorite barbecue potato chips, and visitors have been allowed to bring him McDonald's Happy Meals -- an attempt to keep his environment as normal as it can be as he awaits a decision on whether he is competent to stand trial in his mother's fatal beating.

Five years after the Supreme Court declared in Atkins vs. Virginia that the death penalty was unconstitutional for those who are mentally retarded, Daryl Atkins still sits on death row. In August, lawyers for the man who won the landmark ruling will try again to convince a jury here that he is indeed mentally retarded and therefore deserves a life term in prison, not execution.

One in four women who took the widely used epilepsy drug valproate while pregnant gave birth to children who were mentally retarded, double the rate among women who took other epilepsy medicines, researchers said Thursday. The report, presented at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurology in Boston, was the latest to document the potential dangers of valproate to the unborn.