NEWS
September 15, 2011 | By James Oliphant, Washington Bureau
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.
NATIONAL
September 13, 2011 | By Paul West, Washington Bureau
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.
NEWS
February 18, 2011 | By Shari Roan, Los Angeles Times
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.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
August 12, 2009 | Valerie J. Nelson and Elizabeth Mehren, Mehren is a former Times staff writer.
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.
NATIONAL
April 8, 2009 | Howard Witt
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.
NEWS
March 29, 2009 | Thomas J. Sheeran, Sheeran writes for the Associated Press.
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.