On November 21, global disease tracking organization ProMED posted about hospitals in Northeast China that are overwhelmed due to an surge of “undiagnosed pneumonia” among children, particularly in China’s capital, Beijing, and nearby Liaoning. Some parents there are expressing concern that authorities may have concealed a broader epidemic. ProMED reportedread more
A worldwide outbreak of liver disease of unknown origin is affecting young children around the globe, and has sent medical experts scrambling to uncover the cause. These cases of hepatitis, an inflammation of the tissue in the liver, are primarily afflicting children between 2 and 5 years old, withread more
The discovery of a cluster of 12 genetically related children diagnosed with autism has renewed questions into the role DNA plays in causing autism spectrum disorder, or ASD. The children in question are all related through a common sperm donor that provided reproductive material to numerous sperm banks, resulting inread more
Despite being separated by over 5 million years on our respective evolutionary paths, it appears that nearly 90 percent of the gestures human children use to communicate are shared with those used by chimpanzees. Lacking the capacity for complex verbal speech, the great apes employ a non-verbal language made up of hand and body gestures, whereas humans have well-developed part of the brain called "Broca’s area" that enables us to speak. But before a human child learns to speak a language, they appear to use an ancient gestural language that our ancestors used to communicate with one-another.
read more