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More and more US schools have their own police forces. Pupils are being arrested for throwing paper planes and failing to pick up crumbs from the cafeteria floor. The state has taken over discipline from the classroom teacher and is now criminalizing normal childhood behavior–or is it?

In Austin, Texas, 12-year-old Sarah Bustamantes was arrested for spraying perfume on her neck in class after the other kids were taunting her and saying she smelled bad. In the Guardian Weekly, Chris McGreal quotes Sarah as saying, "They were saying a lot of rude things to me. Just picking on me. So I sprayed myself with perfume. Then the teacher called the police."
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But we’re learning more – Scientists have determined that people often look like their dogs, now a canine chromosome explains why they sometimes ACT like them too. This chromosome, which confers a high risk of the person who has it developing a compulsive disorder, may be linked to both human autism and dogs. Researchers are now discovering that autism is often overlooked in girls and is tied to anorexia. At least there’s one less thing to worry about: Vaccines do NOT cause autism.
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Sometimes bad things happen, but here’s something GOOD to know now that more of the Swine Flu vaccine is finally being released: A recent study published in a peer-reviewed journal found that 2 to 5 year old children diagnosed with autism or autism spectrum disorders had blood mercury levels similar to those oftypically developing control children after adjusting for a variety of sources. Thus mercury in the children’s blood did not appearto be the cause of autism.
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The bad news: there are lots more autistics out there than we thought, because the kids with mild versions of this disease often slip through the cracks. The good news: most of them (in Utah, anyway) are functioning just fine as adults. And “Rain Man” savant type skills, such as astounding memory, perfect pitch or the ability to multiply very high numbers together, may be much more common among autistics than previously thought as well.
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