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One of the busiest doctors at St. Louis Children's Hospital, she and her team treat kids with cerebral palsy, more than 2,000 a year. They come from as far away as Europe and on this day, she had patients from Philadelphia and Cedar Rapids.

Cerebral palsy is the term for a non-contagious group of disorders that affect a person's ability to move their limbs, maintain posture and in some cases communicate. These children face many challenges and no one knows that better than Dr. Brunstrom. She too has cerebral palsy.

As autism becomes the fastest-growing developmental disability in the United States, doctors in a new documentary express concerns that that fathers of these children with special needs are sometimes reluctant to face the issue. NY1's Cheryl Wills filed the second part of this report. Emotions are raw and tears are flowing during a recent retreat for fathers of autistic children covered in a new documentary called "Autistic Like Me: A Father's Perspective."

(Reuters Health) - Despite no federal or uniform state requirements to do so, all school districts should have a doctor to oversee school health services, according to a policy statement from a group of American pediatricians. "Our hope is that a policy statement like this will start to get people talking," said Dr. Cynthia Devore, a co-author of the statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).

When David Blum got caught in a cement silo drill and had to have his lower leg amputated, his doctor told him he would never work his farm again. Blum looked at his farm — his alfalfa, his corn, his soybeans and his cows — and had some choice words for the doctor. “Don’t let anybody tell you the word no,” he said. Today, Blum is one of many farmers who works every day with a prosthetic device, but it hasn’t been easy.

The father of a 7-year-old Chicago boy who was diagnosed as a toddler with autism has sued the Naperville and Florida doctors who treated his son, alleging they harmed the child with "dangerous and unnecessary experimental treatments."

James Coman and his son were featured last year in "Dubious Medicine," a Tribune series that examined risky, unproven treatments for autism based on questionable science.

The defendants — family-practice physicians Dr. Anjum Usman of Naperville and Dr. Daniel Rossignol of Melbourne, Fla. — are prominent in the Defeat Autism Now! movement, which promotes many of the alternative treatments the Tribune scrutinized. Both have spoken to groups of parents at autism conferences and trained other physicians in their methods.

The results of an ethics investigation into the doctor whose controversial research sparked fears of a link between autism and vaccines are expected this week.

Last week the Chicago Tribune printed a long piece on biological treatments for autism by Trine Tsouderos and Patricia Callahan, and an excellent piece it was. They clearly understand what the real story is – a subculture of fringe doctors and others who are essentially doing unethical experiments and children with autism. They are exploiting desperate parents (who then sometimes contribute to the exploitation of the next desperate parents) who are seeking any possible help for their children. Of course the desire of parents of autistic children to do everything they can to help them is perfectly understandable. But there is a quagmire out there – an insidious trap waiting to ensnare the vulnerable, in the guise of professionals offering help. So-called DAN (for Defeat Autism Now) doctors and others are offering a slew of experimental and often highly implausible treatments for autism.

A child's autism diagnosis can mess with parents' heads. Media portrayals of children with autism and their adult spectrum-mates dwell almost exclusively on negatives and challenges, so when a parent is told that their child is autistic, they are usually incredibly upset. It doesn't help when doctors lack the bedside manner to soften the emotional impact of their diagnoses, or have no information about contemporary autism therapies and resources. When that happens, parents are both freaked out and flapping in the wind. Their child's doctor was supposed to give them answers and guidance, but instead upended their lives, then shoved them out the door. No one can explain why they have a child with autism, and they know nothing about autism. They are emotionally reeling, angry with the medical establishment, and hungry for any information that will help their child.

A major pediatricians’ group is issuing new guidelines for physicians diagnosing intellectual and other developmental disabilities. In a clinical report published Monday in the journal Pediatrics, the American Academy of Pediatrics updated its recommendations, which were first released in 2006. Specifically, the new report emphasizes advances in genetic testing in recent years that can aid in providing a more precise diagnosis for children with various delays.

Most children with autism get diagnosed around age 5, when they start school. But signs of the developmental disorder may be seen as early as 1 year old. Yet even if a parent notices problems making eye contact or other early signs of autism, some doctors still dismiss those concerns, a study finds, saying the child will "grow out of it." That can delay diagnosis and a child's access to therapy.

Last month, Dr. James M. Perrin, a professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General Hospital for Children, became the president-elect of the American Academy of Pediatrics, a professional group of 60,000 doctors. A primary care physician, Perrin is particularly interested in addressing chronic childhood illness during his three years of leadership at the academy, first as president-elect, then president, then president emeritus. What do you think are the biggest health issues facing today’s kids? Childhood obesity and other chronic health conditions: the continuing growth in childhood asthma, and the tremendous growth in mental health conditions and developmental conditions like autism. We’ve got three or four major epidemics really growing among children and adolescents in America.

In between those scenarios is a zone between life and death, between viability and futility. If a baby is born after the 22nd week of pregnancy but before the 25th, not even the smartest doctors in the world can say what will happen to it. New technologies can sometimes keep these micropreemies alive, but many end up disabled, some catastrophically so. Whether to provide care to these infants is one of the fundamental controversies in neonatology.

It's Time for School: Building Quality Education Programs for Students with ASD Wed, Mar 20, 2013 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM PDT School Districts across the country are struggling to meet the needs of students with ASD. Budgets are tight making it is hard to think about being proactive when there are not enough dollars to even cover day-to-day operations. However, districts have found that developing quality education programs for students with autism can actually result in substantial savings. During this presentation Dr. Leaf will discuss factors that contribute to the development of classrooms that provide effective educational for students with ASD. Dr. Leaf will share what he has found to be indicators of a "good" school district, teacher and classroom. Dr. Ronald Leaf is a licensed psychologist who has over thirty-five years of experience in the field of autism; he worked with Ivar Lovaas while receiving his undergraduate and doctorate degrees at UCLA. He is co-author of: A Work in Progress; Building Quality ABA Educational Programs for Students with ASD; Sense and Nonsense in the Behavioral Treatment of Autism and Crafting Connections. Dr. Leaf has consulted nationally and internationally with families and school districts; he is Director of Autism Partnership.

An autism diagnosis is relatively rare in girls; Asperger's is even rarer. Boys outnumber girls with autism by 4 to 1; in "high functioning autism" and Asperger's, the gender ratio is estimated to be 10 to 1.1

For years autism was seen as primarily a male disorder, certainly not the only developmental disorder to affect more boys than girls. But some researchers are asking whether girls with ASD are going undiagnosed, especially those at the high-functioning end of the spectrum like June's daughter? Do girls simply do a better job masking their symptoms? Are their symptoms being missed by diagnostic tools that may be better suited to boys? As researcher John N. Constantino M.D. put it, are doctors looking at girls through "boy-colored glasses"?