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For decades, the lion’s share of autism research has focused on one elusive goal: identifying its cause. The idea is tempting—if we could just pinpoint why autism happens, perhaps we could prevent it altogether. But that pursuit has dominated the national research agenda at the expense of something far more urgent: improving the lives of autistic people and their families, here and now. (Alice Kuo and Emily Hotez, 4/17)

I’m upbeat about cell therapy development for Parkinson’s disease, but it has been a marathon. Now two new clinical trial papers published Wednesday in Nature on stem cell-based therapies for Parkinson’s are another step forward. (Paul Knoepfler, 4/16)

I’m not referring to the destructive pseudomedical pronouncements of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. I’m talking about Trofim Denisovich Lysenko (1898-1976), a Soviet agronomist who is today remembered, along with Joseph Stalin and his forced collectivization of farms, as being largely responsible for a famine that killed millions in the early 1930s in the Soviet Union. (Jon Garelick, 4/17)

On March 27, 2025, the federal government announced major cuts to the department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Average Americans could be impacted by these changes through reduced access to early education, family planning and health care, natural disaster response, and more. But the reality of these cuts, which deserves far more attention than it has received, is the disproportionate impact they could have on older adults. (Kristin Lees Haggerty and Scott Bane, 4/17)