Tag Archives: Children and Childhood

Howard Buten, a college dropout from Detroit, juggled three extraordinary lives. In one, he was a tender, clumsy and wordless red-nosed clown named Buffo. He sold out theaters around the world. Critics compared him to Charlie Chaplin and Harpo Marx. In another, he volunteered as an aide with autistic children, went back to school to earn a doctorate in psychology, …

There were more than 32,000 cases of whooping cough in 2024, the highest tally in a decade. In California alone, the disease struck 2,000 people between January and October last year. More than 60 infants younger than 4 months were hospitalized in the state. One died. Whooping cough, or pertussis, is just the most stark example of what happens when …

Most American parents hardly give thought to polio beyond the instant their child is immunized against the disease. But there was a time in this country when polio paralyzed 20,000 people in a year, killing many of them. Vaccines turned the tide against the virus. Over the past decade, there has been only one case in the United States, related …

Water fluoridation is widely seen as one of the great public health achievements of the 20th century, credited with widely reducing tooth decay. But there has been growing controversy among scientists about whether fluoride may be linked to lower I.Q. scores in children. A comprehensive federal analysis of scores of previous studies, published this week in JAMA Pediatrics, has added …