Puna students ‘must go back’

It was quite the logistical feat last fall when some 1,700 students and 300 staffers were abruptly upended from seven schools in lower Puna, due to threat from approaching lava.

Fortunately, after some tense months, the flow halted and the students and staffers who had been dispersed into emergency portables and classrooms will be moving back to their original schools come fall 2015.

No doubt that the temporary relocation had its upsides, as hinted by Complex Area Superintendent Chad Farias: "We realize that some families whose students were reassigned to another school may not want to return to their geographically determined school. However … now that the lava has been determined no longer a threat … students must go back to the school they came from for their education."

Were those nice, new, air-conditioned portables too much of a good thing?

Study dispels myth — again

Another major study has confirmed what legitimate researchers have been saying for years: Childhood immunizations do not cause autism.

Babies immunized against measles, mumps and rubella were no more likely to develop autism spectrum disorder than those who did not receive protection from these serious diseases, according to the study of 95,727 children published this week in JAMA.

The study is at least the 12th to dispel the purported link between vaccines and autism promoted by the fraudulent research of a British doctor in the late 1990s. Those false claims sowed untold fear among parents. Perhaps this new large-scale study will be enough to finally put that fear to rest.