WEDNESDAY, Aug. 6 (HealthDay News) -- While poor eye contact has long been a suspected sign of possible autism, researchers at Yale University have used "eye-mapping technology" to prove that children with autism don't make eye contact like normally developing children do.

Published in the August issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry, the new research found that children with autism spent more time looking at an adult's mouth instead of gazing into the eyes.

THURSDAY, July 17 (HealthDay News) -- New research shows that some parents of autistic children appear to be "socially aloof," providing more evidence that some aspects of autism are hereditary.

Insurers in Illinois should be required to absorb the skyrocketing costs of diagnosing and treating autism, Gov. Rod Blagojevich proposed Sunday.

Under the proposal, insurance companies would be bound to pay up to $36,000 annually and cover an unlimited number of medical visits for autistic children until they turned age 21, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

The director of U.S. National Institute of Mental Health, pressured by the anxious parents of children with autism, is advocating testing chelation therapy as a treatment for the little-understood neurological disorder, the Associated Press reported Wednesday.

Chelation therapy aims to purge the body of heavy metals. Its use in children with autism is based on the unproven notion that mercury in the vaccines is responsible for cases of the disorder, the AP reported. With the exception of certain flu shots, mercury hasn't been used in pediatric vaccines since 2001.