Resumen de Brief points.

• This article presents various news briefs in regards to science. Ten of 13 authors of a 1998 paper linking the childhood MMR vaccine to autism retracted their conclusions, in part because the selection of subjects may have been biased and because one author received undeclared funds from a group pursuing legal action on behalf of children allegedly damaged by the vaccine. Parents who lost a child were 50 percent more likely to develop the disease than those who did not. Astronomers have detected the most distant galaxy yet, one with a redshift of 10, meaning that it is 13.2 billion light-years away. European Southern Observatory announcement, March 1, 2004. Populations of plants, insects and birds in the U.K. have dropped precipitously in the past 40 years--more evidence that the world is in the midst of its sixth mass extinction.