Science
27 March 2015 vol 347, issue 6229, pages 1389-1512
http://www.sciencemag.org/current.dtl

In Depth
Infectious Diseases
A reassuring snapshot of Ebola
Gretchen Vogel
Summary
As Ebola has taken its horrific toll across West Africa, passing from person to person in its longest known chains of human infections, researchers worried the virus might mutate to become even more threatening. New viral genome data from Mali suggest a glimmer of good news: The Ebola virus that infected eight people there in October and November had not changed significantly from the one that infected people at the beginning of the known outbreak, back in March 2014. Diagnostic tests, experimental antibody-based treatments, and potential vaccines for Ebola are all developed based on the virus’s recent sequence. If it were to change too much, cases could go unrecognized, and treatments and vaccines could become ineffective. Mutations might even lead to more dramatic symptoms or allow the virus to pass from person to person more easily. But genome sequences of four recent Ebola virus samples suggest that the virus, so far, has remained fairly stable.

In Depth
Social Sciences
Measuring child abuse’s legacy
Emily Underwood
Summary
The notion that victims of physical abuse as kids are more likely to abuse their own children, often described as the “cycle of violence,” is widely held but sparsely documented. Now, the first large, longitudinal study to track how victims of child abuse treat their own children has found little evidence of a cycle of violence, but suggests that sexual abuse and neglect may indeed be passed down the generations. The study, published this week in Science, also makes a controversial claim: that heightened surveillance of families with a history of abuse may have biased some studies taken as evidence for the cycle of violence.

Report
Intergenerational transmission of child abuse and neglect: Real or detection bias?
Cathy Spatz Widom1,*, Sally J. Czaja1, Kimberly A. DuMont2
Author Affiliations
1Psychology Department, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and Graduate Center, City University of New York, New York, NY, USA.
2William T. Grant Foundation, New York, NY, USA.
Abstract
The literature has been contradictory regarding whether parents who were abused as children have a greater tendency to abuse their own children. A prospective 30-year follow-up study interviewed individuals with documented histories of childhood abuse and neglect and matched comparisons and a subset of their children. The study assessed maltreatment based on child protective service (CPS) agency records and reports by parents, nonparents, and offspring. The extent of the intergenerational transmission of abuse and neglect depended in large part on the source of the information used. Individuals with histories of childhood abuse and neglect have higher rates of being reported to CPS for child maltreatment but do not self-report more physical and sexual abuse than matched comparisons. Offspring of parents with histories of childhood abuse and neglect are more likely to report sexual abuse and neglect and that CPS was concerned about them at some point in their lives. The strongest evidence for the intergenerational transmission of maltreatment indicates that offspring are at risk for childhood neglect and sexual abuse, but detection or surveillance bias may account for the greater likelihood of CPS reports.