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Trump and RFK blame acetaminophen for childhood autism. I couldn’t find a transcript yet, but the meandering press conference is recorded here. Was this on anyone’s bingo cards?
I’m confused. I vaguely knew that the Trump campaign had decided to fight autism at some point, but I always figured it was appeasement for the antivaxxers. Is there an untapped pool of Tylenol haters out there? Is this a stalking horse for a broader wave of FDA guidelines targeting the usual suspects?
Maybe there’s some sort of political smokescreen going on. We don’t appear to have started any new wars, and domestic hate for Trump looks more or less like it did since last week. If it’s a distraction, it’s not a very efficient one; I had a hard time finding reporting on it, and all the sites that bothered were also eagerly blasting his abuses of the Justice Department and the Supreme Court. That leaves the old-fashioned political motive of throwing meat to the base. Maybe Trump is just checking off campaign promises. But again, it’s so niche.
I suppose there could be some sort of personal beef. If Trump is trying to tank someone’s stock, uh, this is still a pretty weird way to do it.
That’s not even touching the medical case. The administration doesn’t appear to have provided much substance behind their claim. This will dissuade approximately no one. Enjoy your fresh CW battleground.
A study was published last month.
https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12940-025-01208-0
Correlation? Likely. Causation? I don't think so.
I suspect Paracetamol use during pregnancy can be correlated to social economic class, which will correlate to better chance of diagnosis.
Even apart from diagnosis, it always seemed self-evident to me that many instances of what is grouped under "autism" are a case of too much of something that makes people successful in the modern environment (focus, monomania, non-response to standard (hyper)stimuli).
Is there even a good definition of "autism" at play? I have met enough cases that I kinda grasp it intuitively, but the lack of a concrete measurement for really any characteristic sometimes makes me wonder if in a slightly different world we'd be having the same arguments over "misanthropy" (including prefers things to people), or something like that. Imagine if we let people self-diagnose with something that caused irritability.
You could go with the pre-2013 definition for classic autism. That’s the year in which it was merged with Asperger’s and some other developmental disorders. I don’t know that the establishment was wrong to combine them into a “spectrum disorder,” but it certainly changed the calculus for self-diagnosis.
It’s worth mentioning that the uptick in diagnoses was not, AFAICT, limited to photogenic “nerd++” autism. It also includes the 25-30% of cases which were classed as intellectually disabled. I find it much less likely that growth in this category is driven by self-diagnosis.
I mean, we kind of do? At least to the same degree as ASD. No one can actually stop you from citing “anger issues” any more than they can gatekeep “depression” or “anxiety.” They have to rely on social cues to warn you if you’re about to be cringe.
Consider whether one particular cluster of personality traits might be less likely to take those hints.
I was curious about this the other day since discussing increasing autism rates seems entirely pointless without distinguishing between non-functional autism and “nerd++” autism so I asked ChatGPT whether there’s research showing an increase in non-functional autism. It led me to this paper https://autismsciencefoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/CDC-Profound-Autism-Statistics_ASF-Copy.pdf which shows that rates of non-functional “profound” autism have been increasing, albeit at a slower rate than ASD generally. This is somewhat convincing that there is something real about increasing rates of autism but could also still be an artifact of more people seeking diagnosis. The one thing that stuck out that makes me think the whole “increased autism” thing is probably fake though is that prevalence of “profound” autism in black children is almost double what it is for white children. My thought is it’s all just Goodhart-ing by school districts to get more special education funding and create more excuses for problematic/low-performing students.
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