I’ve been traveling, so I want to take the opportunity to catch up with all the acetaminophen/paracetamol/Tylenol stuff the Trump administration has been connecting to autism. As everyone will have heard, HHS and the White House are claiming that exposure to the drug during pregnancy is a cause for the rising incidence of autism diagnoses over the last few decades. Let’s dispose of that one right here in the first paragraph: there is no good evidence supporting such a causal link, and in fact there are large studies that have found no association at all. Despite the administration’s claims that “scientists have proposed biological mechanisms” for such an effect, the paper that this statement links to does no such thing and in fact states that any such mechanism(s) remain unknown.
This article at the Guardian does a very good job in a short space of dealing with the topic, and it illustrates how the administration’s spin on this is deliberately deceptive. And I mean that. We’re not talking about just a difference of opinion about medical or scientific issues. The document issued by the Trump White House literally double-counts studies to make it look as if there is more evidence in their favor, while ignoring other studies that do not support its conclusion. It also completely ignores any genetic factors and (very importantly) also ignores expansions in diagnostic criteria over the years and overall monitoring of such symptoms. As mentioned above, even its direct links to the literature do not support what is claimed in the text. Although it is dressed up like some sort of dispassionate review of the literature, it is a tendentious document written with intent to deceive.
That’s because our HHS secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has a longstanding interest in blaming exposure to various pharmaceuticals (and of course the drug companies who develop them and the physicians who prescribe them) for what he sees as modern epidemics of disease. Of course, he also is ready to blame consumption of seed oils and food dyes for other conditions, lack of evidence be damned, but the common thread is that you and your children are only getting sick because people are doing things to you. And here we are, the fearless Trump administration, finally riding to your rescue to save you from the evildoers!
It’s a simple story, which makes it easy to sell. Blaming a list of enemies for all kinds of health problems is certainly a tempting strategy. Enemies make for great politics, the Good Guys versus the Bad Guys, and if it turns out that there are even more Bad Guys than you thought and they’re doing even worse things than you thought (giving your kids autism!), then that makes the Good Guys look even better, right? Of course, this acetaminophen idea is probably not what some of Trump’s and RFK’s fans were expecting, because many of them already believe that autism is caused by one sort of vaccination or another. But what the heck. Bad People are doing Bad Things to you, stick with that, and we’re going to hammer 'em for you. Here, buy a t-shirt to celebrate.
Given all the other chaos going on right now with US policy (foreign and domestic), this may look like a minor issue. I mean, it’s just a small pile of lies, when there are so many others stacked up in every direction. But it’s illustrative. This is how the Trump Administration treats every issue, at every scale: brazen falsehoods, puffed-up language, triumphal press releases, trumpet blasts. Anyone who disagrees is slandered, ridiculed, and if possible fired. Or worse: we’re now to the point of adding “arrested” “beaten up” “deported” or “shot” to the list of possibilities.
All in just a few months, and it gets worse week by week. I miss having competent adults in positions of authority instead of vengeful sociopaths. I miss ideals, and I miss principles. I miss the United States, God damn it. Let’s not stop until we get all of that back, and let’s not stop until we’ve figured out ways to keep this disaster from happening again.