In a speech on Sept. 22, President Donald Trump announced that Tylenol is linked to autism spectrum disorder and said that women shouldn’t take it during pregnancy, according to The New York Times.
Whoa there, let’s take a step back. I thought it was vaccines? Oh wait, there’s no scientific data that explains that either causes autism. Give me a study with concrete evidence and thorough results.
Many pregnant people who take Tylenol have a health problem, such as an infection or an underlying condition, according to an article from Nature. Any apparent link between the drug and autism might be explained by other health factors rather than the drug itself, which scientists have to factor in. This leads to conflicting results between studies looking for a connection.
So now we have complications in trying to find a cause for autism? Well, no one said this job was easy. Glad I didn’t choose science as a major. It looks cool, but math is difficult. Just curious – how do these studies work?
A study led by Viktor Ahlqvist, an epidemiologist at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, involved taking data from 2.5 million children born between 1995 and 2019, according to an article by Nature. Ahlqvist collected the data through self-reports from midwives of children diagnosed with autism.
So, scientists go out of their way to find autistic children and their midwives for research. Sounds like a long process; then again, conducting studies requires a lot of research. Sounds like a waste of time to me because next thing you know, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will come up with another cause or link to autism.
On April 11, RFK Jr. pledged to find the cause of autism by September to limit exposure, according to PBS.
Autism diagnoses have increased since 2000, and by 2020, the rate among eight-year-olds reached 2.77%, according to the CDC. Part of the increase in diagnoses are attributed by scientists who expand on the definition of autism and researchers who search for environmental factors that may lead to the cause.
Well, that’s what you do to get RFK Jr. off your back. You put all of your energy into studies with no root cause and eventually burn out because you’ve come up with no results. Besides, even if there were a cause for the rise in autism diagnoses, why are so many people against this disorder? I have friends who are autistic, and they’re living successful lives.
One friend is a communications major at the University of Rhode Island and will be graduating this year. Another friend who I met in high school now goes to Stonehill College. Both are incredibly kind women who aren’t defined by their disabilities.
Now it’s October, and with RFK Jr.’s assistance, Trump says Tylenol, or acetaminophen, is the cause. I watched his announcement on a segment from the Daily Show, and he had trouble pronouncing its clinical name. Mind you, I wouldn’t be able to pronounce it correctly on my first try, so: Hey Trump, why didn’t you look up the pronunciation before saying it in public? You could’ve avoided humiliating yourself in front of hundreds of people at your speech.
If there’s no evidence Tylenol causes growth in underlying symptoms, then Trump and RFK Jr. are wrong; but hey, that’s just my opinion.
