Ignoring Scientific Evidence, Trump Blames Tylenol For Autism

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Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast.

I'm Danielle Kurtzlavan.

I cover the White House.

And I'm Domenico Montanaro, Senior Political Editor and Correspondent.

And today's guest, we have NPR health correspondent Yuki Noguchi.

Hey, Yuki.

Hi.

And today on the show, we are talking about several recent health recommendations President Trump has made, often contradicting well-established science.

Let's start with the President's comments about Tylenol during a press conference this week.

So taking Tylenol

is

not good.

I'll say it.

It's not good.

For this reason, they are strongly recommending that women limit Tylenol use during pregnancy unless medically necessary.

That's,

for instance, in cases of extremely high fever,

that you feel you can't tough it out, you can't do it.

I guess there's that.

It's a small number of cases, I think.

But if you can't tough it out, if you can't do it,

that's what you're going to have to do.

So Yuki, how does what Trump's saying here compare with the science?

You know, there's no scientific basis for him saying that, you know, mothers ought not take Tylenol.

In fact, it's one of the few medications that pregnant women are told to take.

A number of studies have been done on this topic of acetaminophen's relationship with autism, the largest of which was funded by the NIH and Sweden and found no additional risk.

You know, some studies have looked at the possible correlation between using Tylenol and autism, and there may be a correlation, but that's not the same thing as finding a cause.

You know, remember, Tylenol is, again, a very common medication and one that pregnant women are told is safe to take for high fever and pain.

So to say that Tylenol caused it is kind of like saying I drank coffee this morning and now I feel sick.

I mean, it doesn't mean that the coffee caused the illness, right?

The two things could be an unrelated correlation.

And what research shows is that, you know, autism's primary cause is actually genetic and that perhaps hundreds of genes may be involved in its development.

Well, there's something else else Trump said during that event.

He also warned against using Tylenol for infants.

But I got to say, I know when I was pregnant, when I had an infant, I was warned, you do not want to let your own fever or your baby's fever get too high.

And meanwhile, Trump is making Tylenol sound scary.

So I'm wondering, what are the risks for both pregnant women and infants if they don't take Tylenol when they have a fever?

Untreated fever during pregnancy can actually lead to neural defects, damage to the fetus's heart, you know, preterm birth, or even miscarriage.

So coughing it out is really not what doctors would advise.

And for babies, too, you know, high fever, I mean, fever is common among babies, but it can be an indicator of, you know, a broader problem, an infection, for example.

Well, Yuki, something else happened at this event.

The president not only said Tylenol causes autism, but he also offered up a different medication as a treatment for it.

Can you tell us what he said?

Yeah, the president's deputies suggested that an old drug called leukavorin is showing promise as a treatment for autism and even referred to it as a reversal drug.

But that's very, very premature to say so.

There's nothing that sort of indicates that it would actually reverse autism at all.

What leukavorin is, is a form of vitamin B that's most often used during chemotherapy, you know, because it's able to basically bypass the normal pathways to get vitamin B to the brain in people who have a deficiency of vitamin B.

Now, very few studies have been done on its effects on autism.

There is a study that shows it may alleviate symptoms for those with both autism and this vitamin B deficiency, you know, but the percentage of people who have both is still in a minority.

And again, that's not very well researched.

You know, in general, what I would say is in endorsing Lukavorin, I mean, The administration is basically rewriting how the health system works, I mean, including with medicines that have been historically vetted and checked for safety, you know, based on very extensive scientific research.

The Food and Drug Administration usually takes years to review these things before allowing them to go to market.

But this administration this week said it will basically change the labeling on leukoborin to broaden its use to those who have this vitamin B deficiency and autism.

And, you know, it's planning to track the effects of that.

I mean, and basically what is going to be a real world experiment with this drug.

Now, Domenico, all of this is pretty unusual for a president to make this type of an announcement on a health issue.

Politically, why is Trump doing this?

Yeah, there's a lot of politics at play here, but once RFK Jr.

dropped out of running for president and then endorsed Donald Trump during the presidential campaign, you sort of knew that there was going to be this marriage between RFK's political base that then now was being brought into the fold for Donald Trump to try to win a second term.

And you knew that RFK Jr.'s

like principal thing that he'd gotten so much attention for was about autism and vaccines and talking about that as a health issue.

And we know that once he picked RFK Jr.

as his health and human services cabinet secretary, that they said that they would find a solution by September.

And here we are.

And I think that there's a political risk in this, obviously, as well, because you have a lot of people who now are not really believing what comes out of the government, not believing what comes from Donald Trump or from RFK Jr., and you're blaming women.

There's a lot of women who feel like this is targeting them to say, oh, tough it out.

This is something to do with you because you gave yourself Tylenol to make yourself feel better.

Now you're giving your kid autism.

You know, that's given how much has been done by Donald Trump in what a lot of women see as targeting them on reproductive rights, this is just one more tab of that that's going to keep women engaged, especially a year before the midterms.

That's a very good point.

And I I do want to go back to what you were saying about people not trusting Donald Trump.

Trump in particular has this long history of casting distrust on authority, on science, on expertise.

It feels like this is part of that through line.

Right.

I mean, that's been Donald Trump's message.

Trust me.

Don't trust the experts.

The experts don't know what they're talking about.

We saw that by Vice President J.D.

Vance during the debate last year, where he's talking about, oh, you know, expert schme experts, basically.

You know, you don't need to trust them.

They've been wrong about everything.

And we're not talking about just health care, you know, and I think a lot of this has roots in COVID, but we're talking about the economy, immigration, crime, whatever it is, that's what this administration is really about.

This is at the heart of Trumpism, of MAGAism, to say you trust one man, Donald Trump, and all of the people that he says are the real experts, even if those people don't have the credentials or the scientific community says that these things are not necessarily the way that they should be presented.

Okay, well, we need to take a quick break, but we will have more in a moment.

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And we are back.

We've been talking about recent health recommendations that President Trump has made.

And these announcements that he's made seem to be part of a narrative that autism is a problem in need of a solution.

What is going on here?

Domenico, let me start with you.

Well, I mean, this was something, you know, that Trump had talked about during the campaign.

And he's said even back to 2015 when he was running that he believes that vaccines had something to do with autism because we've seen an increased percentage of people who are diagnosed with autism.

That doesn't mean that there are more people with autism or that the Amish don't have autism or that Cubans don't have autism.

As Trump has claimed.

As Trump claimed this week in that same press conference.

This has to do mostly, people believe, with medical diagnoses and being better about that.

I mean, 30 years ago, this wasn't something that was as prevalent, that doctors were looking for, that had the same signs of.

Plus, it's a spectrum disorder, right?

I mean, autism is a disorder with a wide range.

I mean, you have varying abilities, people who show fewer symptoms to people who are nonverbal.

So it's not exactly like one size fits all.

But politically, this is something that RFK Jr.

has made a huge part of his political rise, as well as his activism before going into politics.

And it's something that, given what we saw with COVID and the distrust of the CDC increasingly, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from the right, then that's something that Donald Trump has been able to latch on to politically and sort of ride that wave a little bit.

And this is a big piece of that.

Well, Yuki, I'm very curious how families, especially families with children with autism spectrum disorder, how have they received Trump's remarks?

You know, anyone who understands autism knows that it's a complex disease with complex contributing factors and likely complex solutions, right?

And the president's remarks really don't reflect that.

You know, he's kind of looking for a simple cause and a simple solution.

But in terms of how families are reacting, I mean, for sure, some families are excited about Lucavorin and some have wanted to see if that might work on their particular child.

But, you know, the idea, again, that there's an easy solution strikes most families as pretty bogus.

You know, I've talked to families who say, you know, there's a lot of supplements and vitamins and solutions that they've been pushed for many years, you know, some of which could even exacerbate their child's symptoms.

And, you know, people who know autism know that, like Domenico said, I mean, it is a spectrum.

There are so many different manifestations of autism.

And so, therefore, what really seems to work for most families is actually therapies, you know, not a pill, but something like a speech therapy, therapy to help them move better or even eat, because so many autistic people have sensory difficulties.

So, you know, I think there is no simple solution.

And I talked to a mother named Katie Donovan.

She lives in Mayopec, New York and has a daughter who was diagnosed at 17 months with autism.

You go through this self-blame and you beat yourself up and you ask yourself a million questions.

And I've been in therapy for many years and worked on this a lot to come to the conclusion that it isn't something I did.

This is just who my daughter is.

And she's perfect the way she is.

And this is not my fault.

And so Donovan was really dismayed to hear the president's remarks because it reflected a lack of understanding of what autism is.

And she felt blamed for her child's condition.

And it sounds like also she feels like it pathologizes her child.

As she said, my daughter is perfect the way she is.

It seems like she was reacting to the idea that there's a big problem with her daughter.

Exactly.

I mean, that's something that I actually hear from a lot of people in the autism community is like, these are people who are differently abled and they don't necessarily see themselves as, you know, a problem in need of fixing.

There are so many parents, right, who have been frustrated and are frustrated with what they see as this increase.

They don't know what caused it.

They're looking for solutions.

They're looking for answers.

And sometimes they grasp at things that are really things that are pushed by charlatans.

I mean, a lot of these supplements and injections and all of this stuff that really has no basis in science, but has basis in commercial sales, essentially.

And, you know, you've got vulnerable people who are looking for for something to latch on to.

And it's easier to talk about medicine sometimes than the therapies and the supports that they need.

A lot of families, you know, will say what they really need is, you know, better access to these therapies, the speech therapy, the movement therapy, and for better insurance coverage to cover those things.

And what you're actually seeing is the federal government is actually limiting Medicaid coverage, for example, which would affect a lot of these families.

You know, the Medeco, I think quite a few people watched this event, and it reminded them of some of Trump's press conferences during COVID.

And I'm wondering how what we heard from the White House this week on Tylenol, autism, vaccines, how does that fit into a broader pattern from Trump?

Certainly took me back to that time.

And there were a lot of parallels with that because it's health information that's being put out, sometimes just throwing stuff at the wall, it seems.

I mean, Trump was looking for a magic bullet that would say in 15 days, it'll magically go away.

You know, this is very similar to that.

And, you know, autism is not something that's just going to go away by moms not using Tylenol during pregnancy or then using this drug afterward that's only really designed for a certain sect of kids.

It's much more complicated.

There are a lot more treatments that are helpful, needed, necessary that parents use and are looking at that aren't medical necessarily.

But there's a lot that does need to be researched when it comes to autism scientifically.

And this just sort of seems seems to, you know, go along with what we saw during COVID, where people then just don't trust what they're hearing from the federal government and are left on their own looking for answers.

Aaron Powell, Jr.: And I will say the president even said by his own admission that he's not very precise at this press conference and that

he believes certain tenants.

And so on the basis of that, is making these kinds of statements.

And I think a lot of scientists have

a lot of concern about that when it comes to

making health policy or health decisions based on someone's belief or supposition.

All right, well, we are going to have to leave it there.

Thank you so much for being here, Yuki.

Thank you.

I am Danielle Kurtz-Lavin.

I cover the White House.

And I'm Domenico Montanaro, Senior Political Editor and Correspondent.

And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.

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