Autism in the spotlight

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MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Thursday the 2nd of October.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

First up: Pain meds and autism.

Last week, President Trump joined Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at a press conference on autism treatments. In it, Kennedy questioned whether the use of Tylenol during pregnancy could affect the development of unborn babies.

Here’s WORLD reporter Emma Freire.

TRUMP: Today, we're delighted to be joined by America's top medical and public health professionals as we announce historic steps to confront the crisis of autism.

EMMA FREIRE: After President Trump appointed vaccine-skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to the top job at HHS, Kennedy promised to investigate the causes of autism. His promise this spring to release preliminary findings by September was met with raised eyebrows. Last week’s press conference did little to lower them.

TRUMP: So taking Tylenol is not good.

Trump started by announcing the FDA would notify physicians that taking Tylenol during pregnancy can be associated with a higher risk of autism for the baby. Trump was unequivocal in his advice regarding Tylenol’s active ingredient acetaminophen.

TRUMP: So ideally, you don't take it at all.

The FDA’s actual letter to physicians is much more cautious. It stresses that the science is far from settled and Tylenol is still safer for pregnant women than other over-the-counter medicines like Ibuprofen.

SINGER: There was no news there for us at all as doctors.

Dr. Jeffrey Singer is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. He said doctors have long known there are tradeoffs when it comes to Tylenol during pregnancy.

SINGER: This is something we've known for a while, and that obstetricians have discussed with their patients.

But the press conference sends a message that autism is high on the Trump administration’s list of priorities.

TRUMP: The meteoric rise in autism is among the most alarming public health developments in history. There's never been anything like this. Just a few decades ago, 1 in 10,000 children had autism. And now it's 1 in 31.

Numbers like that have led many to distrust the medical establishment’s efforts to understand and treat autism, and they are happy to see the president shining a spotlight on it. Mary Holland is the president of Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit advocacy group founded by Kennedy.

HOLLAND: The President and the Secretary of HHS are deeply, deeply committed to ending the autism epidemic and to identifying causes and to informing people in a real time kind of way, and so that major message was incredibly welcome and had never been said before by anybody in that level of authority.

While the press conference was supposed to focus on Tylenol, Trump took the opportunity to once again link autism and vaccines. He echoed many of the concerns Kennedy has expressed over the years.

TRUMP: On the vaccines, it would be good instead of one visit where they pump the baby, load it up with stuff, you'll do it over a period of four times or five times.

Interest in delayed vaccination schedules grew after the 2007 book from Dr. Robert Sears recommended a more customized approach to the shots.

After the press conference, the American Academy of Pediatrics put out a statement criticizing Trump’s comments and stressing the importance of not delaying or spacing out the vaccines on the schedule.

When Kennedy took the podium he promised a new approach to tackling autism.

KENNEDY: Historically, NIH has focused almost solely on politically safe and entirely fruitless research about the genetic drivers of autism. And that would be like studying the genetic drivers of lung cancer without looking at cigarettes. Despite the cataclysmic impact of the epidemic on our nation's children, we are now replaced -- we are now replacing the institutional culture of politicized science and corruption with evidence based medicine

Singer, at the Cato Institute, thinks the use of the word “epidemic” to describe rates of autism is overblown.

SINGER: So that's to call it an epidemic Is really not to take into account the, the evolution of our understanding of autism over the last 50 years. It's the spectrum. So it depends on what end of the spectrum you’re on.

Holland disagrees. She thinks epidemic is exactly the right description. She thinks the true autism rate may be as high as 1 in 20. She argues autism must be placed within the wider context of high rates of chronic disease in America.

HOLLAND: Most people in the United States have some kind of chronic health condition. That's not normal. Over half of kids have some kind of chronic health condition, be it severe allergies, obesity, diabetes, asthma, ADHD, autism, cancer.

Later in the HHS press conference, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya who heads the National Institutes of Health announced the launch of major new research into the causes of autism.

BHATTACHARYA: The NIH has launched the Autism Data Science Initiative to turbocharge autism research, devoting an additional $50 million to the cause of studying autism. The NIH reviewers and peer reviews chose the 13 best projects focused on root causes and therapies.

The research grants encouraged groups like the Autism Science Foundation and Autism Speaks, who offered cautious support.

However, Singer fears the massive influx of funding will actually distort research into the causes of autism.

SINGER: So anybody who's wanting to do research on the subject, obviously is going to be more likely to get a grant if the way they they make their research proposal suggests that it's going to reinforce the idea that acetaminophen can cause harm during pregnancy.

Mary Holland of Children’s Health Defense is also concerned about some of the grantees. She worries they will continue looking at potential causes for autism that she thinks have already proven to be dead ends.

HOLLAND: They are largely grantees who seem to have been in the pipeline before. They don't seem to be really using innovative approaches or really completely aligned with what the President and Secretary Kennedy spoke about on Monday.

Many of the research projects will take 3 years to complete, and Kennedy has promised to give updates as soon as he has them.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Emma Freire.

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