The White House’s announcement on Sept. 22 – falsely linking autism to taking Tylenol during pregnancy – is a scary reflection of how the administration is changing the mission of science.
During the announcement, President Donald Trump and United States Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F Kennedy Jr. referenced autism as an “epidemic,” a “crisis,” “devastating” and “alarming.”
The statement was chock full of discrimination against autistic people, misogyny and general nonsense.
Let’s clear some things up. The “cutting-edge science” – that the same administration gutted federal funding for medical research for it – is not reputable. There is no real evidence that links taking acetaminophen during pregnancy to autism. The cited research was drastically twisted to fit a societal narrative favoring neurotypical individuals and stigmatizing neurodivergence.
Not only was the administration’s statement false, it will have direct – and negative – impacts.
The White House’s announcement is harmful to autistic people because it addresses autism as a crisis in need of solving, perpetuating derogatory stereotypes about neurodivergence which have long contributed to negative representations of autism in the media and the societal oppression of autistic people.
The false claims are harmful to pregnant people, who need to know which safe treatments are available to them – including Tylenol. While Trump encouraged pregnant people to “tough it out” Tylenol has repeatedly been proven to reduce pregnancy pain and treat fevers during pregnancy: An issue the president – lacking a uterus and a heart – obviously does not understand.
The statement is harmful to children who will be born with autism, whose parents need to know autism is not a negative diagnosis, and it is certainly not a crisis.
The Trump administration has never had an issue with spreading disinformation. Watching the president shamelessly tell lies from the most powerful platform in the nation has become a motif since his first-term.
But repetition doesn’t make it any less sickening.
In one painful speech, Trump spread blatant disinformation isolating the neurodivergent community and vilifying autism. The statement is a terrifying example of how quickly the administration will target one community after the next: With the right lies, even the mission of science can be exploited to accelerate prejudice.
