Echo chambers are generally bad. Any group making important decisions should have a certain level of diversity of thought to avoid groupthink. But I would argue that there are some stances that are so fundamental that it’s good when everyone is on the same page about them. Vaccines, for instance. It would be just the best if everyone in the agencies that manage American health, all the way up to the top, believed in the power and benefit of vaccines. Sadly, that isn’t the case.
RFK Jr. has fired many people for not agreeing with his stance that vaccines make people autistic, kill them, are bad because too many undesirables poison the gene pool, or whatever other crap he’s spewing these days. He fired Susan Monarez after only weeks on the job, reportedly for not agreeing to rubber stamp changes to vaccine schedules he wanted to make. He fired literally everyone on the CDC’s ACIP panel, the group that advises the CDC on those very same changes to vaccine schedules. There’s probably been more, as well.
We’ll have to see if NIH boss Jay Bhattacharya just started the countdown to his own termination, now that he has publicly broken with Kennedy on vaccines. In a Senate Committee hearing, Bhattacharya was grilled by Bernie Sanders.
NIH director Jay Bhattacharya, 58, faced the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions on Tuesday. There, ranking member Bernie Sanders asked him point-blank, “Do vaccines cause autism? Tell that to the American people: Yes or no?”
After trying to hedge and say he did not believe the measles vaccine causes autism, he finally admitted, “I have not seen a study that suggests any single vaccine causes autism.”
Asked specifically about what his approach would be to the current measles outbreak in America, Bhattacharya was even more forceful.
Unlike his boss, Bhattacharya was vocally pro-vaccine during Tuesday’s hearing. Discussing the measles outbreak in the United States, he said, “I am absolutely convinced that the measles epidemic that we are seeing currently is best solved by parents vaccinating their children for measles.”
Reluctantly stated or not, those are sane comments that are completely at odds with Kennedy. Now, so there is no misunderstanding, Bhattacharya is still terrible. He made his name railing against COVID-19 policies and vaccine schedules. He’s also engaged in some politically targeted attacks on elite universities when it comes to grant money and the like.
But on this, he’s right. And that potentially puts his job at risk. RFK Jr. doesn’t like dissenting opinions. He tends to avoid them through firings. On the other hand, I don’t know if he can afford more chaos at HHS and its child agencies.
But when it comes to placing bets, betting against RFK Jr.’s ego is rarely a winner.
Welcome to year two of the unmitigated disaster that is RFK Jr. being in charge of Health and Human Services and its child agencies. To call Kennedy an anti-vaxxer is not remotely controversial any longer, and probably never was. To state that he’s a corrupt peddler of misinformation from which he has, likely still is, and will in the future profit should be equally uncontroversial. And if there is a single health issue on which Kennedy has staked his dubious claims more than any other, it certainly must be autism spectrum disorder.
Kennedy, and Trump right alongside him, have been all over the map when it comes to his claims about autism. Kennedy was one of those leading the charge for decades in claiming that thimerosal in childhood vaccines was responsible for rising rates in autism diagnoses. When thimerosal was removed from most childhood vaccines over two decades ago and autism rates didn’t decrease, rather than admitting they were wrong, Kennedy and his cadre of hapless buffoons simply pivoted to another vaccine ingredient: aluminum. That ingredient has also been deemed safe by countless studies and experts. You know, people who actually know what the hell they’re talking about.
Since then, Kennedy has discovered all sorts of other causes of the disorder. Male circumcision? Autism! Make American girthy again, I suppose. Use of Tylenol by pregnant women and/or for young children? Autism! Fevers are super hot these days, y’all. And, of course, he is still claiming it might be vaccines too, because why the hell not? It’s not like measles is everywhere or anything.
Kennedy’s alteration of the CDC page on vaccines and autism to suggest that there just might be a link between the two is particularly appropriate, as the FDA just also disappeared a webpage informing the public on the various snake oil style scams that are out there purporting to treat autism as well.
…under anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—who has numerous ties to the wellness industry—that FDA information webpage is now gone. It was quietly deleted at the end of last year, the Department of Health and Human Services confirmed to Ars Technica.
The defunct webpage, titled “Be Aware of Potentially Dangerous Products and Therapies that Claim to Treat Autism,” provided parents and other consumers with an overview of the problem. It began with a short description of autism and some evidence-based, FDA-approved medications that can help manage autism symptoms. Then, the regulatory agency provided a list of some false claims and unproven, potentially dangerous treatments it had been working to combat. “Some of these so-called therapies carry significant health risks,” the FDA wrote.
The list included chelation and hyperbaric oxygen therapy, treatments that those in the anti-vaccine and wellness spheres have championed.
It should be obvious already that there is no evidence to suggest that these so-called autism therapies work in any way, shape, or form. That’s why the FDA had a page up warning against their use. In some cases, the danger in using them is no joke either.
Hyperbaric oxygen chamber use is probably the lesser of the two concerns. They won’t do anything for your autism, but they are typically found in facilities with staff who aren’t medical professionals and aren’t always trained well in their use generally. That’s how one five year old (!!!) that visited a wellness center that claimed to treat autism with hyperbaric chambers was incinerated inside it when a spark went off and all of that concentrated oxygen ignited. On the one hand, this person certainly doesn’t have autism any longer, though I don’t think that’s how the result is supposed to be achieved.
Then there’s chelation therapy, a process by which chemical injections into the body are performed, so that these chemicals can bind to metals within a person’s bloodstream, allowing them to be excreted through waste. Chelation actually does have legitimate uses, such as when someone has heavy metal poisoning, typically from mercury, lead, or arsenic. Using chelation therarpy to remove non-approved minerals, however, can have negative health outcomes, including death. And, of course, one of Kennedy’s minions is David Geier. Geier is an anti-vaxxer who joined HHS to “find” the cause of autism and has long been advocate for chelation therapy.
To address this nonexistent problem, anti-vaccine activists have touted chelation as a way to remove metals delivered via vaccines and treat autism. One of the most notorious of these activists is David Geier, whom Kennedy hired to the US health department last year to study the debunked connection between vaccines and autism. David Geier, along with his late father, Mark Geier, faced discipline from the Maryland State Board of Physicians in 2011 for, among other things, putting the health of autistic children at risk by treating them with unproven and dangerous hormone and chelation therapies. Mark Geier was stripped of his medical license. David Geier, who is not a scientist or doctor, was issued a civil fine for practicing medicine without a license.
So why is all of this being done? Money, of course! Kennedy has surrounded himself with these “health guru” snakeoil salesmen, both in government and out, and the lot of them have made buckets and buckets of money doing this sort of thing.
Generally, my experience is that people think RFK Jr. is one of two things. One common belief is that he’s a health savior, finally sticking it to a corrupt medical industry and telling the truth about the real causes of real disorders like autism. That’s incredibly wrong for a million different reasons. The other common belief is that Kennedy’s views on vaccines and health are super wrong, and that he’s very dumb, but also that he’s a true believer.
That’s wrong, too. This is a grift and always has been. A money-making scheme built on the backs of illness and death for those who listen to him, all while he collects a government paycheck. That he was confirmed as Secretary of HHS at all was profane. That our government has allowed all of his bullshit to go unchecked and unaddressed, however, is perverse.
I knew this was coming but this still is absolutely maddening. In all of our coverage of RFK Jr., particularly since his vile appointment and confirmation as head of Health and Human Services, it’s been abundantly clear that he’s an anti-vaxxer. While that may seem obvious to most of our readers, it’s important to note that there are a great many Kennedy fans out there who will tell you he’s not that and that he instead is merely seeking more science on the effects of vaccines. Some say this in genuine fashion, while most say it knowing precisely how full of shit they are. The man’s time at DHS has made any debate over this point academic, of course. Every action he’s taking is the action an anti-vaxxer would make, no matter what he may admit to or otherwise. Still, there was enough nuance and subtlety in all of this to give some folks the cover needed to claim that Kennedy isn’t what he plainly is.
Well, that time is now past. The CDC recently updated its webpage meant to educate the public on the lack of a link between autism and vaccines to indicate that, hey, there might just be a link after all.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has updated its website to promote the widely debunked claim that vaccines may cause autism. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has repeatedly linked vaccines to autism, and now the public health agency he oversees is publicly reversing its position to reflect that belief.
The CDC site previously said studies showed there was no connection between receiving vaccines and developing autism. HHS communications director Andrew Nixon said the agency updated the site to reflect “gold standard, evidence-based science.”
Okay, I’m not going to mince words on this: this change to this publicly facing webpage is unscientific, dangerous, and fucking evil. It’s one man and his cadre of handpicked anti-vaxxer cronies foisting upon the public guidance that is not built on science or medicine. And it’s patently obvious that the approach here is an unscientific one.
There is going to be some nuance here, but this is really important. Here is the banner at the top of the page after the changes:
Let’s go one by one. The first bullet point is by far the stupidest. Scientists simply don’t talk like this. If the CDC would like to have a webpage for every single potential cause of autism that studies haven’t “ruled out”, well, that is going to require a hell of a lot of webpages. Has science ruled out that ghosts don’t cause autism? Or that the hand of god isn’t directly involved? How about, oh I don’t know… turtles? Have there been enough studies done, peer reviewed of course, that specifically rule out the possibility that proximity to turtles doesn’t have some causative link to autism? I can promise you there hasn’t, because that would be insane.
In science, the burden of proof is on those who make a claim. In absence of that proof, the proper course of belief is in the null. In other words, scientifically, making a scientific claim puts the onus to prove it on the claimant and puts zero onus on anyone else. If I want to argue that turtles cause autism, I have to prove it. Otherwise, you assume no link exists. And that’s what the CDC’s page used to do. It used to say that there is no link, which is shorthand for the fact that no link has been proven to exist, which is precisely the right way to describe this.
As for the claim that studies proving a link have been ignored, they very much have not. They’ve either been exposed for their poor methodology or they’ve been debunked. That’s it. And the rest of the research out there indicates, again, there is no link between autism and vaccines.
“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website has been changed to promote false information suggesting vaccines cause autism,” said Dr. Susan J. Kressly, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, in a statement. “Since 1998, independent researchers across seven countries have conducted more than 40 high-quality studies involving over 5.6 million people. The conclusion is clear and unambiguous: There’s no link between vaccines and autism.”
She went on to say, “Anyone repeating this harmful myth is misinformed or intentionally trying to mislead parents. We call on the CDC to stop wasting government resources to amplify false claims that sow doubt in one of the best tools we have to keep children healthy and thriving: routine immunizations.”
As for CDC’s new assessment of causes of autism, who the actual fuck knows what that means. So far, out of Kennedy at least, we’ve heard that the causes of autism are maybe vaccines, definitely Tylenol (except maybe not), and male circumcision. They’re all over the damned place and there is zero trust from anyone with a couple of brain cells to rub together that any new analysis coming out of this bullshit iteration of the CDC is at all trustworthy.
And, people, this matters. We are, right now, on the verge of losing our measles elimination status and it’s because of exactly this kind of bullshit from exactly these assclowns. That has happened because vaccination rates have been steadily falling for two decades and this is going to make it much, much worse. Kennedy should be dragged before Congress for hearings to explain why this change was made, on what scientific basis the change was made, and why in the world impeachment efforts to oust him ought not to begin immediately.
Anything less is Congress abdicating its responsibility.
When it comes to RFK Jr., I tend not to find much humor in the chaos he creates. The man’s work involves American health and illness, life and death, so it’s just generally not funny. And that holds true to Kennedy’s wielding of incomplete, inaccurate, and unsettled science to go before all of America and declare definitively that acetaminophen, of which Tylenol is the most famous brand, was at least partially the cause for autism spectrum disorder when expecting mothers took it for pain or fever while pregnant. It wasn’t funny when Trump went to the same microphone and did likewise, stating simply “Don’t take Tylenol” if you’re pregnant. It wasn’t funny when Sinclair decided to abuse its airwaves to disserve the public interest (hey, Brendan Carr, over here!) by spreading even more Tylenol disinformation. And it wasn’t funny when Senator Bill Cassidy took to the airwaves to complain about Kennedy’s nonsense when he was a pivotal voice and vote in confirming Captain Brainworm to head HHS in the first place.
But, I have to admit, this is very funny. See, Texas AG Ken Paxton, a man who I imagine has a Donald Trump body pillow to cuddle with at night, decided to run with the claims Kennedy and Trump made and has filed a lawsuit against the makers of Tylenol for their “deceptive” marketing and labeling practices for Tylenol.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing the maker of Tylenol, Kenvue and Johnson & Johnson, who previously sold Tylenol, claiming that they have been “deceptively marketing Tylenol” knowing that it “leads to a significantly increased risk of autism and other disorders.”
To back that claim, Paxton relies on the “considerable body of evidence… recently highlighted by the Trump Administration.”
Specifically Trump and Kennedy’s claims about Tylenol, actually. See, this is already funny. Here’s one passage from the suit itself, the entirety of which is embedded below.
There are many examples of drugs regulated by the Food and Drug Administration that include complete information regarding risks on their labels even when the underlying science—unlike here—is not fully settled. These labels reflect the aims of the regulatory system, which recognizes States’ authority to require warnings to inform consumers of certain risks. Pregnant women should be provided with complete information so that they can make informed decisions regarding the risks to which they expose their unborn children.
So, to start with, regulating OTC drug labels is the responsibility of the FDA. If these companies were not properly including warnings on their standardized labels, the remedy for that is getting the FDA involved, which has regulatory teeth and enforcement mechanisms to declare OTC drugs to be “misbranded.” Tylenol has been around for decades. The idea that this hasn’t been an issue for the better part of a century, but now is, is plainly absurd.
But I want to pay very close attention to Paxton’s claim that warning labels include risks even when the science isn’t settled, but that this isn’t one of those cases. In this case, according to Paxton, the science is settled, making this all the worse.
But that’s all kinds of bullshit. The science here isn’t remotely settled. The scientists of those very studies cited by Paxton have complained about how the administration is drawing conclusions from studies that they are very upfront about being inconclusive. None of Kennedy’s data was “new.” It was merely new analysis of old studies.
“The causative association between Tylenol given in pregnancy and the perinatal periods is not sufficient to say it definitely causes autism,” Kennedy told reporters. “But it’s very suggestive.”
“There should be a cautious approach to it,” he added. “ That’s why our message to patients, to mothers, to people who are pregnant and to the mothers of young children is: Consult your physician.”
That’s always been the message. And that is very funny. Paxton just got pantsed by the very person he cited in his lawsuit, in which he claimed this was all settled science. Even Kennedy, a man capable of saying outrageous things when it comes to healthcare and science, walked this back. And, in doing so, he tore an enormous hole in the lawsuit that Paxton, a Trump bootlicking sycophant, just filed.
Drink that shit in, because it’s delicious.
Now, even Kennedy’s walkback is still bad, of course. He’s acting like this is all more sinister and direct of a relationship than there actually is between autism and Tylenol. “It’s very suggestive” is a line without meaning, scientifically. Suggestive to whom? And to what degree? It’s typical Kennedy, taking outlier studies and pretending they mean much more than they do, even as researchers complain about the methodology of those studies, or their inconclusive nature. He did this with his claim that America’s men are suffering greatly from reduced sperm counts, and now he’s doing it here.
But in a country that could use a good laugh at the moment, I’m not going to pretend like what he did to Paxton isn’t funny.
It’s story time! I came home from the grocery store over this past weekend very proud. I rushed to tell my wife about how I was complimented in the check out line by the very nice woman behind me. She mentioned that she was impressed by how I “Tetris-ed” my groceries on the conveyor belt, carefully organizing my purchases not only in proper order so that they’re bagged together (drinks/alcohol, then frozen stuff, then refrigerated items, then warm storage items), but also so that there is no unused real estate on the belt itself. Hence the “Tetris” comment.
My wife’s response was: “Honey, your spectrum is showing.”
This isn’t to make fun of autism spectrum disorder, of course. Quite the opposite, actually. It’s an acknowledgement that I’m somewhere on that spectrum, as are many more of us than probably realize it. I’m an IT guy. This isn’t unexpected.
But I had no idea that one of the potential causes for my landing there was because my parents made the choice to have me circumcised after birth.
During a cabinet meeting on Thursday, Kennedy, a longtime proponent of the unfounded theory that vaccines cause autism, went on a tangent about the causes of autism.
Specifically, he talked about how he saw a TikTok video of a pregnant woman “gobbling Tylenol.” Kennedy said that the woman took Tylenol “with a baby in her placenta,” even though the fetus develops in the uterus. In addition, Kennedy said that infant boys who are circumcised have double the rate of autism.
But Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who voted to confirm Kennedy both in the Senate Finance Committee and on the Senate floor, expressed confusion.
“That’s new,” he told The Independent after chuckling.
Chuckling? Kennedy waxing poetic about how an ancient ritual that’s been around for eons is suddenly causing a spike in autism rates over the past several decades isn’t funny. Spelling your name wrong with a useless “h” in it is funny, but this is something else. The bumblefuck who doesn’t have even the basics down about how in utero development works is running healthcare policy for the entire damned country and he just claimed that there is a link between autism rates and circumcision. The proper response to this is hearings, specifically impeachment hearings for Kennedy, not a guffaw.
Some people, at least, including a large majority of the voting public, don’t find any of this humorous.
Many Americans seem to not trust Trump and Kennedy’s claims. A poll from KFF found that just four percent of Americans believed their claims about Tylenol and autism were definitely true, while 30 percent said it was probably false and 35 percent said it was definitely false.
But Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.), a member of the HELP Committee and a sharp critic of Kennedy, said Kennedy’s bizarre and unfounded claims are no laughing matter.
“We’re talking about whether or not parents can rely on the information provided by the Secretary of Health and Human Services,” she said. “ It’s really not funny. This whole thing is dangerous. People will get sick and die based on it. And I think it’s horrible.”
If you’re wondering, these claims are largely built upon a Danish study from 2015 that found that circumcised boys were more likely to be diagnosed with ASD compared with boys who had not been circumcised. And as you would expect, the methods and conclusions drawn by the study were heavily critiqued. It shows a correlation, but no causation. And, as is the case with ASD diagnoses generally, the real factor at play here appears to be contact with medical professionals versus those who have less of those contacts.
The 2015 study found that the risk of autism was higher among circumcised boys under age 5, but after age 5, the association disappeared. “If circumcision truly caused autism,” said Gounder, “that association should continue even after age 5. They’re likely picking up on the fact that kids undergoing circumcision in the health care system have greater contact with the health care system and have parents with higher levels of education and income — all of which are associated with being diagnosed with autism at a younger age than other kids. That association may disappear once kids start school, when teachers and counselors pick up on the symptoms.”
Folks, the timeline for how long it’s going to take to unwind the destruction of trust that Kennedy is currently sowing in our governmental medical institutions is going to be measured in decades. And please miss me with any claims that the COVID response or anything else that may have also caused similar distrust is in any way on par with what is currently going on at HHS. It’s not, and it’s not even close.
I’ll start with this: I am certainly not fully politically aligned with Senator Bill Cassidy, but I have typically found him to be genuine and intelligent. Points of disagreement aside, he doesn’t strike me as a grifter or psychopath, which is unfortunately quite rare amongst government these days. He is a doctor, specifically a gastroenterologist, and typically pretty good on medical issues.
But come on, man: do something.
Cassidy was a key vote in confirming our own national embarrassment, RFK Jr., as head of HHS. Kennedy’s chaotic activity during these first nine months is well documented in that link above, but I’m going to reiterate what I said in a post about how polling is demonstrating that the American people are done with Kennedy’s bullshit.
But the context around this is that plenty of GOP members of Congress are looking ahead to the midterms and some percentage of those same people are in districts that are either swing districts or not solidly safe GOP districts. And every bit of chaos that comes out of this administration, and HHS has produced a ton of that chaos, makes the reelection chances of those House and Senate members that much worse.
Cassidy is one of those that are campaigning for reelection at the midterms. He last won in 2020 with 59% of the vote, which wouldn’t strike you as a particularly risky place to be, except he’s getting attacked from both the right and the left. His fellow senators have made it quite clear that they look to his guidance on matters of healthcare, and specifically on how he views and handles RFK Jr. During Kennedy’s most recent congressional hearing, he said many strong and tough things directly to and about Kennedy.
But come on, man: do something.
All we have gotten is words. There has been no public whipping of support to pushback on Kennedy and the disastrous things he’s done for nine months. No public followups from the hearing. No real oversight of any kind. I know this, because Kennedy and Trump recently came out and made the scientifically illiterate claim that pregnant mothers ingesting Tylenol is responsible for the uptick in rates of autism.
Cassidy first addressed the president’s words on X, saying studies don’t back up the claims he made at a clunky press conference on Monday.
“The preponderance of evidence shows that this is not the case,” Cassidy wrote. “The concern is that women will be left with no options to manage pain in pregnancy. We must be compassionate to this problem.” He added that HHS, helmed by vocal health conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., “should release the new data that it has to support this claim.”
We already know there is no “new data.” The studies cited by Kennedy and Trump were old studies. The new study that they used to push this unfounded claim didn’t do any new research itself, but rather analyzed a bunch of existing research instead. Oh, and that study’s own authors disagreed with the conclusions Kennedy and Trump drew from it. The data isn’t new, so Cassidy’s request is moot.
Cassidy expanded on all of this on local radio.
The “best” study on Tylenol usage during pregnancy and autism doesn’t back up Trump, he told Talk 107.3 host Brian Haldane.
“There is an article out of Sweden ― two million people followed ― and what they did is they looked at someone who had autism and they compared them to a sibling who did not have autism, and they found no association, effectively, between taking Tylenol or not,” Cassidy pointed out, calling it the “highest quality” and “best controlled” study on the subject.
The findings Trump was referencing Monday appeared to be from “a study which found an association,” he said. “Now that’s the key thing: an association. That doesn’t mean it causes it; it just means that it’s associated.”
Yes, exactly right! Kennedy and the Mad King are going to harm mothers and the unborn with this nonsense. Cassidy is correct that the advice coming from HHS and the goddamned President is not trustworthy, nor based in good science.
But come on, man: do something.
Do something more than words. Back the folks in the House that are seeking to impeach Kennedy. Break with him publicly. Demand more accountability. Haul him before Congress as often as it takes to expose the very real harm that is being done to the health of the American people.
Do no harm, Senator. That’s an oath you once took, before you entered the pretzel-twisted world of federal politics. Your inaction is doing harm.
Our mad, idiot king recently declared war on Tylenol. Nobody really knows why, exactly. There’s only shaky, correlational data to support any link between Tylenol and autism (did you know summertime ice cream consumption leads to an increase in shark attacks?).
And even the backers of those studies say telling pregnant mothers to avoid Tylenol is irresponsible. Mostly, Trump appears to be trying to maintain his flimsy veneer as a populist for the conspiratorially minded MAHA movement. He lies to that gullible segment about cracking down on pharma much like he lied to Matt Stoller types about cracking down on corporate power in general.
That’s certainly not stopping the MAGA propaganda machine from behaving irresponsibly. Sinclair Broadcasting, the local broadcast affiliate that has been censoring comedians that give our mad idiot king a sad, has been really busy helping the administration spread disinformation about Tylenol.
Media Matters notes that while you couldn’t watch Jimmy Kimmel on Sinclair last week, the affiliate was repeatedly platforming a member of an organization who has spread medical misinformation on more than 60 Sinclair stations across 37 states in segments since the Trump announcement:
I hate to beat a dead horse, but media academics have been warning for fifty+ years about the dire problems created by letting media companies (especially local broadcasters) fall into the hands of just a few rich people. Most of the time, the press, public, and even policymakers yawned. Now, every single day, we get ugly, glaring examples why it was a bad idea to ignore their advice.
Authoritarians and corporations in particular love having a monolithic, homogenized media (with all the critical, informed voices marginalized to the fringe), happy to parrot their lies and bullshit. Still, we were endlessly told by corporations (and even “free market Libertarian” groups purportedly super concerned about unchecked state power) that maintaining functional media consolidation limits was a dated relic that “harmed innovation.”
Now the Trump administration is pushing to remove the last remaining media consolidation limits that exist in the U.S., built over generations of bipartisan collaboration. Local right-wing broadcasters Sinclair, Nexstar, and Tegna are all preparing to merge. In addition to massive consolidation among major national networks.
And this isn’t just a “problem for dying traditional media” you can casually dismiss as irrelevant. As we let Twitter, TikTok, and other major social, telecom, and media companies all fall into the hands of a few authoritarian-loyal billionaires, the evidence of harm from mindless consolidation is everywhere you turn. And it’s not remotely subtle.
Back in April, RFK Jr. committed publicly to firmly knowing the cause of autism by September of this year. In May, Donald Trump himself weighed in with the already baked conclusion that autism doesn’t “occur naturally” and therefore must have some environmental cause. Both statements were absurd at the time. Autism causes have been studied for decades and RFK Jr. has no magic wand to make the answer more knowable to him than the collective medical community. Donald Trump is not a doctor, nor a medical researcher, and unless he has actual evidence and research to back up his claim, it is fit for being ignored and nothing else. Meanwhile, Kennedy also shut down the research that was actually being done to find causes of autism.
But it’s now September and a promise was made, so the Trump administration had to at least pretend to make it a promise kept. To that end, reporting came out last week that Kennedy and HHS would be pointing the finger at prenatal use of Tylenol as a major cause of autism. And just this week, that’s exactly what Trump and Kennedy did.
“Don’t take Tylenol,” Trump instructed pregnant women around a dozen times during the unwieldy White House news conference, also urging mothers not to give their infants the drug, known by the generic name acetaminophen in the U.S. or paracetamol in most other countries. He also fueled long-debunked claims that ingredients in vaccines or timing shots close together could contribute to rising rates of autism in the U.S., without providing any medical evidence.
The rambling announcement, which appeared to rely on existing studies rather than significant new research, comes as the Make America Healthy Again movement has been pushing for answers on the causes of autism. The diverse coalition of supporters of Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. includes several anti-vaccine activists who have long spread debunked claims that immunizations are responsible.
Okay, so where is this coming from, you might be asking? Well, to start, studies do exist that point to correlational data between use of Tylenol and autism rates. That’s just the truth. So, if you hear any opponent of this administration tell you that there is zero data or studies indicating that this might be a concern, that is simply not true. It’s important that we be really precise about this sort of thing.
One such Harvard study, for example, did find that there was an uptick in rates of autism diagnoses among children who’s mothers took Tylenol while pregnant, primarily to reduce a high fever in the mother. The problem is that even those who performed that very study don’t agree with Trump’s message to pregnant women, which was, again, “Don’t take Tylenol.”
One of the researchers on that study was Ann Bauer, an epidemiologist at the University of Massachusetts. Bauer said she thinks pregnant women should be told about a possible risk from acetaminophen. But the researcher also was worried that it might be too soon to have the federal government offering guidance on its use.
“I’m a little concerned about how this message is going to come because I think they may be jumping the gun,” Bauer said before the announcement was made. “I think those of us in the research community would like to see stronger evidence.”
This is how scientists talk when the evidence is, at best, inconclusive. We’re talking about one study, with a relatively small sample size and for which all kinds of externalities that could impact an outcome of autism were not accounted for. “We need more data” is exactly the right conclusion of such a study, as opposed to “Don’t take Tylenol.” Again, precision here matters very much.
Trump and Kennedy didn’t bother being precise. They advised the nation on a health matter that they can’t possibly understand, since the current researchers of it don’t understand it. And they even took it further than studies like the Harvard study would suggest even if we wanted to draw conclusions based on it.
One challenge is that it’s hard to disentangle the effects of Tylenol use from the effects of high fevers during pregnancy. Fevers, especially in the first trimester, can increase the risk for miscarriages, preterm birth and other problems, according to the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine.
Trump also urged not giving Tylenol to young children, but scientists say that research indicates autism develops in the fetal brain.
Responding to Trump’s warnings, the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine said they still recommend Tylenol as an appropriate option to treat fever and pain during pregnancy. The president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists said Monday that suggestions that Tylenol use in pregnancy causes autism are “irresponsible when considering the harmful and confusing message they send to pregnant patients.”
Ironically, high fevers in pregnant women have also been suggested as a potential cause of autism diagnoses in children, among many other negative healthcare outcomes for the unborn child. This is the same flavor of medical advice that Kennedy had on COVID vaccines: the cure is worse than the disease. That’s bullshit, of course, but it’s the kind of bullshit you get when you believe that those who suffer negative health outcomes are at fault for those same outcomes.
And, despite the plain advisory language from definitely-not-a-doctor Donald Trump, he also threw out the repeatedly debunked claims about vaccines being linked to autism in the same announcement. Perhaps he did so because he really believes in such a link, but I doubt it. Instead, this was red meat to Kennedy’s base of supporters, because they were fucking furious when the news first broke about the announcement of the link to Tylenol.
“We didn’t wait 20 years for Bobby to finally speak and then get served Tylenol as an answer,” anti-vaccine group Georgia Coalition for Vaccine Choice wrote in an unhinged Facebook post on Monday morning. “If that’s all we hear – is that the end? Not thimerosal. Not aluminum. Not MMR. Not Hep B. Not the insane schedule pushed after pharma got liability protection. Are we supposed to just forget?”
Children’s Health Defense (CHD)—the anti-vaccine group founded by Kennedy—even got in on the backlash, retweeting a post on Monday about parents who falsely blame vaccines for their children’s neurological condition, with the statement: “THIS WAS NOT CAUSED BY TYLENOL.”
And if that’s not good enough for you, here’s Steve Bannon and a guest on the matter.
In an interview on Steve Bannon’s podcast War Room Monday, CHD President Mary Holland downplayed the link, telling Bannon: “Today may be something of a sideshow—Tylenol is not the primary cause. Vaccines are the primary cause [of autism],” Holland said. (The claim that vaccines cause autism has been thoroughly and repeatedly debunked.)
Bannon, for his part, slammed Kennedy’s effectiveness as health secretary, calling his efforts to implement an anti-vaccine agenda unserious and amateurish. “This Tylenol thing stinks to high heaven,” he said.
Again, precision in how we talk about this matters when we’re talking about science and healthcare. I am unwilling to say that vaccines definitely do not cause autism. Instead, I say that there is no scientific evidence that has gone through a rigorous process to suggest that it does, so there’s no reason to operate as if there were. I will not say that there is zero link between Tylenol use in pregnant women and autism. But I can sure as shit say that here too there is certainly no conclusive causal link of significance between them, only correlational data that doesn’t account for a zillion other factors, and therefore we don’t put too much weight on this claim until more studies and data shows otherwise.
Many medical experts, instead, point to a novel 2024 study conducted in Sweden. The study, published in JAMA, used data from a population of 2.5 million children and was also able to compare differences among (full) siblings. This provided a simple way to skirt confounding variables, such as genetics and environmental factors, to which siblings would have similar exposure.
In the entire population, children exposed to acetaminophen during pregnancy were slightly more likely to be diagnosed with autism than those who weren’t—echoing some earlier studies. But, in the sibling analysis, which compared siblings who were exposed to acetaminophen to siblings who were not, the association vanished. In all, the data suggests that acetaminophen was not causing an uptick in autism diagnoses; rather, there were other confounding factors behind the link.
Meanwhile, the President tells the public “Don’t take Tylenol.”
There is so, so much damage being done by these halfwits looking for a headline rather than real answers. It seems obvious to me that some non-zero number of pregnant women out there will adhere to Trump’s message and their unborn children will either suffer the consequences of high fevers in life, or miscarry and never have that life to begin with. Some will even refuse to give their already-born children Tylenol as Trump instructed and some, almost certainly, will die. On who’s ledger will we place those deaths? The answer must be on Kennedy and Trump.
And beyond that, this cavalier attitude towards healthcare pronouncements will do no favors when it comes to getting the public to trust doctors and researchers on matters of health and medicine. And that is of paramount importance, as the American people today trust both their leaders and medical institutions in particular less than perhaps they ever have in the past.
On matters of life and death, that will literally kill people.
Well, that was certainly a thing. We mentioned yesterday that RFK Jr. was scheduled to go before the Senate Finance committee to answer all kinds of questions as to just what in the holy hell is happening at HHS. As we said, this was always going to be a contentious hearing, given that the Democrat Senators are aligned, and in fact demanded his resignation before the hearing, while even GOP members such as Bill Cassidy have begun signaling wavering support for Kennedy.
But this wasn’t just contentious; it was a disaster. USA Today has one of many live update pages where you can go back and relive the timeline, but the topline summary is that Kennedy shouted over the Senators questions, often asked them questions instead of answering the questions he was asked, dissembled all over the place when asked direct and honest questions, and otherwise spouted conspiracy theories without a scintilla of evidence to back them up. And while it’s certainly true that questions from Democracts were done in a more hostile tone than those from the GOP, the open disdain, or at least concern, about Kennedy’s actions as of recent was entirely bipartisan.
I’ll give you some highlights, for lack of a better term, along with a summary of the key thing we learned in each highlight.
Mark Warner (D):
Kennedy claims neither he, nor anyone else, has any idea how many Americans died from COVID-19
Kennedy is unwilling to state that COVID vaccines did “anything” to prevent deaths from COVID-19
Kennedy was unaware of some specific implications of the latest budget bill on American healthcare
John Barrasso (R):
Barrasso points out all the chaos and failure that has happened under Kennedy, including the largest measles outbreak in decades.
Kennedy claims that CDC vaccine guidance has never before, in the history of the agency, been “clear, evidence based, and trustworthy.” He claims his leadership is the first time this will ever have happened.
This, by the way, is precisely how you get situations like unhinged people shooting up the CDC’s Atlanta campus. The CDC was born in 1946, initially to combat malaria. But, according to Kennedy, it has never in its entire history been trustworthy on the topic of vaccines. It’s a lie, of course, but those that believe it would logically be very, very pissed off.
Thom Tillis (R):
Tillis starts off by saying he’s going to make a statement and essentially begs Kennedy to not respond in the moment, but to go and gather his answers after the hearing and present them. Kennedy repeatedly attempts to answer those questions anyway.
Tillis points out that based on the myriad of conflicting statements Kennedy made within the hearing, he has no idea whether Kennedy thinks Operation Warp Speed was a good thing or not. On the one hand, Kennedy agrees with Tillis and others that Trump should be a Nobel prize for the government’s efforts in creating the mRNA vaccines. On the other, Kennedy claims the vaccines were deadly and can’t account for them being effective at all.
Tillis asks how a CDC Director can be lauded a month ago and fired four weeks later.
Tillis asks for evidence that Kennedy has kept any of the promises he’s made to Congress in the past.
Tillis points out that all he can get out of Kennedy’s HHS to a question about the economic impact of the budget bill that was passed amount to “word salad.”
Kennedy affirms his position that the COVID vaccines cause “serious harm” and “death”.
Folks, that’s as polite a way for a GOP Senator to state publicly that they don’t trust Kennedy as is possible.
Bernie Sanders (I):
This one takes a brief bit of preamble. When Senator Warren was questioning Kennedy about his decision to fire Dr. Susan Monarez as Director of CDC, she asked Kennedy about Monarez’s public claim in a WSJ editorial that he demanded she sign off on what ACIP would recommend prior to them even meeting and insisted she fire a slew of senior staffers at CDC for who knows what reason. Kennedy told Warren that was not true and, when she asked what was the reason he fired her, got this in response.
That is obviously not a believable story. I mean, to make light of it, why would an untrustworthy person tell their boss they were not trustworthy instead of lying?
In any case, with that context, we move on to the takeaways from the back and forth with Bernie Sanders.
Kennedy reiterates his claim that Monarez lied about why she was fired and that, again, he did so because she told him she was not trustworthy.
Kennedy calls a net -$100 million investment in rural healthcare “the largest infusion of public money” into rural healthcare.
Kennedy affirms the COVID vaccines are the deadliest vaccines in history and that Trump should get a Nobel prize for helping develop them.
Kennedy launches into a conspiracy theory in which the largest NGOs and others that disagree with him have all been corrupted by the pharma industry.
Bill Cassidy (R):
Cassidy is the one many of us were waiting to see in this hearing, for multiple reasons. He’s a doctor, for instance. He was a pivotal vote in Kennedy’s confirmation hearings and extracted several promises about vaccines and policy during those hearings. And, finally, several other Republican Senators have pointed to him as the one they trust on healthcare and medicine issues.
Kennedy again affirms that Trump deserves a Nobel prize for Operation Warp Speed, despite saying those vaccines killed people. Cassidy then points out that Kennedy sued to limit access to COVID vaccines before his time in government.
Cassidy points out that the ACIP conflicts of interests data that Kennedy has claimed was wildly inaccurate. Kennedy attempts to argue the point, but fails.
Cassidy points out that several current ACIP members, which Kennedy hand-picked, serve as paid witnesses in vaccine injury trials and asks Kennedy if that is a conflict of interests. Kennedy responds it may be a bias, but not a financial conflict of interest, which makes zero sense.
Stick around for the end in which Cassidy shares some personal interactions he’s had with constituents demonstrating precisely how Kennedy’s policy actions have introduced a limitation of vaccine access and chaos and confusion among doctors as to what they can prescribe or not, which is exactly what we indicated would happen.
There was much, much more. More dissembling. More conspiracy theories. More lies. By any honest viewing of the hearing, it was a bipartisan verbal indication of no confidence in Kennedy, with some Senators choosing to be more polite about it than others. This was a more pointed and thorough takedown of Kennedy from both sides of the aisle than even I had hoped for.
So of course the White House is pretending this is all a partisan hitjob because Kennedy is so awesome.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt defended Kennedy after he faced tense questioning by both Democratic and Republican senators.
The Health secretary “is taking flak because he’s over the target,” she said on X several hours after the hearing concluded. “The Trump Administration is addressing root causes of chronic disease, embracing transparency in government, and championing gold-standard science.”
Although she blamed Democrats for attacking “that commonsense effort,” Republican senators such as Cassidy and Barrasso had also expressed disapproval during the hearing with some of Kennedy’s most recent actions concerning vaccines.
As I said in a previous post, this is by no means the end of Kennedy’s tenure at HHS. But it just might be the beginning of that end. No amount of White House gaslighting is going to be able to counter rising illnesses, full hospitals, or explosive growth in the casket manufacturing business.
Erin McCanlies was listening to the radio one morning in April when she heard Robert F. Kennedy Jr. promising to find the cause of autism by September. The secretary of Health and Human Services said he believed an environmental toxin was responsible for the dramatic increase in the condition and vowed to gather “the most credible scientists from all over the world” to solve the mystery.
Nothing like that has ever been done before, he told an interviewer.
McCanlies was stunned. The work had been done.
“That’s exactly what I’ve been doing!” she said to her husband, Fred.
As an epidemiologist at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which Kennedy oversees, McCanlies had spent much of the past two decades studying how parents’ exposure to workplace chemicals affects the chance that they will have a child with autism. Just three weeks earlier, she’d been finalizing her fourth major paper on the topic when Kennedy eliminated her entire division. Kennedy has also overseen tens of millions of dollars in cuts to federal funding for research on autism, including its environmental causes.
For 20 years, Kennedy has espoused the debunked theory that autism is caused by vaccines, dismissing evidence to the contrary by arguing that vaccine manufacturers, researchers and regulators all have an interest in obscuring their harms.
He remains skeptical of the scientists who have been funded by his own agency to study the neurodevelopmental condition. “We need to stop trusting the experts,” he told right-wing host Tucker Carlson in a June interview, going on to suggest that previous studies that found no relationship between vaccines and autism were marred by “trickery” and researchers’ self-interest.
In contrast, Kennedy told Carlson that under his leadership, and with a new, federally funded $50 million autism research initiative, “We’re going to get real studies done for the first time.”
Some autism researchers fear that the effort will manipulate data to blame the condition on vaccines. “Kennedy has never expressed an open mind, an open attitude towards what are the fundamental causes of autism,” said Helen Tager-Flusberg, a Boston University psychologist who founded a coalition of scientists concerned about his approach to autism. In a June statement, the group said the initiative lacks transparency and that Kennedy “casually ignores decades of high quality research that preceded his oversight.”
As Kennedy promotes his new initiative, ProPublica has found that he has also taken aim at the traditional scientific approach to autism, shutting down McCanlies’ lab and stripping funding from more than 50 autism-related studies. Meanwhile, he has stood by as the Trump administration encourages the departure of hundreds of federal employees with experience studying the harm caused by environmental threats and rolls back protections from pollution and chemicals, including some linked to autism.
Kennedy did not respond to requests for an interview, and an HHS spokesperson did not answer specific questions from ProPublica, including those related to the concerns of the coalition of autism scientists. “Under the leadership of Secretary Kennedy, HHS is taking action on autism as the public health emergency it is,” the spokesperson wrote. “NIH is fully committed to leaving no stone unturned in confronting this catastrophic epidemic — employing only gold-standard, evidence-based science. The Department will follow the science, wherever it leads.”
Genetic factors account for a significant portion of autism cases. Research like the kind McCanlies and other government-funded scientists have conducted over the past two decades has established that environmental factors have a role, too, and can combine with genetics. Multiple factors can even converge within the same individual. Some of those environmental risks could be reduced by the very measures the Trump administration is rolling back.
Kennedy would have been well positioned to advocate for researchers looking into the environmental causes of autism while sitting on President Donald Trump’s cabinet.
The nephew of President John F. Kennedy and son of his former attorney general, Bobby, Kennedy spent decades as an attorney battling some of the world’s most notorious corporate polluters. Once heralded by Time Magazine as one of the “heroes for the planet,” he railed against actions by the first Trump administration, complaining in his 2017 introduction to the book “Climate in Crisis” that 33 years’ worth of his work was “reduced to ruins as the president mounted his assault on science and environmental protection.”
But recently he has remained publicly silent as the Environmental Protection Agency halts research and weakens regulations on air pollution and chemicals, including some McCanlies and her colleagues have identified as possible factors in the development of autism.
“I don’t think he’s aware of my work,” McCanlies said, “or most of the literature that’s been published on what the causes of autism are.”
McCanlies was studying how a toxic chemical, beryllium, causes chronic lung inflammation in workers when she began to think seriously about autism.
It was 2005, and her college-age stepson had a job shadowing children with autism. As he described helping them navigate playground dynamics, reminding them to return a wave or a greeting, McCanlies wondered whether their behaviors might be tied to chemicals their parents had encountered on the job. Could the exposures have altered genes their parents passed down? Could they have infiltrated the kids’ developing brains through the womb or through breast milk?
The questions remained abstract until McCanlies met another researcher named Irva Hertz-Picciotto, who had a unique data set. She had collected detailed information on the occupations of two large groups of parents: those who had children with autism and those whose kids developed neurotypically. Comparing the groups’ chemical exposures before their children were born could help illuminate causes of the condition, McCanlies realized.
Hertz-Picciotto, an environmental epidemiologist based at the University of California, Davis, was a pioneer in the search for the causes of autism. In 2009, she published a much-cited paper highlighting a sevenfold increase in diagnoses in California. While others had asserted the rise was due to increased awareness and broadened diagnostic criteria, Hertz-Picciotto found those factors could only partially explain it. She and others went on to document additional contributors to autism risk, including parental age at the time of birth, a mother’s fever during pregnancy and more traditional environmental considerations, such as chemical exposures.
McCanlies hadn’t studied autism. But she offered Hertz-Picciotto her experience in genetics and epidemiology as well as the considerable resources of her agency. NIOSH was established in 1970 to investigate the dangers of the workplace, and its statisticians and industrial hygienists were among the world’s experts on the health impacts of chemical exposures.
Their first collaboration, published in 2012, used Hertz-Picciotto’s data to see if parents of children with autism were more likely to have been exposed to chemicals already thought to be dangerous to the developing brain. The work was technical and time-consuming, but the analysis showed a clear relationship: Mothers and fathers of children with autism were more likely than the parents of unaffected children to have been exposed to solvents such as lacquer, varnish and xylene on the job. These solvents evaporate quickly and can be easily inhaled or absorbed through the skin. Chemical plant workers, painters, electricians, plumbers, construction workers, cleaners and medical personnel are among those who may be exposed to these solvents.
The sample size was small — just 174 families. But the results lined up with recent findings showing possible links between autism and exposure to metals and certain solvents during pregnancy or early childhood, including a solvent called methylene chloride. They also tracked with studies linking the chemicals to miscarriage, reproductive problems, birth defects and developmental problems other than autism.
McCanlies and Hertz-Picciotto followed up with a 2019 study that looked at more than 950 families. It showed that women exposed to solvents at work during pregnancy and the three months leading up to it were 1.5 times more likely to have a child with autism than women not exposed to the chemicals. (The study did not find a link for chemically exposed men.)
Their third study, published in 2023, took the link between solvent exposure and autism as a starting point. Using blood samples to examine the genetic makeup of the parents of children with autism, McCanlies and Hertz-Picciotto found that when exposed to solvents on the job, people with specific variants of 31 genes had an especially elevated risk of having a child with autism. Their genetic makeup appeared to increase the risk that solvents by themselves posed. Some of those 31 genes help cells connect with one another; others play a role in helping cells migrate to different areas so they can grow into the various parts of the brain; still others ensure that cells clear away toxic substances.
Researchers were also making strides under the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, a division of Health and Human Services, which has financed investigations into dozens of environmental contaminants. Several have been linked to autism, including air pollution, certainpesticides, a plastic additive known as BPA and diesel exhaust, which causes “autism-like behavioral changes” in mice. In 2021, Hertz-Picciotto co-published a study linking “forever chemicals” called PFOA and PFNA with the condition. (In 2023, a second paper also found an association with PFNA.) Other government-funded research has established a link between autism and another solvent, trichloroethylene, also known as TCE, which has been used for dry cleaning, manufacturing and degreasing machines.
Together, the results have shown that many exposures can increase the likelihood of autism, and that there can be multiple causes for any one person.
At least one exposure can have the opposite effect: A study by a researcher named Rebecca Schmidt — and funded by the NIEHS and NIH — found that a B vitamin called folic acid was associated with a significant decrease in the chances of an autism diagnosis. More than a dozen studies have since confirmed the association.
One problem hung over much of autism research. The sweeping diagnosis includes everyone from people who treasure their neurological differences to those with debilitating symptoms, including repetitive behaviors, excruciating sensitivity to touch and sounds, and difficulty responding to social situations. McCanlies and Hertz–Picciotto wondered whether certain chemicals were linked to the most severe cases or to specific symptoms.
In 2023, they set about finding out.
They were preparing to submit their study for publication when newly inaugurated Trump put Kennedy in charge of America’s health.
Despite having made chronic health conditions the focus of his agenda, Kennedy has quietly abided environmental policies that will exacerbate these problems, including autism.
The Environmental Protection Agency, under Administrator Lee Zeldin, is rolling back rules and regulations that will result in an increase in air pollution, which multiplestudies have linked toautism. The agency is in the process of reversing bans on several chemicals, including TCE, one of the solvents associated with the disorder, and has told a federal court it won’t legally defend certain aspects of a ban on methylene chloride, another of the solvents linked to autism. It also began dismantling its Office of Research and Development, which has funded research into the environmental conditionscontributing to autism. According to an EPA spokesperson, more than 2,300 workers have so far elected to leave the agency through Trump administration programs encouraging early retirement and resignation.
The EPA also began canceling grants, including one it had given to Schmidt, the researcher who studied the protective effect of folic acid. Schmidt had been awarded $1.3 million to determine whether air pollution from wildfires might increase the risk of various neurological conditions. Schmidt and her colleagues had just done preliminary analysis and found that there was a significant association between wildfire pollution exposure and autism when she received a letter saying that the grant was terminated because the project was “no longer consistent with EPA funding priorities.” After a judge ruled in a class-action lawsuit on behalf of University of California researchers alleging their funding was unlawfully terminated, her grant was reinstated last month. But the EPA has appealed the judge’s ruling, leaving Schmidt unsure about the fate of the project.
Schmidt said there is an urgent need to finish the study and warn people about how to avoid the dangers from wildfire smoke by staying indoors and using air filters and N95 masks. “Millions of pregnant women are getting exposed as we speak,” she said.
Meanwhile, Kennedy has presided over his own gutting of research. Known for sharing videos of his bare-chested workouts, he likened his agency’s cuts to getting rid of “unhealthy fat,” but his plan to reduce the staff of HHS by 20,000 amounts to slashing the workforce by roughly a quarter, including veteran scientists. Among the divisions Kennedy eliminated was one that studied air quality and collected data on chemicals found in human blood. Some workers in the division were subsequently reinstated. After a lawsuit and pressure from Congress, HHS has also rehired some NIOSH workers, though none at the division where McCanlies worked. Those whose jobs have not been reinstated remain on administrative leave.
The reorganization plan for HHS involves consolidating the remnants of these parts of the agency, along with several others, into a new division called the Administration for a Healthy America. Asked about the transition, an HHS spokesperson told ProPublica in an email that the reorganization would save taxpayers $1.8 billion a year and that “critical programs will continue.”
Meanwhile, a ProPublica review of federal data found that more than $40 million in grants awarded by the National Institutes of Health for dozens of autism-related research projects were canceled under Kennedy’s watch. Some had been awarded to universities the administration is now targeting, while others ran afoul of Trump’s “anti-woke” priorities by mentioning gender and other verboten terms. Among them was a grant to Harvard University to use data on nearly half a million Israeli children to evaluate whether men’s exposure to air pollution affects the risk of having a child with autism. (A small number of grants have been recently reinstated.) A survey of researchers conducted by the Autism Science Foundation, which tallied cuts to training grants and the anticipated cuts to future grants over the next few years, estimated that the total loss of funding could be tens of millions more.
“We’re talking about probably decades of delays and setbacks,” said Alycia Halladay, chief science officer at the Autism Science Foundation. “To take money away from all these areas of need to focus on a question that the HHS director considers high priority seems not scientific and not the way that science is done.”
Housed under the National Institutes of Health, Kennedy’s new $50-million Autism Data Science Initiative is looking to fund two- to three-year research projects that plumb large public and private datasets to find “possible contributors to the causes of autism” as well as conduct research on existing treatments.
With the deadline for his promised discovery fast approaching, Kennedy recently acknowledged that his initial six-month timeline was overly optimistic. He told Carlson he should have “some initial indicator answers” about the causes of autism by September, his original deadline, and promised unqualified answers within another six months.
While the NIH typically releases the names of the scientists on the committees that review grant applications and the criteria they use to review them, it has not done so in this case. Nor has the agency clarified what role NIH staff will have in awarding the grants, who will make the final selection, or what terms and conditions researchers must agree to if they receive funds. HHS did not respond to ProPublica’s questions about who will make the final grant selection and why the agency has not yet made this information public, but a video NIH created for applicants of the funding acknowledges that reviews of the proposals “do not follow the traditional NIH review process.” According to the video, the process was “designed to ensure integrity, fairness and transparency.”
Hertz-Picciotto, who laments the fact that Kennedy is “shutting down good studies,” is among the researchers in her field who have decided to apply for the funding. “Some of his agenda is really ridiculous and very counterproductive,” she said. “But if something good can be done with this money, I’d like to be part of that.”
If her project is approved, she plans to hire McCanlies to consult on it.
McCanlies said she agreed to work on the project because she has complete confidence in her longtime colleague, if not the health secretary. “I don’t trust him at all,” she said.
McCanlies had never paid much attention to Kennedy — or to politics. Throughout the seven presidential administrations that governed while she had been at NIOSH, her work had been utterly uncontroversial. But weeks after his confirmation, she knew her job was in peril. She had deleted the first email she received from Trump’s Office of Personnel Management. The tone was so strange and disrespectful, hinting that she might be punished if she didn’t respond by confirming her email address, that she assumed it was a phishing attempt. By the time she received a second, suggesting that she find a “higher productivity” job in the private sector, firings and budget cuts were rolling across federal agencies.
The 58-year-old, who has short, greying hair, hazel eyes and three graduate degrees, hadn’t been ready to leave NIOSH’s Health Effects Lab in Morgantown, West Virginia, a place where she had mentored young colleagues, taught a lunchtime meditation class and helped conduct several yearslong research projects. The lab is also where she met Fred, her husband, another Ph.D. scientist who studied workplace chemical hazards. She reluctantly put in for early retirement just days before the entire lab was dissolved.
McCanlies spent her final days at NIOSH finishing her last paper, which explores the association between workplace chemicals and the severity of autism. Normally, she would have her supervisor sign off on her submission to a journal, but he had already lost his job. The rest of her colleagues were gone, too, and the lab’s hallways were empty as she gave the manuscript a final edit.
She felt proud of the study, which answered some of the questions she and Hertz-Picciotto had posed years ago. There were indeed links between exposures and the severity of autism. Parents’ exposure to plastics was “consistently and significantly associated” with lower cognitive scores in their children who had autism, increases in “aberrant behaviors” and deficits in basic life skills, the study found. The exposure was also linked to particular symptoms of autism, including social withdrawal, hyperactivity and repetitive behaviors such as hand flapping and body rocking. Higher autism severity scores and weaker daily living skills were also linked with ethylene oxide. Last year, the EPA imposed stricter limits on the chemical, which is used as a sterilizer. But the agency is now reconsidering those restrictions, and, in July, Trump exempted some of the biggest polluters from them.
The paper, which is now available as a preprint, recommended that regulatory agencies “consider increasing awareness of these hazards and make clear recommendations for implementing protective measures at the worksite.”
Having just watched so many occupational health experts forced to leave their jobs, McCanlies suspected their advice was unlikely to be heeded anytime soon.
