Pennsylvania House Democratic lawmakers on Tuesday sorted through fact, misinformation and fear over new federal guidance from the Trump administration linking the use of Tylenol during pregnancy with autism.
During the 90-minute hearing by the House Democratic Policy Committee, a panel of three medical experts aggressively pushed back on what they described as blatant misinformation from unqualified “amateurs” and conspiracy theorists at the federal level.
“We have a Secretary of Health and Human Services who describes autistic people as devoid of words, who seems unaware of the breadth of the spectrum,” said Dr. David Mandell, professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.
“We have calls for an autism registry that harken back to a time when eugenics was all the rage. We have confident promises from our federal administration to identify the causes and treatments of autism by the end of September…and these have led to the reckless pronouncement without meaningful evidence that acetaminophen causes autism and lupus or folinic acid can cure it.”
Mandell, who has been involved in autism research and advocacy for nearly three decades, blasted the Trump administration’s gutting of autism-related research and redirecting the funding “to bad actors to relitigate whether vaccines cause autism.”
The Trump administration last week urged pregnant people to avoid using the over-the-counter painkiller acetaminophen, commonly marketed in the U.S. as Tylenol, saying use of the medication is associated with a higher risk of having children with autism spectrum disorder, or ASD.
Flanked by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid head Dr. Mehmet Oz, President Trump issued what scientists have decried as misinformation — that acetaminophen use during pregnancy caused autism.
“So taking Tylenol is not good,” the president told reporters. “All right. I’ll say it. It’s not good.”
Leading scientists and medical groups have strongly criticized the claims by the Trump administration.
Before unpacking the genetic component of autism, Mandell urged lawmakers and the general scientific and medical community in Pennsylvania to push back on federal directives on autism, and to “say no to submitting data to the federal government to be part of an autism registry.
He urged them to rely on the vast network of scientific resources across Pennsylvania “to put out accurate scientific information about the causes of autism, appropriate and appropriate treatments that will combat some of the misinformation that we are seeing.”
Mandell laid out to the hearing, which was hosted by Rep. Abigail Salisbury (D-Allegheny), who chairs the Pennsylvania Autism Caucus and is the first person with autism to hold this position, the high concurrence of autism among identical and fraternal twins, and even siblings. Scientists have identified more than 100 genes that are associated with the neurological disorder, he said.
“In most cases of autism, however, it seems like there are many, many genes at play,” Mandell said, noting a new study involving children diagnosed early in life that will further give evidence of the genetic component of autism.
Mandell, who serves on the executive committee of the Coalition for Autism Scientists, which represents 300 scientists, said he has been issuing statements to combat the misinformation from the federal government.
He bemoaned the fact that for the first time in his career, professional organizations such as the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the American Academy of Pediatrics have issued powerful statements and guidance regarding autism to counter and diverge sharply from the information out of the CDC, the Department of Health and Human Services and the FDA.
Mandell encouraged everyone to look to those statements and “those physicians and scientists for guidance.”
Mandell warned that the research on acetaminophen cited by federal health officials is not new, and basically constituted a literature review, “and it’s a bad literature view that a college freshman would not get a good grade on.”
Mandell warned that the CDC staff has been decimated by the Trump administration; and many scientists have also resigned in protest.
The Trump administration last week fired Susan Monarez, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Her ouster came just weeks after her official confirmation to the post, and days after 600 CDC staff were fired by the Trump administration.
“The pronouncements we are hearing about acetaminophen causing autism are not coming from those career scientists in the CDC,” Mandell said. “They are coming from political appointees within the Department of Health and Human Services. So to say that the CDC is saying that there’s a connection between acetaminophen and autism, I think is actually incorrect. It’s our Secretary of Health and Human Services who’s saying it.”
Dr. Reuben Brock, professor of psychology at the Pennsylvania Western University, California, warned that the rhetoric and tenor from the Trump administration on autism is adversely impacting children.
“I see it in children and adults, literally, in the past week who articulated to me that they believe that they are useless to society and that it’s time to go,” said Brock, who is autistic. “That’s not an exaggeration. That’s really happening. That’s why I say this misinformation is dangerous….if there’s a rabbit hole that tells you that you are a problem to your family and you are already anxious, you are already depressed, it is a very, very dangerous situation.”
Brock was emphatic that there is “absolutely not an explosion of autistic people happening in America,” but rather: “What is happening is there is an explosion of understanding.”
Brock noted that just a few decades ago, autism was little understood by the scientific community, particularly as it pertained to women and people of color. Scientific advancement has significantly broadened understanding, but only to a point.
“What we know today is that it is such a wide spectrum that right now the medical community, the psychological community all agree that it would be inappropriate to suggest that there is a single cause of autism,” Brock said.
Some of the fiercest pushback against the newly released federal guidance was offered by Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding, director of Public Health and chief epidemiologist at the New England Complex Systems Institute.
He debunked the studies used by federal health officials as “teeny tiny retrospective” and not comprehensive or national in scale; and characterized the Harvard study cited as a review paper, “an editorial narrative” by a paid author.
He went on to blast federal health officials for cherry-picking facts and ignoring the Swedish study widely considered “the gold standard” on autism research.
“Why hasn’t the CDC director refuted it?,” Feigl-Ding asked. “Well, first of all, RFK Jr. fired CDC director Monarez….and the current CDC director, the acting director, has no medical background, is actually a speechwriter for George W. Bush. So if you’re a speechwriter, you too can become a CDC director someday if you really believe in yourself.”
Trump last week tapped Jim O’Neill, a former biotech investor and speech writer under President George W. Bush, to head the CDC. Whereas Monarez is an infectious disease expert, O’Neill has no training in medicine. He is a former associate of MAGA billionaire tech donor Peter Thiel.
A long-time member of the Federation of American Scientists, Feigl-Ding blasted right-wing social media platforms and influencers for sowing mistrust in science and the medical community.
“Hence, everything is fake news, fake science,” he said. “Fire the CDC director, let’s appoint a speechwriter instead….now fill the vacuum with lies…..Let’s try to find the actual complex web of causes via medical research instead of slashing the NIH upcoming budget by 30-40%, decimating NSF funding, and if not outright sowing disinformation and purposeful disinformation.”
Tylenol-maker Kenvue has strongly disputed the claims out of the Trump administration, pointing to independent, “sound science” showing no link between acetaminophen and autism. The manufacturer has seen an influx of lawsuits in the wake of the Trump pronouncement.