It is heart-wrenching to witness the struggles of a family with a child suffering from severe autism. President Donald Trump sincerely expressed his longstanding compassion for mothers who endure this trauma in their children as he led a Sept. 22 press conference announcing new efforts to discover both the causes and cures of autism in America. Who could object?
The legacy media sought to discredit the administration’s effort even before the public announcement, belittling the anticipated policy recommendation that pregnant women should avoid taking acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol. Some outlets also criticized the decision by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to make leucovorin, a drug showing promising signs of reducing the symptoms of autism, more widely available.
Without so much as taking a breath, progressive newsrooms began to churn out copy to disparage the president’s announcement. Here are just a few of the naysayers:
AP: “Trump promotes unproven ties between Tylenol, vaccines and autism without new evidence.”
BBC: “Trump urges pregnant women to avoid Tylenol over unproven autism link.”
Newsweek: “What Did Trump Say About Child Autism? And Is It Actually True?”
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. explained in detail that leucovorin would be made more widely available for families and that products containing acetaminophen would be labeled to warn pregnant women of possible risks. Going further, he observed that for two decades, misguided research had focused on a genetic cause for a condition that had exploded far too quickly, proclaiming “[t]hat would be like looking at the genetic drivers of lung cancer without looking at cigarettes.”
The HHS secretary promised transparency as 13 research teams have been commissioned to determine what has caused this horrible increase in autism in American children. He also pointed to another source of information – the mothers of affected children. He advocated strongly for these often-ignored voices:
“Some 40-70% of mothers who have children with autism believe that their child was injured by a vaccine. President Trump believes that we should be listening to these mothers instead of gaslighting and marginalizing them like prior administrations … We will perform the studies that should have been performed 25 years ago.”
The Trump administration’s study of mRNA vaccines, Tylenol, SSRIs, and leucovorin should not be controversial. In the past, many drugs that did not work as hoped or inflicted unforeseen side effects have been marketed. A prominent example that seems long forgotten is thalidomide, offered confidently in the late 1950s and early 1960s to pregnant women but which caused devastating birth defects on their fetuses.
The evidence for caution regarding acetaminophen appears substantial enough that not warning expectant mothers would be indefensible. Following Secretary Kennedy, FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary quoted the dean of the Harvard School of Public Health: “There is a causal relationship between prenatal acetaminophen use and neurodevelopmental disorders of ADHD and autism spectrum disorder. We cannot wait any longer.”
The urgent push for transparent, cutting-edge studies to discover the causes of rising autism rates in children should be bipartisan, yet the undercurrent of contempt for anything MAGA (or MAHA) by a segment of the population and media is so profoundly oppositional that it would halt even this inquiry. This isn’t about faith in vaccines; it is embracing a continued ignorance.
As Trump observed during the press conference, there appear to be unvaccinated populations of children, such as the Amish, who have no incidence of autism spectrum disorder. Kennedy and others posit that it is likely a combination of environmental toxins that cause autism, of which vaccines could be one source. They seek more aggressive research, while detractors oppose such common-sense scientific inquiry.
Those in the media and political opponents who gaslight President Trump and Secretary Kennedy, along with long-suffering mothers, dismiss the real cost of autism: the children who must live in misery and frustration – barely able to communicate. Efforts by the leftist press to pour cold water on this latest research are spiteful and show no compassion for these families. After decades of confusion regarding this confounding medical condition, the Trump administration is making an effort to shed some light on the studies that have been conducted but have not been released to the public. It’s high time Americans had some hope that medical experts will be able to pinpoint what is causing this scourge.