When Autism Becomes the Trigger Word Again
Fear for Parents, Fatigue for Doctors, Fury for Advocates
In the days since Trump’s reckless, evidence-free Tylenol pronouncement, the reactions have split along painfully familiar lines:
- Autism moms are left in tears, blaming themselves for following medical advice that was supposed to keep them and their babies safe. Their trust is shattered, their guilt weaponized.
- Physicians are weary and resentful, watching their exam rooms turn into battlegrounds where bone-headed presidential soundbites overpower decades of solid clinical guidance. They know nuance can’t compete with fearmongers.
- Neurodiversity advocates are furious, because autism has once again been dragged into the spotlight not as lived reality, but as a scare tactic — shorthand for tragedy, liability or “what went wrong.”
Different roles, same harm. Autism gets framed as catastrophe, and everyone pays: parents with guilt, doctors with mistrust, autistic people with erasure.
What we need is a conversation that refuses the frame altogether. Autism is not a warning label. It is not the cautionary tale at the end of a drug commercial. Until we stop letting political clown cars define autism as the thing to be feared, every new “cause” — Tylenol, vaccines, refrigerator mothers — will spin up again, ad infinitum.
The real crisis is not whether Tylenol “causes” autism. It’s that we keep accepting a world where autism is always the threat, never the life being defended.