When Power Decides Autism Is an Epidemic
When Science Locks Us Out, Ideology Walks In
The White House briefing on Tylenol and autism was supposed to be measured. A fact sheet. A cautious research investment. Instead, it became a stage for Donald Trump to declare victory over a “mystery” he has obsessed about for decades. He ignored nuance, discarded evidence, and turned an association into a decree: autism comes from Tylenol, and mothers are to blame.
This wasn’t just a gaffe. It was a reversion to a well-worn script: use autism as a cultural scarecrow, and let mothers carry the blame for society’s unanswered questions.
The Return of Old Myths
We have seen this before. In the mid-20th century, mothers were accused of causing autism by being too cold. The “refrigerator mother” myth has been thoroughly debunked, but the logic survived: if autism looks inconvenient, blame the parent. Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recycled it in updated packaging: Tylenol instead of iceboxes, vaccine rumors instead of psychoanalysis, but the same underlying charge — that autistic people exist because women failed.
This is not science. It is ideology retrofitted as medicine.
What the Roundup Captured
An Intelligencer article (registration required) documented the tidal wave of backlash. Ethicists called the event a “flood of nonsense.” OB-GYNs condemned the guidance as dangerous and confusing. The World Health Organization and Britain’s health secretary flatly rejected any Tylenol-autism link. Even the researchers whose work was cited objected to how their studies were twisted.
That coverage matters. It shows how widely Trump’s claims were seen as reckless, and it preserved the expert record for the public. But the roundup, like most journalism, still framed autistic people as background — harmed, yes, but not narrators of the story.
The Silence That Speaks Loudest
Autism advocacy organizations have been asking for dialogue with Kennedy’s office and have been met with silence. Not disagreement. Silence. That absence is more telling than any quote. It shows how autistic lives are treated: as props in a political theatre, not as subjects with agency.
The experts warned about maternal health. The regulators reassured pregnant women. The ethicists decried pseudoscience. But what went unnamed in most coverage is the deeper injury: autistic people were described as a catastrophe to be prevented, not as citizens with futures to claim.
Better Questions Than “Does Tylenol Cause Autism?”
The question isn’t whether Tylenol causes autism. The better questions are:
- Why is autism still positioned as a disaster to be reversed, instead of a life to be supported?
- Why do governments invest more energy and resources into preventing autistic births than in supporting autistic adults?
- Why do women’s choices get policed whenever science stumbles on uncertainty or politicians take advantage of it?
These are the questions missing from the Roosevelt Room — and, too often, from the reporting that follows.
Epidemics, Defined by Power
The presser called autism an “epidemic.” That word does not describe autistic lives. It describes how power behaves when it fears difference: it pathologizes, blames and seeks to contain. If autistic people are treated as an epidemic, then the real infection is not Tylenol or vaccines. It is ideology — spreading through press briefings, headlines and policy drafts — telling the public that our existence is a mistake. If ideology keeps being mistaken for science, who gets erased next?