This text was featured within the One Story to Learn Right this moment e-newsletter. Join it right here.
For almost a decade, the immunologist and biochemist William Parker has tried, with little success, to steer different scientists to take severely his concept that acetaminophen—higher identified by the model title Tylenol—is the first explanation for autism. Researchers have lengthy didn’t discover a causal hyperlink between autism and any remedy, and today, most of them imagine {that a} change in diagnostic standards is basically behind the dramatic uptick in autism charges over the previous 30 years. However late final month, Parker obtained a telephone name from Well being Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who needed to study extra about his work. In reality, he’s heard from Kennedy a number of instances since then. Parker additionally spoke lately with Jay Bhattacharya, the director of the Nationwide Institutes of Well being. To listen to Parker inform it, the nation’s high well being officers have taken nice curiosity in his concepts.
Over the previous few weeks, Kennedy has reportedly been wanting into an alleged connection between autism and Tylenol use throughout being pregnant. Parker’s preoccupation is barely completely different: He believes that youngsters’s use of Tylenol causes autism. Parker has for years operated on the fringes of academia. He runs his personal small, unbiased laboratory, which he began after he misplaced a lab at Duke College’s medical faculty. (Duke didn’t renew Parker’s contract after he started specializing in autism in his analysis, although an e-mail that an administrator despatched to Parker in 2021, which I reviewed, stated solely that holding the lab open wasn’t in his division’s “strategic finest curiosity.”) Parker’s makes an attempt to publish in educational journals have frequently been rebuffed. One reviewer tore right into a current submission from Parker, writing of their evaluation that his speculation was “outrageous” and “illogical”; the paper was rejected. The previous couple of weeks have been a wild reversal for Parker. “Nothing was occurring and—increase!” he advised me. “It’s stunning.”
In April, Kennedy promised that Individuals would know by September what causes autism and methods to get rid of it. How precisely he would try this in 5 months was a thriller, particularly contemplating that researchers have for many years tried to find out what genetic and environmental components is perhaps accountable. (Each appear more likely to play a job, although research have steered that about 80 p.c of an individual’s autism threat is discovered of their DNA.) Kennedy had already introduced in David Geier, a researcher who has revealed deeply flawed papers linking autism to vaccines, to uncover any irregularities in a CDC vaccine-safety database. Plus, Kennedy has a well-established historical past of anti-vaccine activism, and specifically of linking immunization to autism, regardless of reams of analysis indicating in any other case. He appeared poised to pin the blame for autism on childhood photographs.
Final week, Laura Loomer, a far-right activist who appears to have a direct line to the White Home, strongly hinted on X that Kennedy’s autism report, which has but to be launched, would possibly implicate acetaminophen. A number of days later, The Wall Road Journal, citing unnamed sources accustomed to the discussions, additionally stated that the report would possible hyperlink the drug to autism. These tales targeted on prenatal publicity to acetaminophen, which is taken into account the most secure ache reliever and fever reducer out there for pregnant ladies. In 2015, the FDA issued a tepid discover concerning the dangers of utilizing acetaminophen throughout being pregnant, mentioning conflicting outcomes a couple of attainable hyperlink to ADHD however nothing about autism. Since then, a handful of consultants, together with the dean of Harvard’s faculty of public well being, have revealed papers suggesting an affiliation between prenatal use of acetaminophen and neurodevelopmental issues, together with autism.
A spokesperson for Kenvue, the corporate that makes Tylenol, advised me in an e-mail, “Now we have evaluated out there science and proceed to imagine that there isn’t any hyperlink between acetaminophen use and autism.” (The spokesperson additionally famous that Parker has consulted in an ongoing lawsuit over circumstances of ADHD and autism allegedly attributable to Tylenol use throughout being pregnant. Parker advised me that he did supply session, however he didn’t testify within the case and didn’t settle for any compensation—“not even a penny.”) The e-mail additionally cited an FDA reality sheet, up to date final month, that notes the company has not discovered clear proof of any harms of acetaminophen use throughout being pregnant.
Parker’s concept is that giving acetaminophen to infants and younger youngsters, not pregnant ladies, is what’s behind almost all circumstances of autism. For greater than an hour, he walked me by means of his analysis, citing research that present how acetaminophen alters cognition in male mice, highlighting the rise in youngsters’s use of the drug as soon as aspirin stopped being advisable for them within the Eighties, and referencing a 2008 examine led by an epidemiologist who believed that his son’s autism was attributable to the acetaminophen he was given after getting an MMR shot.
Contemplating that the massive majority of youngsters obtain acetaminophen—one examine discovered that 95 p.c of infants are given the drug at the very least as soon as of their first yr of life—acetaminophen alone clearly doesn’t trigger autism. Parker contends {that a} constellation of things, together with genetics, irritation, and stress, allow acetaminophen to set off autism in sure youngsters. In his first paper on the subject, revealed in 2017, he and his co-authors couched their phrases fastidiously, sustaining that it was “one clarification for the elevated prevalence of autism.”
Within the years since that paper’s publication, Parker has grown extra assured. He now sees acetaminophen as the one attainable clarification for the rising variety of autism circumstances. After I requested him how sure he was of his conclusion, Parker advised me, “We’ve considered this lots and it’s 99.99” p.c. The one means he sees to extend that certainty to one hundred pc is to cease giving American youngsters acetaminophen. When that happens, Parker advised me, the variety of autism circumstances will drop by about 95 p.c and the rest will possible be reclassified as another dysfunction. He claims that autism, as we all know it, will basically finish. After I requested Jeffrey Morris, a biostatistics professor on the College of Pennsylvania, about Parker’s prediction, he replied that “daring claims require rigorous, reproducible proof”—and up to now, judging by the response from fellow scientists, Parker hasn’t met that normal.
Parker acknowledges that his work has not been embraced by mainstream autism researchers. Viktor Ahlqvist, the writer of a 2024 Swedish examine that concluded that acetaminophen use throughout being pregnant was not related to autism, advised me that developmental outcomes in youth are “notoriously troublesome to check,” and that many obvious correlations—say, acetaminophen use and autism—don’t maintain as much as scrutiny. After I requested Parker to provide me the names of scientists who assist his concept, he couldn’t consider anybody. (He stated Kennedy requested him for names too.) I contacted a number of longtime autism researchers, none of whom had heard of Parker. His 2023 paper trumpeting the hazards of acetaminophen has been cited a mere 11 instances, in response to Google Scholar. (In contrast, a 2007 paper Parker wrote on useful micro organism within the appendix has been cited 500 instances.) For somebody who’s 99.99 p.c sure he is aware of what causes autism and methods to finish it, Parker has hardly made a mark.
And but, American well being officers seem to have sought his recommendation anyway. Parker confirmed me screenshots of emails arranging a Zoom between him and Bhattacharya, in addition to a doc he emailed to Bhattacharya’s assistant summarizing his analysis findings. (In keeping with Parker, on their Zoom name, Bhattacharya stated Parker had given him lots of homework and he can be in contact.) Parker additionally shared his name log, which included 5 calls with Kennedy. (The Atlantic verified that the telephone quantity is in truth Kennedy’s.) On Sunday, I requested Parker when he had final spoken with Kennedy. “What time is it now?” he stated. Kennedy had known as a couple of hours earlier—Parker advised me he’d needed to debate the Swedish examine. A spokesperson for Well being and Human Providers declined to say whether or not Kennedy or Bhattacharya had spoken with Parker. “We’re utilizing gold-standard science to unravel America’s unprecedented rise in autism charges,” the spokesperson wrote in an e-mail. “Till we launch the ultimate report, any claims about its contents are nothing greater than hypothesis.”
For Kennedy, the attract of Parker’s concept appears apparent. The secretary has not solely pledged to seek out out the causes of autism but additionally burdened that the Trump administration will be capable to get rid of them. Parker provides a prepared answer that properly dovetails with Kennedy’s hostility towards vaccines, and pharmaceutical interventions towards illness normally. Parker isn’t claiming that vaccines trigger autism, however in response to his concept, they may result in the stress and irritation that create the surroundings for what he insists is the true set off.
4 days after Kennedy first known as Parker, at an August 26 Cupboard assembly, Trump requested his well being secretary to supply an replace on his promise to find the reason for autism. Kennedy advised the president that he had discovered “sure interventions now which are clearly, virtually definitely inflicting autism.” Trump, who likes to trace at insider secrets and techniques, chimed in that there “must be one thing artificially inflicting this, which means a drug or one thing.” Parker took that change as an indication that his analysis may need lastly discovered a sympathetic viewers.