Last month, Robert F. Kenney JR., along with President Donald Trump, announced last month that taking acetaminophen, an active ingredient of tile lenol, is related to autism. Since Tylenol has long been used as a painkiller, this has quickly turned to most doctors, clinical and parents’ heads. In fact, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has a rating system for drugs that can be purchased without prescription, depending on what the study of the risk of developing fetuses. The drugs that receive A have been thoroughly tested in pregnant women, and there is no evidence of abnormalities about the fetus during birth during pregnancy. Tylenol or acetaminophen has always gained a general ahead.
As a result, the announcement received an immediate pushback from various medical associations, including the US Pediatrics Academy (AAP), and all of this confirmed the safety of Tylenol during pregnancy when used according to the instructions. In addition, this presentation was made without evidence of scientific research on the connection between acetaminophen and autism. Indeed, recent studies on more than 2 million children born between 1995 and 2019 have not only reported zero connection between tile lenol and autism risks, but also found that the connection between drugs and ADHDs, including ADHD, is zero (AHLQVIST et al., 2024).
However, regardless of the fact that this presentation is not medical evidence, it is necessary to send a mother as guilt and anxiety because it suggests that it is directly related to the mother’s behavior during pregnancy. This is not new, and in fact, criticizing the mother of autism is as old as the diagnosis itself.
Mother’s history of autism
In the 1940s, psychiatrist Leo Kanner pointed out that many of his autism patients tended to have a well -educated mother when they interacted with their children (according to Kanner). This simple observation has been changed to a “refrigerator mother” theory that Bruno Bettelheim runs and popularized in the 1950s and 1960s, and lacks the warmth of motherhood ultimately autistic.
In 1977, twin studies discussed this theory by comparing the commonality of autism between the same twins (sharing all the same genes) and brothers twins (only half shared). If the genes play an important role in causing developmental disorders, the match rate should be higher in the same twins than the twins who are likely to have the same disability. If developmental disorders are caused by something in the environment, such as Tylenol, it is expected that the match rate will be the same in the twin types. As predicted, the 1977 study found that the same twin match rate was higher than the brothers and twins (Folstein & Rutter, 1977), and in 1995, another researcher reported that the gene factor accounted for up to 95 %of the incidence of autism (Colvert et al., 2015). This suggests that genetics plays quite a big role in determining whether someone suffers autism.
But even the powerful evidence that the root of autism is in our biology did not prevent the mother from blaming. In 1998, Andrew Wakefield and his colleagues published a paper that they were involved in vaccinations, especially the MMR vaccine, was associated with autism (Wakefield et al., 1998) (Wakefield et al., 1998). This time, there is no evidence of the connection between vaccine and autism, but Wakefield Configure his data The newspaper was later withdrawn, and he lost his work and medical license. After Wakefield’s research, other researchers tried to find the association between vaccination and autism, and all failed (eg Maglione et al. In fact, more recent studies have repeatedly repeated that the predictor of autism is almost entirely genetic (e.g. Tick et al., 2017).
Then why do you blame your parents? It is easier for government agencies to feel the pressure to find a single cause and treatment for autism, and to blame parents, especially mothers, is easier than swallowing more complicated truths. In other words, autism is called “spectrum disorder” for reasons. In other words, most people who have it will experience it very differently, so it will be difficult to treat one cause and one treatment.
This does not mean that we should stop finding the answer, but the answer must be scientifically investigated and responsible. Statements for autism made without scientific evidence can cause more problems than they solve. For example, there is no scientific evidence that vaccination causes autism, but the belief in autism and vaccine continues to flood the news cycle, the vaccination rate has plummeted, and people are dying from the previously eradicated diseases such as measles and coughs. Tylenol has been added to the list of unproven risk factors, so anxious mothers will feel the pressure that should not relieve pain by taking drugs that are safe and can be purchased without prescription.
Advice to expect parents
So look forward to your parents: If you are worried about taking Tylenol during pregnancy, or if you need to vaccinate infants, follow the research -based model case and listen to the doctor. If your child has autism, it’s not because you are not a warm parent, but because you have taken tile lenol during pregnancy or your child is vaccinated. Instead, genetic makeup for autism has always been there and will not be related to the choice you choose as a parent.
