In The Politics of Autism, I write:
The conventional wisdom is that any kind of treatment is likely to be less effective as the child gets older, so parents of autistic children usually believe that they are working against the clock. They will not be satisfied with the ambiguities surrounding ABA, nor will they want to wait for some future research finding that might slightly increase its effectiveness. They want results now. Because there are no scientifically-validated drugs for the core symptoms of autism, they look outside the boundaries of mainstream medicine and FDA approval. Studies have found that anywhere from 28 to 54 percent of autistic children receive “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM), and these numbers probably understate CAM usage.
A lot of people in RFK Jr's MAHA orbit are making a lot of money from supplements.
The US government has also removed protections that were previously in place to prevent harm to autistic people. In February of 2026, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) removed a warning about disproven autism “remedies”, including chelation therapies, chlorine dioxide (i.e. bleach) treatments, raw camel milk, and hyperbaric oxygen therapies (O’Matz, 2026). In the 1990s, by Bernard Rimland, a US-based psychologist and parent of an autistic son, promoted therapies involving adjustment of the biological environment (including vitamin regimens and other, more invasive approaches such as chelation therapy and gluten/casein-free diets). Although these therapies had no or minimal research evidence, he convinced parents they were worth trying because any possibility for reducing autism “symptoms” meant the intervention was worth any potential harms, which he considered unlikely (Shattock, 2006). This of course was not true— primary harms to autistic children could and did happen with biogenic therapies, including death (Sinha et al., 2006). On a now defunct US FDA consumer updates webpage available via the Wayback Machine Internet Archive, the agency (under a previous administration) shared the potential harms of many of these therapies. For example, regarding bleach cures marketed as Miracle Mineral Solution (MMS) they stated, “FDA has received reports of consumers who say they experienced nausea, severe vomiting and life-threatening low blood pressure after drinking the MMS and citrus juice mixture” (United States Federal Drug Administration [USFDA], 2014). Secondary harms, such as wasted caregiver time and resources, and reduced motivation to access more efficacious interventions, are also likely when therapies without research support are promoted by people in positions of power. No reliable evidence of their effectiveness has ever been produced, and other international sources of guidance continue to warn families against these therapies (e.g. Raising Children Network, 2026).
