RFK's "Smoking Gun"

 In The Politics of Autism, I discuss various ideas about what causes the condition. 

If you listened to Sirius XM in recent years, you may have heard radio ads about a class action lawsuit alleging that acetaminophen causes it.  A judge nixed it. From the ruling: "the plaintiffs do not have admissible evidence to demonstrate that prenatal exposure to acetaminophen causes either ASD or ADHD in offspring."

Azeen Ghorayshi at NYT:

For more than a decade, scientists have asked whether acetaminophen — the active ingredient in the painkiller Tylenol — could affect fetal brain development, causing problems in children like autism and A.D.H.D. Some studies have suggested that there is a link; others have found none.

Now the latest study, a scientific review by researchers at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, has been swept into a larger, politically fraught debate about the causes of autism, spurred in part by the views of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Health and Human Services secretary.

There has been speculation that Mr. Kennedy may cite Tylenol use during pregnancy, among other environmental factors, as a potential cause of autism in an upcoming report.

The review that began the latest round of controversy, which examined 46 existing studies, eight of them looking specifically at autism, found there was evidence for a connection between acetaminophen use during pregnancy and neurodevelopmental disorders.

But the researchers who conducted the review cautioned that their conclusion did not mean acetaminophen caused autism, which mainstream scientists overwhelmingly agree is a result of a complex mix of genetic and environmental factors.

And the findings, other experts said, would not alter the advice doctors routinely give pregnant patients about acetaminophen use.

The conclusion of the review “doesn’t change a thing,” said Dr. Nathaniel DeNicola, an OB-GYN who advises the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists on environmental issues.

“The conclusion of the paper is that Tylenol should be used judiciously in the lowest dose, least frequent interval,” he said, “which is exactly the current standard of care for Tylenol and for so many medications, and really so many things we may encounter in pregnancy counseling.”