Last week, US President Donald Trump and his health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., stood before the cameras and announced at a news conference that Tylenol (Acamol in Israel) – a medication that until now has been almost the only one recommended to pregnant women to reduce fever and relieve pain – may be linked to autism. Trump added that he is planning a “revolution” in children’s vaccination schedules.
Someone who looks at that statement in isolation might think it’s just another medical discussion, perhaps even a scientific question that needs to be investigated. However, anyone who has followed Trump’s and Kennedy’s discourse in recent months knows this is not an isolated remark: It is part of a sequence of messages in which they have described autism as a “nightmare,” as something that “destroys families.”
When you put all those things together – the earlier accusations and the new conclusions – it’s hard to miss the larger picture: Autism is an enemy, something to be prevented, something the world would be better off without.
The implications of the message
As someone who is autistic herself, a mother of two autistic children, and a woman who works day to day with autistic children, this message hits me deeply. It doesn’t remain “just” politics or medicine – it is an existential statement about our very right to be here.
I know what it is to live an entire life with a nameless sense of otherness. Only after the age of 40 did I receive my diagnosis, and suddenly the world fell into place differently. All those moments of feeling that I was odd, didn’t fit, not knowing how to put my finger on exactly what was different about me, finally received words. It wasn’t easy, but it was a relief. The diagnosis did not make me “defective”; it made me authentic, gave me new meaning.
It is from that place that I raise my children. I tell them: You see the world differently – and that is not a deficit, it is a gift. The way you experience reality is what makes you singular, exceptional, wonderful. It is not a reason to be ashamed; it is a reason for pride.
And here comes the unbearable clash: When the most powerful leaders in the world speak of autism in terms of disaster, as if it were a biological mistake that must be prevented, the message is clear. It is not that you should adapt the world to fit you; rather, you are not supposed to be here. You are not wanted.
The dangers of statements on autism
This is a dangerous mindset. First, because such words do not remain at the rhetorical level. They create fear. A child who hears at home that he should be proud of his autistic identity, then turns on the news and hears the president say that it would have been better if he had not been born, what message does he internalize? What sense of self-worth will remain for him?
It is also dangerous in practical terms. If pregnant women avoid using an essential medication because someone dropped a media bomb without a solid research basis, they may put themselves at risk and endanger their pregnancies. Untreated high fever, unrelieved pain – these are not minor matters. We need measured, transparent research that distinguishes correlation from causation, not declarations based on ideology and politics.
Perhaps the hardest thing is that history has already taught us where such messages lead. Time and again, groups within the population have been labeled a “problem to be solved.” Time and again, whole lives were presented as a burden on society, as a mistake of nature. We know where such thinking led in the last century, and we must not allow it to recur.
So what should be done? Yes to recognizing the difficulties autistic people and their families face; yes to expanding education, healthcare, and support services; yes to a society that understands, includes, and adapts. Yes to stopping the impulse to think about how to prevent autistic people from being born – and to start thinking about how our world can be better, more accessible, and more humane for them.
I know how powerful a diagnosis can be: the ability to look at yourself and know, I am okay as I am. I want my children, and every autistic child, to be able to feel that way. I want them to see a world that is willing to change for them, not a world that seeks to erase them.
The writer is an autistic woman, mother to two autistic children, behavioral analyst and treatment coordinator at Tipul-li, a developmental center for children.