The White House recently released the press release with links to Scientific research confirming the requirement of Trump The use of acetaminophene, usually called thylenol, causes autism during pregnancy, but these studies provided only “weak” and “unconvincing” evidence, according to doctors who have experience in the consideration of medical research, who talked with the guardian.
Jeffrey Singer, surgeon and senior researcher at the Cato Institute, who has It is written about claims to Tilenol/autismHe said that references to the press release of the White House showed that the claims contained political rotation.
According to Singer, the release creates the appearance of additional evidence, referring to the same studies. The latest study mentioned – Review of a document Published in August by the authors of the authors associated with Mount Sinai and Harvard – it looks like two separate research, one of the Harvard and one of the Sinai Mountain. A Boston cohort study at birth The author of researchers John Hopkins is also connected twice in the issue, as if these are two separate studies.
“Thus, you say that the study at Harvard discovered the same as the Hopkins study and the study on Mount Sinai. This may give the appearance that [the same results have] He was achieved in one study after another, all of the very prestigious centers, ”Singer said.
Jake Scott, a doctor and a member of the clinical advisory committee of the vaccine in Stanford, said that the press release “makes me get sick in the stomach, to be honest”, because “they represent the association as a causal relationship, first.”
There is a much higher bar for proving a causal relationship than an association. In this case, proof of a causal relationship will mean that the elimination of the effects of Tilenol will actually reduce the number of cases of autism.
For example, an increase in ice cream sales can be associated with a thermal blow, simply because both are things that occur in the summer, but the ban on the sale of ice cream will not reduce the number of heat strokes. In order to prove a causal relationship, it is not enough to show that one event follows another – these results should appear again and again in various research projects, and scientists also need to find a believable explanation of how these two factors are connected.
None of the studies associated with the press release have evidence -based cause -effect relationship.
Actually, All their Admit that they cannot finally Set causality, although some use a more careful formulation than others. According to experts, one of the ways to quickly find the volume of research claims is the search for key terms, such as “causal”, “causality”, “association”, “restrictions”, “caution” and “further investigation”.
According to experts, as soon as you start reading research, more statements in the press release begin to fall apart. For example, the release says: “Scientists proposed Biological mechanisms connecting the prenatal effects of acetaminophene of the changed brain development and adverse results of childbirth. ” Biological mechanisms explaining how exposure leads to the end, are an important way to establish a causal relationship. It took decades In order for scientists to establish that cigarettes cause cancer through a biological mechanism for introducing carcinogens into the lungs, which, for example, create cancer mutations in cells.
But The study is connected In the release, in order to illustrate the biological mechanism, in fact does not include the biological mechanism, but vice versa. The authors write: “The mechanisms underlying associations of the prenatal exposure of acetaminophen with adverse birth results remain unknown.” In addition, the study did not study the “changed brain development” in general, as indicated in the press release, but instead considered only the results associated with the weight of birth and the gestational age.
The singer and Scott agree that another way to verify the scientific statements of the Trump administration is to see which studies are excluded from the conversation.
For example, the press release left a Swedish study Published in 2024. “This is a study where they followed almost two and a half million births … They used the control of the brothers and sisters,” said Singer, “so they found that acetaminophen [the generic name for Tylenol] Use during pregnancy showed a small connection [with autism]. But this association disappears when you compare the brothers and sisters who have much more genetic and environmental similarities than comparison groups in other studies, Singer explained.
The authors of the Swedish study wrote: “This suggests that the associations observed in other models could be related to mixing”, which means that it probably was not Tylenol himself, but other factors associated with the use of tilenol (which may include, for example, more fever during pregnancy) that created a risk.
“This is a rather impressive study,” Singer said. “I'm not saying that they are right. What I say as a doctor who reads research literature has not yet answered this question. ”
The singer says that there is probably the reason why the White House included some research, and not others: “Kennedy secretary, I think that he is under pressure, because remember, he was going to tell us the reason for autism By September. “
According to Scott, who recently showed that in Congress Tylenol’s claims resemble arguments against vaccines, which recently testified to oppose the statements that vaccines cause chronic diseases – claims based on the study that has never been presented for publication From the shortcomings in his design.
“All this is part of the scheme for using really weak evidence based on a really low quality study,” Scott said.
