So President Trump is back at it again spreading misinformation
The TLDR is he’s trying to make the claim that acetaminophen use during pregnancy is one large cause of autism. Given his track record, he’s probably going to try to convince people that vaccines cause autism too soon, if he hasn’t already. He’s set to make another announcement at 4 pm today.
Trump’s unscientific statements on Tylenol
I could go on about how there’s no good evidence for these statements – how the best population study of almost 2.5 million children in Sweden found that while some poorly done research might make it *seem* like Tylenol use creates a tiny risk, when you compare siblings (where one pregnancy used Tylenol and one didn’t) they found no difference. Aka the “risks” seen before were probably due to genetics or environment, not Tylenol itself.
But I don’t want to sit here and debate what does or doesn’t cause autism because it’s missing the more important point.
The bigger point: we just don’t need to, and shouldn’t try to, “cure autism”
Autism does not need to be cured.
Autism is a different way of being – It’s not a curse. It’s not a tragedy.
What is making our leadership pour hundreds of millions of dollars a year into trying to stop autistic existence, while spending almost no money on doing things that materially improve autistic people’s lives and wellbeing – accepting them for who they are?
I’m brought back to autistic advocate Jim Sinclair’s 1993 essay “Don’t Mourn for Us”. I’d highly recommend you read the whole thing but here is a snippet:
“Autism is not an appendage
Autism isn’t something a person has, or a “shell” that a person is trapped inside. There’s no normal child hidden behind the autism. Autism is a way of being. It is pervasive; it colors every experience, every sensation, perception, thought, emotion, and encounter, every aspect of existence. It is not possible to separate the autism from the person–and if it were possible, the person you’d have left would not be the same person you started with.
This is important, so take a moment to consider it: Autism is a way of being. It is not possible to separate the person from the autism.
Therefore, when parents say,
I wish my child did not have autism,
what they’re really saying is,
I wish the autistic child I have did not exist, and I had a different (non-autistic) child instead.
Read that again. This is what we hear when you mourn over our existence. This is what we hear when you pray for a cure. This is what we know, when you tell us of your fondest hopes and dreams for us: that your greatest wish is that one day we will cease to be, and strangers you can love will move in behind our faces.”
Imagine what could happen if we invested those same resources into accessible housing, inclusive schools, barrier-free healthcare, and workplaces where autistic people thrived.
What if instead of trying to prevent autistic existence, we focused on building spaces that valued autistic lives – where autistic people were accepted, celebrated, and belonged?
What could happen then?
