Autism: debunking Trump claims, and what scientists still don't know
Short Wave
NPR
4.7 • 6.5K Ratings
🗓️ 3 February 2026
⏱️ 13 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
If you liked this episode, check out our episodes on an Autism researcher’s take on Trump’s claims about Tylenol and a Fragile X treatment that may be on the horizon.
Interested in more science in the news? Email us your question at shortwave@npr.org.
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This episode was produced by Berly McCoy. It was edited by Rebecca Ramirez. Tyler Jones checked the facts. The audio engineer was Damian Herring.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. |
| 0:05.4 | Hey, shortwavers, Emily Kwong here. |
| 0:07.8 | You may know that the Trump administration has put forward a lot of misinformation about autism. |
| 0:13.5 | Here's the president himself at a press conference in 2025. |
| 0:16.1 | There are certain groups of people that don't take vaccines and don't take any pills that have no autism, that have no autism. |
| 0:25.7 | Does that tell you something? |
| 0:27.4 | That is definitely misinformation, because researchers have found autism in pretty much every group they've ever studied around the world. |
| 0:34.8 | And it made no difference whether or not they'd been vaccinated. I'm here with |
| 0:39.0 | John Hamilton, our resident brain correspondent, and you've been tracking the spread of this |
| 0:44.2 | misinformation for months. Hey, Emily, yes, I have, including some other claims made at that conference, |
| 0:49.9 | like when federal health officials also told pregnant women not to take Tylenol because it might |
| 0:54.7 | cause their children to develop autism, which I know you guys did a whole episode, truth squatting. |
| 1:00.2 | We did. We've linked the episode in our show notes. Let's revisit, though. Is there any |
| 1:05.3 | science behind that claim about Tylenol? Not much. In 2024, there was a very large study in Sweden that found no |
| 1:13.0 | link. In 2025, there was an analysis of data from a bunch of smaller studies that found a possible |
| 1:18.7 | link. But that analysis didn't account for factors like infection or fever, which can on their own |
| 1:24.6 | increase the risk of autism. And earlier this year, there was a larger and more rigorous review of Tylenol used during pregnancy. |
| 1:31.7 | And once again, it found no link to autism. |
| 1:35.0 | Good to know. |
| 1:35.8 | And coming from that same press conference, there was still more misinformation. |
| 1:40.3 | What else was said, John? |
| 1:42.0 | Well, FDA Commissioner Marty McCarrie said they were going to formalize vitamin B9 as a treatment for children with autism. That's on the assumption that autistic kids have a B9 deficiency, but it's still not clear how many autistic kids actually have this deficiency, let alone whether Luca Voran, this vitamin B9, can reduce their symptoms. |
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