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Speaker 1: au does cause autism. It's the question blowing up the
Speaker 1: medical world after US President Donald Trump released official advice
Speaker 1: regarding the use of the common painkiller during pregnancy. Today
Speaker 1: Health editor Natasha Robinson joins us to unpack this complex issue.
Speaker 2: I think we found an answer to autism. How about that.
Speaker 1: This is part of a wide ranging address given by
Speaker 1: US President Donald Trump at a memorial for conservative activist
Speaker 1: Charlie Kirk on Sunday Tomorrow.
Speaker 2: We're going to be talking in the Oval Office in
Speaker 2: the White House about autism. How it happens. I think
Speaker 2: it's going to be one of the most important news
Speaker 2: conferences I'll ever have, and I look so forward to it.
Speaker 1: It was curious given the circumstances, but on Monday, the
Speaker 1: President's message came into sharp relief.
Speaker 2: First, effective immediately, the FDA will be notifying physicians that
Speaker 2: the use of I said, well, let's see how we
Speaker 2: say that. I said a menefin. Acetamnifin said, okay, which
Speaker 2: is basically commonly known as thailand all during pregnancy, can
Speaker 2: be associated with a very increased risk of autism. So
Speaker 2: taking thailand all is not good. I'll say it. It's
Speaker 2: not good.
Speaker 1: Flanked by Health Secretary Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr. The President
Speaker 1: urged pregnant women to limit the use of acetaminifin, which
Speaker 1: is known as paracetamol in Australia, unless it's absolutely medically necessary.
Speaker 2: But if you can't tough it out. If you can
Speaker 2: do it, that's what you're gonna have to do. You'll
Speaker 2: take atil and all, but it'll be very sparingly.
Speaker 3: There is certainly no causation established here. That's the first
Speaker 3: thing to say.
Speaker 1: Natasha Robinson is the Australian's Health editor.
Speaker 3: But I don't think that you can take the fact
Speaker 3: that there is not a definitive link established between the
Speaker 3: use of paracetamol in pregnancy and causation in terms of
Speaker 3: autism to completely dismiss what the administration in the USA
Speaker 3: has put on the agenda here. It's really important, I think,
Speaker 3: in this circumstance to sift through the heat and light
Speaker 3: that we see with Trump in everything that he says,
Speaker 3: and I would really encourage people to go and look
Speaker 3: at the policy in relation to this that the US
Speaker 3: Department of Health and Human Services has put out. It's
Speaker 3: really interesting to go through that and see just how
Speaker 3: measured it actually is. Everything that I've heard in terms
Speaker 3: of response from experts shooting down these claims is actually
Speaker 3: documented in this information that they've put out there, including
Speaker 3: the fact that they openly admit that causation is in
Speaker 3: fact not established here.
Speaker 1: But I think what the whole.
Speaker 3: Point of this announcement is. There are association studies, and
Speaker 3: there are many of them, and they have consistently shown
Speaker 3: a higher rate of autism, sometimes only a small difference,
Speaker 3: but nevertheless that is consistent across many studies in terms
Speaker 3: of the slightly high rates of autism among women who
Speaker 3: have taken parasitamol during pregnancy, and that particularly late pregnancy
Speaker 3: seems to be the issue here. There are other studies
Speaker 3: that have disproven any association. A large Swedish study that
Speaker 3: many of the experts who are responding to this announcement
Speaker 3: appointing to, which can trolled for genetics essentially by examining
Speaker 3: siblings as well, and once they examined the siblings and
Speaker 3: their circumstances, they found that the association disappeared. But then
Speaker 3: there's yet again other studies that have looked at that
Speaker 3: Swedish study, and there's in particular a Harvard study that
Speaker 3: had some concerns with the way that that study was conducted.
Speaker 3: So look, it is safe to say here the evidence
Speaker 3: is mixed.
Speaker 1: Let's do a quick fact check here.
Speaker 2: And by the way, I think I could say that
Speaker 2: there are certain groups of people that don't take vaccines
Speaker 2: and don't take any pills that have no autism.
Speaker 1: Donald Trump didn't actually seem too confident on this point.
Speaker 2: Is that a correct statement? By the way, there are
Speaker 2: some studies that suggests that with the Amish, for example,
Speaker 2: the Amish, Yeah, virtually I heard none. She Bobbie wants
Speaker 2: to be very careful with what he says, and he should.
Speaker 2: But I'm not so careful with what I say. But
Speaker 2: you have certain groups, the Amish as an example, they
Speaker 2: have essentially no autism.
Speaker 3: I've had a little opportunity to have a bit of
Speaker 3: a look at these studies. First of all, the idea
Speaker 3: that there's no autism in the Amish communities is false.
Speaker 3: I think it's true as far as I can see,
Speaker 3: that there is a lower rate of autism in Amish communities,
Speaker 3: and some of the material studies that I've looked at
Speaker 3: have indicated that it may be as much as four
Speaker 3: times lower. But it's unclear why that is. There does
Speaker 3: seem to have been an issue with the particular study
Speaker 3: around about twenty years ago in the US where there
Speaker 3: was some suggestions that because Amish families don't generally vaccinate
Speaker 3: their children, that was the reason they didn't have any autism,
Speaker 3: and I think that's been comprehensively debunked.
Speaker 2: And you shouldn't give the child to taileril. Every time
Speaker 2: he goes he's born, he goes and has a shot,
Speaker 2: you shouldn't give a tailer and oil to that child.
Speaker 3: So, in relationship to children, there is no evidence whatsoever
Speaker 3: that there's any problem giving parasita mult your children. What
Speaker 3: the TGA recommends is that you follow the dosage instructions
Speaker 3: and you only give it as needed. So the general
Speaker 3: advice is to give it in the smallest possible dosage
Speaker 3: for the time that it is really required. Take the
Speaker 3: advice of your doctor. I know that doctors do often
Speaker 3: recommend it when people vaccinate their children. It's certainly not
Speaker 3: a clear cut issue, and it's absolutely one that requires
Speaker 3: the advice of a doctor, not President Trump.
Speaker 2: It can be something that's very dangerous to the woman's health,
Speaker 2: in other words, a fever that's very very dangerous, and
Speaker 2: ideally a doctor's decision because I think you shouldn't take it,
Speaker 2: and you shouldn't take it during the entire pregnancy. They
Speaker 2: may tell you that toward the end of the pregnancy
Speaker 2: you shouldn't take it.
Speaker 1: So Natasha, what the Therapeutic Goods Administration, which is the
Speaker 1: health regulator here in Australia, what does it actually recommend
Speaker 1: for pregnant women where paracetamol is concerned.
Speaker 3: The TTA in Australia classifies paracetamol as a Category A
Speaker 3: drug in pregnancy, which means that it generally considers it safe.
Speaker 3: It does say that it should only be taken where necessary,
Speaker 3: and it should be taken at the lowest possible dose
Speaker 3: for the shortest possible time. And I think the important
Speaker 3: thing in relation to paracetamol that is the biggest consideration
Speaker 3: here is that people don't always use it just for paying.
Speaker 3: People often use it to control fever. And that's actually
Speaker 3: very important in pregnancy because fever uncontrolled can be dangerous
Speaker 3: for the fetus and can trigger premature births. So it
Speaker 3: is an important factor and that's also acknowledged by the
Speaker 3: US Health Department. And that's what many experts are saying
Speaker 3: to pregnant women in the wake of this is if
Speaker 3: you have a don't let it run. It's better to
Speaker 3: take paracetamol than to actually have a high fever that
Speaker 3: goes on and.
Speaker 1: On coming up dangerous ideas make a Trump era comeback.
Speaker 1: The idea that autism is caused by certain medications and
Speaker 1: vaccinations can be traced back to a paper published in
Speaker 1: the respected Lancet Medical Journal in the nineteen nineties by
Speaker 1: British gastro intestinal doctor Andrew Wakefield. It said of a
Speaker 1: group of twelve eight children who'd received the combined measles
Speaker 1: Mump's rubella vaccine went on to develop autism. It was
Speaker 1: a global bombshell, but it was also wrong. It's since
Speaker 1: been determined Wakefield's methodology was flawed and his paper was
Speaker 1: retracted by the Lancet, but the ideas had taken hold,
Speaker 1: and they've undermined faith in vaccines ever since. Vaccines have
Speaker 1: saved millions of lives from diseases that used to kill
Speaker 1: people of all ages, from babies to adults. Now, anti
Speaker 1: vaccine rhetoric has had a resurgence under the Trump administration,
Speaker 1: thanks to skepticism of high ranking officials like RFK Junior
Speaker 1: and even the President himself, who famously took the anti
Speaker 1: malaria drug hydroxychloroquin during the COVID nineteen pandemic against medical advice.
Speaker 2: And they've pumped so much stuff into those beautiful little babies.
Speaker 2: It's a disgrace.
Speaker 3: So I'd just say something about these comments by Trump
Speaker 3: in the first instance, do not take your medical advice
Speaker 3: from the US president. Okay, a responsible president should be
Speaker 3: telling people to discuss these issues with their doctor. That
Speaker 3: is the first thing that I'd say in relation to
Speaker 3: his general message. I think what is clear and agreed
Speaker 3: by everybody is that this is an incredibly complex condition
Speaker 3: that probably has a lot of complex drivers. We've studied
Speaker 3: the genetics. We know that there's a lot of genes
Speaker 3: involved with traits that are apparent in conditions of neurodiversity,
Speaker 3: including autism. The incredibly important other aspect here is the
Speaker 3: environmental factors, of which pharmaceuticals are one. It's incredibly complex
Speaker 3: to pin down those exact mechanisms, but what people believe
Speaker 3: is going on, and the foremost researchers in the world
Speaker 3: all agree in terms of autism, it is driven by
Speaker 3: genetics and in combination with environmental factors which have an
Speaker 3: impact upon a person's genetics. I think the comment that
Speaker 3: made about we think we've essentially figured autism out, we're
Speaker 3: going to fix it, is really unhelpful because implicit in
Speaker 3: that comment is that this is a pathology that requires
Speaker 3: a medical fix, and with a condition like autism, of
Speaker 3: course it's not helpful to speak about a condition which
Speaker 3: involves diversity in the way that people affected by neurodevelopmental
Speaker 3: conditions actually communicate, experience the world, et cetera, et cetera,
Speaker 3: and so essentially casting it as a problem that needs
Speaker 3: to be fixed, and we've found the answer is very
Speaker 3: unhelpful and stigmatizing for people with autism.
Speaker 1: Natasha Robinson is The Australian's Health editor. You can read
Speaker 1: all her reporting and analysis right now at the Australian
Speaker 1: dot com dot au