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WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump and his Health Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., on Thursday promoted another fringe theory about autism — this time linking it to circumcision or to pain medication given for the procedure.
The claim was swiftly derided by experts who said the main study cited by proponents of this theory was strewn with errors and it was yet another example of Kennedy’s penchant for “pseudoscience.”
“Don’t take Tylenol if you’re pregnant and when the baby is born, don’t give it Tylenol,” Trump said during a Cabinet meeting.
“There’s two studies that show children who are circumcized early have double the rate of autism,” chimed in Kennedy, adding: “It’s highly likely because they’re given Tylenol.”
“None of this makes sense,” Helen Tager-Flusberg, a professor at Boston University and autism expert, told AFP.
“None of the studies have shown that giving Tylenol to babies is linked to a higher risk for autism once you can control for all the confounding variables,” she said.
Pregnant women are also advised by medical associations to take pain medication including acetaminophen — the active ingredient in Tylenol — in moderation when needed, contrary to Trump’s advice to “tough it out.”
While a few studies have suggested a possible association with acetaminophen in pregnancy, no causal link has ever been proven. The most rigorous analysis to date — published last year in JAMA and using siblings as controls — found no link at all.
As for the circumcision theory, the most widely cited paper, published by Danish researchers in 2015, was “riddled with flaws” that were pointed out by other scientists at the time, David Mandell, a psychiatrist at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, told AFP.
Specifically, he said, the study relied on a tiny sample of Muslim boys circumcized in hospitals rather than at home — the dominant cultural practice.
Because those children were hospitalized, Mandell said, it was likely they were “otherwise medically compromised,” which could explain higher rates of neurodevelopmental disorders.
“A more recent review of studies in this area finds no association between circumcision and any adverse psychological effects,” he added.
Kennedy — a former environmental activist and lawyer who spent decades spreading vaccine misinformation before being appointed Trump’s health secretary — has made uncovering the root causes of autism a central focus, while cutting research grants in other areas.
He has hired vaccine conspiracy theorist David Geier, previously disciplined for practicing medicine without a license and for testing unproven drugs on autistic children, to investigate alleged links between vaccines and autism — a connection debunked by dozens of prior studies.
 

MANILA, Philippines: An offshore earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 7.6 hit off a southern Philippine province Friday morning, sending people out of houses and buildings in panic, knocking out power and prompting officials to order villagers to evacuate from the coastlines of nearby provinces due to a possible tsunami.
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said the potential damage was being assessed and rescue teams and relief operations were being prepared and would be deployed when it was safe to do so.
The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said it was expecting damage and aftershocks from the earthquake, which was centered at sea about 62 kilometers (38 miles) southeast of Manay town in Davao Oriental province and was caused by movement in a fault at a shallow depth of 10 kilometers (6 miles).

“I was driving my car when it suddenly swayed and I saw powerlines swaying wildly. People darted out of houses and buildings as the ground shook and electricity came off,” Jun Saavedra, a disaster-mitigation officer of Gov. Generoso town in Davao Oriental, told The Associated Press by cellphone.
“We’ve had earthquakes in the past, but this was the strongest,” Saavedra said, adding that the intense ground swaying caused cracks in several buildings, including schools.
At least 50 students from a high school in his town were brought to a hospital by ambulance after either fainting or becoming dizzy due to the earthquake, Saavedra said.
Gov. Generoso is a town about 100 kilometers (62 miles) south of Manay, where classes in all levels were also suspended.
Children evacuated schools in Davao city, which has about 5.4 million people and is the biggest city near the epicenter, about 250 kilometers (155 miles) west of Davao Oriental province.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Honolulu said hazardous waves were possible within 300 kilometers (186 miles) of the epicenter. It said waves up to 3 meters (10 feet) above normal tides were possible on some Philippine coasts, and smaller waves were possible in Indonesia and Palau.

Office of Civil Defense deputy administrator Bernardo Rafaelito Alejandro IV warned that tsunami waves could hit six nearby coastal provinces from Davao Oriental up to two hours after the earthquake struck at 9:43 a.m. He asked people to immediately move to higher ground or further inland away from coastal areas.
“We urge these coastal communities to be on alert and immediately evacuate to higher grounds until further notice,” Alejandro said in a video news briefing.
“Owners of boats in harbors and those in the coastal areas...should secure their boats and move away from the waterfronts,” he said.
Indonesia’s Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics Agency said small tsunami waves were detected in North Sulawesi province with heights ranging from 3.5 to 17 centimeters (1.3 to 6.7 inches) in Melonguane, Beo, Essang and Ganalo in Talaud Islands districts. People were warned to stay away from beaches and riverbanks.
The Philippines is still recovering from a Sept. 30 earthquake with a magnitude of 6.9 that left at least 74 people dead and displaced thousands of people in the central province of Cebu, particularly Bogo city and outlying towns.
One of the world’s most disaster-prone countries, the Philippines is often hit by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions because of its location on the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” an arc of seismic faults around the ocean.
The archipelago also is lashed by about 20 typhoons and storms each year, making disaster response a major task of the government and volunteer groups.