Francesca Rudkin: Trump’s Autism comments are unhelpful

I didn’t really want to touch on this yesterday. I really hoped the story about President Trump coming out and declaring that pregnant mothers taking paracetamol was the cause of autism would just die a quick death in the news.

But it made an impact - as you may have seen.

Comments like Trump’s are hugely frustrating and unhelpful. They cause concern among expectant mothers about the use of paracetamol. As stated by the NZ College of Midwives yesterday, “high quality scientific evidence does not demonstrate a causal link or association between paracetamol use and autism or other developmental concerns.

"Large, high-quality studies —including population data from Sweden involving over two million children— found no increased risk of autism, ADHD, or intellectual disability from paracetamol use during pregnancy.”

You could also ask mothers of autistic children —and the ones I know are scratching their heads— because they didn’t use paracetamol when pregnant.

Please, if you are a pregnant mum out there, follow the advice of your doctor, not a politician.

Reputable clinicians and researchers have been working for decades to understand this complex neurodevelopmental syndrome, and the widely held view of researchers is that there is no single cause; rather, it is thought to be the result of a complex mix of mostly genetic and to a lesser extent environmental factors.

When you have autism in the family, you don’t think about cure or cause, you focus on helping that person live their best life. And they can live a great life.

The rise in reported autism cases is not a "horrible crisis", as Trump has described it. There’s a simple reason why the number of cases has increased. It’s not because of vaccines, but rather the result of changes in the way autism is defined and assessed.

In the 1980s autism was tightly defined and considered extremely rare, but then Asperger’s syndrome, which is much milder in severity than classic autism, and much more common, was added as a diagnosis.

In 2013, Asperger syndrome was eliminated as a stand-alone diagnosis and folded into the newly introduced concept of autism spectrum disorder – hence an increase in diagnosis under that one umbrella. That and more general awareness of ASD has led to more people getting themselves or their children assessed. And yes, the difficulty of diagnosing autism can lead to misdiagnosis as well.

But implying autism is something to fear, something that needs to be erased, is offensive. Yes there are high support need cases which are hugely challenging for families, and yes living with a disability in a world that isn’t designed for you is difficult.

But with support, autistic people live productive, interesting and rich lives, and quite frankly, the world would be so much less without them.

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