The Politics of Autism, Part Two

This story by Jennifer Shutt appeared on Colorado Newsline on September 24, 2025. We are sharing it in two parts.

Read Part One

Carissa Cascio, a senior scientist at the University of Kansas Life Span Institute, reinforced that autism is “strictly diagnosed based on behavior.”

Cascio said that when it comes to environmental factors, studies have shown pregnancy or the very early post-natal time frame are key.

“We’re still parsing this out, but some of the environmental factors that seem to have more evidence behind them than others are older parental age, perinatal trauma, premature birth and low birth weight,” Cascio said. “And then there’s some maternal health factors that are gathering some evidence as well. So maternal infection and immune response, maternal exposure to medications or pollutants are sort of gathering some evidence.”

While much more research is needed on the many potential environmental factors, Cascio said scientists know vaccines are not a component.

“The things that we definitely can rule out are things that have been studied in great depth and not really produced much association. So you know, the idea that vaccines cause autism is a common belief. There have been dozens and dozens of studies that have all failed to find any association between vaccines and autism,” Cascio said.

There’s also not yet a clear link with Tylenol, also called acetaminophen, as a possible environmental factor.

“It is unlikely that this is the smoking gun that they’re hoping for,” Cascio said. “I think we all want to understand this better, but this is certainly not something that we feel has a strong weight of evidence behind it yet.”

A spokesperson for Kenvue, the company that manufactures Tylenol, wrote in a statement released in connection with the Trump-Kennedy press conference that “acetaminophen is the safest pain reliever option for pregnant women as needed throughout their entire pregnancy.

“Without it, women face dangerous choices: suffer through conditions like fever that are potentially harmful to both mom and baby or use riskier alternatives. High fevers and pain are widely recognized as potential risks to a pregnancy if left untreated.”

Why have autism diagnoses increased over several decades?

Health and Human Services Secretary Kennedy has repeatedly raised concerns with an increase in autism diagnoses over several decades, but experts say there are logical reasons for this.

“In the early 1990s the CDC set up a system to collect and count the number of people with autism,” said Autism Science Foundation Chief Science Officer Dr. Alycia Halladay. “So it definitely has increased since then, but one of the main reasons that’s been shown over and over again is access to services.”

Halladay believes most of the increase is due to greater knowledge and access, though she said, “there is room for some of the increase in autism to be a true increase in the number of people with autism due to something else.”

Dr. Michael Murray, a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health at the Penn State College of Medicine, explained that about 60% to 70% of people diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum are characterized as having “low-support needs, meaning that they clearly have the features of autism, but they are able to, with the appropriate level of supports, be in traditional schools or typical schools; they can, with job support, work and lead their lives the way they choose to.”

When Murray began his career, he said, those people never would have been diagnosed as having autism.

“Secondly, we as a professional community are getting better and better at picking up these symptoms, particularly in kids who are quite young,” Murray said.

During the late 1980s and 1990s, Cascio said, a new version of the DSM and better tools helped medical professionals more accurately diagnose people along the entire autism spectrum.

Additionally, Cascio said, there’s a similar concept called diagnostic substitution, where people who in the past may have been diagnosed with something else are now being correctly diagnosed with autism.
How much research has been done on autism and over how many years?

Scientists have been researching autism for decades, building on past work to better understand how to diagnose and assist people across the spectrum, though experts said more is needed.

“The many, many scientific discoveries and funding into understanding autism has promoted scientists moving into the field,” Halladay said. “So there’s clearly an increased number over the past two decades of the number of people who are focused on studying autism.”

Murray said the first papers published in scientific journals regarding autism were in 1944.

“So it is 80 years, at a minimum, of work,” Murray said.

Murray reiterated that autism spectrum disorders are not simple to study and said a “really important paper came out earlier this year talking about how there’s four genetically recognizable subtypes of autism. So it’s not a single autism. It is, at the very least, four autisms, and probably more.”

Cascio said addressing any aspect of autism is complicated.

“The behavior is complex. The genetics are complex. The brain is complex,” Cascio said. “And so this makes it a huge challenge for research. And there’s certainly no possibility that we would go from not fully understanding the causes of autism to having a definitive cause in five months.”
What are some of the biggest misconceptions about autism?

The internet has led to misinformation, and in many cases disinformation, and health diagnoses are no exception.

Halladay said people often try to simplify autism or believe an actor’s portrayal in a television show or movie is representative of everyone on the spectrum.

“I think that because of the narrative of autism being oversimplified, that people are not understanding that it’s a more complex disorder,” she said.

Murray said the autism spectrum may be pictured as a straight line and an expectation arises when someone is diagnosed that they are in just one spot.

“That’s not really the way it is. There are needs or strengths that show up variably depending on the demands of the situation,” Murray said. “So for instance, someone who has a really exquisite sensitivity to sound, if they are attending a symphony, that may make that experience so much more rich for him or her versus the average person.

“But if they are at a rock concert, it may be overwhelming. The same trait can be a source of vulnerability or a strength depending on the situation.”

Murray said there’s often a misconception that all people with autism are antisocial or don’t want to make and maintain friendships.

“And that’s true for some people, right? They aren’t really interested in social interactions. It’s not their thing,” Murray said. “It’s also true for some neurotypical people that they’re really not interested in social interactions. But the vast, vast majority of autistic individuals just want a friend, and they want someone who they can count on and rely on. They want to be loved, just like everyone else in the world … They just need more supports or different situations to have that happen.”

Cascio said that people can form misconceptions after seeing actors portray people along the spectrum.

“I first became interested in autism after watching the movie ‘Rain Man,’” Cascio said. “And I think there’s a lot of people who see a depiction like that and think, ‘Okay, this is what autism looks like.’ And there’s just so much more complexity and variability from person to person and I would say that’s probably the biggest misconception.”

Cascio said it’s also human nature to want one clear answer to why someone develops autism or any other health diagnosis, but that oftentimes the best science shows a more complicated picture.

“It’s uncomfortable for us to say, ‘This is really complex and we don’t understand it yet,’” she said. “And so when there is something that people hold up and say, ‘Here’s an explanation.’ I think it can be really tempting for people to just want to have it solved. And that’s a very natural reaction.”