About a week ago, I joked to someone that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was going to say that clouds cause autism; he’d been quiet for a week or two, which meant he would be plucking something new out of the sky.
It turns out that I chose the wrong C-word. On Thursday, Kennedy, the secretary of health and human services, said in a cabinet meeting, “There’s two studies that show children who are circumcised early have double the rate of autism. It’s highly likely because they’re given Tylenol.” Was he trying to persuade parents to avoid circumcision, Tylenol (the most popular brand of acetaminophen) or both?
It’s really anyone’s guess, though it’s worth noting that the Children’s Health Defense, the organization started by Kennedy, has videos on its website discouraging new parents from hepatitis B vaccines and circumcision for their newborns — suggesting that it’s all part of the same anti-establishment soup.
Scientists who research autism have pointed out that the studies that Kennedy appears to be referring to about male circumcision are small and observational, that babies may not even be given acetaminophen after the procedure and that more recent studies with better methodologies show no association between circumcision and short- or long-term adverse psychological issues.
Kennedy added that “none of this is positive” but that any people who take acetaminophen during pregnancy unless they have to is “irresponsible.” As I previously wrote, there’s no good evidence that most pregnant women are misusing acetaminophen, and any link between acetaminophen and autism is far from proven.
Sometimes I wonder if it’s useful for me to get into the wacky statements Kennedy makes, because he makes so many of them and I worry that I’m only amplifying his incomplete or inaccurate messages. But I have come to the conclusion that it’s necessary because his public statements have so much power and reach.
The day after the Trump administration pushed the link between Tylenol and autism, KFF, a nonpartisan health research organization, polled Americans about the claim. It found: “Most adults — including majorities across many demographics — express uncertainty, saying the unproven claim is either ‘probably true’ or ‘probably false.’ Belief in this claim is closely tied to partisanship, with most Republicans, including over half of Republican women, saying it is either ‘probably’ or ‘definitely true.’”
It seems clear that what Kennedy says, no matter how distantly tethered to scientific consensus, is successful at driving the public health conversation. Even as his statements are debunked by the most experienced researchers and disbelieved by many Americans, every time he mentions a fringe, unproven theory, it gains a firmer foothold and a measure of undeserved legitimacy.
Circumcision is an instructive example, because it epitomizes the Kennedy method of undermining public health expertise. Whether this is conscious or not, he seizes on hot-button issues that already have entrenched and aggressive internet partisans, uses quasi-scientific language and bolsters his case using minor, cherry-picked studies. As a result, he muddies the water and creates more guilt and confusion among new parents who are already inundated with conflicting information online.
Let me say upfront that on the issue of circumcision, I am Switzerland. As the mother of girls, I haven’t faced this choice. While there are real health benefits to the procedure, like a reduced risk of some sexually transmitted infections and a lower incidence of urinary conditions, the American Academy of Pediatrics stops short of a universal recommendation. That’s because the issue is complex and, as the group explains, “parents ultimately should decide whether circumcision is in the best interests of their male child. They will need to weigh medical information in the context of their own religious, ethical and cultural beliefs and practices.”
This seems reasonable, and caring parents — who should be adequately informed about the risks and benefits — can disagree on whether the procedure is right for their child. This is not an issue like measles vaccination in the United States, for which there is an abundance of evidence for a universal recommendation and there’s no reliable way outside of vaccination to prevent the spread of the disease.
But there is no agree to disagree on the internet. Very loud anticircumcision partisans have been flooding the comments of articles and social media posts about the procedure for over a decade, long before Kennedy blundered into the issue.
In 2013, Slate’s Marc Joseph Stern described how self-proclaimed intactivists (“intact” + “activist”) went on the offensive wherever circumcision was discussed online, with a combination of untrue and exaggerated claims. “Intactivists pummeled the Amazon rankings of a book about the history of AIDS that mentioned circumcision as a proven preventive measure. Check any internet message board, and you’ll find the same ideas peddled as unimpeachable fact: Circumcision is amputation, a brutally cruel and despicable form of abuse. It damages penises and violates human rights. And it irrevocably, undeniably ruins male sexuality for life.”
Which brings me back to Kennedy’s bizarre statements (which also included a description of a woman as having “a baby in her placenta,” an anatomically impossible situation). Parents who are trying to make an informed decision about whether to circumcise their child are probably more confused now than they were last week, and parents who circumcised their children have another issue to worry and feel guilty about — autism — that probably never occurred to them.
Perhaps, by bringing circumcision into the chat, Kennedy is trying to distract us from an ongoing measles outbreak that has required hundreds of unvaccinated grade schoolers to quarantine or from the chaos at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where just in the past week the Trump administration fired hundreds of workers and then rehired some of them, because our president and his appointees don’t seem to know how their own organizations function.
Or maybe Kennedy’s just totally unqualified for the job and, like many of Trump’s cabinet members, was selected to undermine the public’s faith in the establishment even further.
End Notes
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Trash: The second season of “English Teacher,” a sitcom on FX about a group of high school teachers in Austin, Texas, might be my favorite thing on TV right now. One episode, “Trash,” stands out as both incredibly funny and brutally potent social commentary. Evan, an English teacher and the main character, gets A.I. trash cans installed at his high school on the advice of his tech employee boyfriend, who works at the company. I won’t spoil the punchlines for you, but this episode should be required viewing for every teenager, because satire is so much more effective than some boring opinion essay written by your mom. It sends the message that “free” equipment isn’t so free when the price is your data.
Jessica Grose is an Opinion writer for The Times, covering family, religion, education, culture and the way we live now.
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