FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary tells Scripps News 'I don't think autism is genetic'
Source: Scripps News
Posted 5:49 PM, Sep 26, 2025 and last updated 1 hour and 49 minutes ago
Dr. Marty Makary, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, said he does not believe autism is a genetic condition, calling it instead a “modern-day phenomenon.”
"I don't believe autism is genetic. When you see the severe autism that we see, at the high rate that we see today — the repeated motions, the ticks, the individuals who are completely nonverbal, you didn't see that a generation ago," he said in an interview with Scripps News. "You still don't see people in their 60s and 70s with those symptoms — the sort of repetitive motions, the completely non-verbal individuals."
This week, federal health officials warned of the possible link between Tylenol and its active ingredient, acetaminophen, during pregnancy to autism — despite contested science.
"The number one thing was that we found for some kids, autism is an autoimmune disease, whereby their body is reacting to the folate receptor on the brain, blocking the brain from getting this critical vitamin," Makary said. "There's a treatment called leucovorin that some kids take and have a marked improvement in their autistic symptoms." Makary explained that he and the FDA are now investigating a theory that recent rates of severe autism are not genetic.
Read more: https://www.scrippsnews.com/health/fda-commissioner-dr-marty-makary-tells-scripps-news-i-dont-think-autism-is-genetic
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Walleye
(43,145 posts)
Bernardo de La Paz
(60,320 posts)
Timeflyer
(3,520 posts)
Hekate
(100,129 posts)
RedArkGuy
(845 posts)Either of assisted suicide, outright murdered or of neglect.
Skittles
(168,546 posts)long ago many autistic folk were probably put in sanatoriums
why do these fucking morons keep lying about autism? WTF
LiberalArkie
(19,102 posts)A lot of words for people like me. Now that I know what I am, I can look at my family tree and spot guys like myself back in the 1000's.
Even all the western and cowboy shows always had characters who were just the blacksmith who was single, lived alone, just did the job, went home, ate slept and went back to the work location. No parties, no socializing just solitude and maybe a hobby. Just the people who kept things working and the ones who were always made fun of.
The reason they believe it is something new is because of the Internet. We can now find other people like ourselves. we can now figure out
"OMG, THAT IS WHY I AM LIKE I AM". and that folks is an amazing thing to find out when you are in your 60's. Now 77 and that was the best thing I ever found out.
Skittles
(168,546 posts)yes, as the sister of a severely autistic younger brother it is heartbreaking to realize how such folk were treated in the past and so disgusting to see what is going on now - what Trump and RFJ Jr are doing is pretty much the GOP playbook now - find a target and demonize them.......they've done it to POC, immigrants, LGBTQ, and now anyone on the Spectrum........seems to me like none of those folk are the issue, MAGA assholes are the real problem
LiberalArkie
(19,102 posts)Someone asks "Can I use your car?" Yea sir
"Can I borrow $500?" Oh. all I have is $450, but here ya go.
The big one... Neighbor asks me to leave my house to him in my will. I told him that I do not have a will as I do not have anything worth anything but my little house and the banks would put a lean on it for credit card debt anyway.
Well you can just let us have it and we will take care of it..
Never thought that my neighbor would charge me rent on something that cost them nothing..
Yea, if he is inclined to be a friendly and giving person, this is a very big deal..
In my 20's a guy at work asked me to co-sign a note for a new 69 Corvette.. Yep, skipped out
I hope kids these days are taught that us on the spectrum are VERY EASY marks. People do not have to work very hard even to con us.
Skittles
(168,546 posts)yes I can see how that could happen, for sure
my brother received benefits from my dad's military service and I can easily see some families trying to take advantage of that
LiberalArkie
(19,102 posts)I had had decent paying jobs, but kept giving it away. I think it stems from wanting to have friends and only attracting narcissistic people. Those seem to see us coming from a mile away.
I remember working in NYC and going out with co workers every few nights and end up paying for all the drinks. Always..
Now I know about it and I still almost give in, but I reach for my phone in my pocket like I have a call and their moment is gone. A side note is now that I have told a couple of people is that they never ask me for anything at all, ever.
Good luck
Skittles
(168,546 posts)Last edited Sat Sep 27, 2025, 06:25 PM - Edit history (1)
he was in hospice and due to Covid I could not visit him - I was out of state and skyped with him via a nurse but he looked confused, like he didn't recognize me
I feel sad when I think of his life - autistic folk notoriously don't like change but that's all we had growing up in a military family - we moved constantly, sometimes overseas.....different schools almost yearly.
Now when so much more is known about autism there should be great advances in how such children are educated, for example......but now we have a bunch of quacks using these folk as political targets.....it is deeply disturbing.
LiberalArkie
(19,102 posts)Sadness is one of the things that people have a hard time expressing. I believe most of us feel it very deeply, so very deeply, but we do not show it. Except for maybe just shutting down. So people think we are very cold hearted.
I guess that is why I was designated to do my mothers funeral, then my fathers funeral.
And then the designated person to sign the papers to terminate life support for my sister. Not her husband, not her son, but me.
I think they are targeting people deemed unworthy, similarity to what was done in Germany during the early stages of the Nazi regime. "Lebensunwertes Leben." It is the predictable next step in the catastrophic course down which we are being driven.
To understand the gravity of such rhetoric, we must revisit one of the most chilling ideological and bureaucratic programmes of the 20th century: Aktion T4 in Nazi Germany. Between 1939 and 1945, this state-sanctioned “euthanasia” programme targeted individuals deemed “Lebensunwertes Leben”—“life unworthy of life.” The victims were not soldiers, criminals, or political opponents; they were disabled children, neurodivergent individuals, people with mental illness or intellectual disabilities—those who, in the regime’s cold estimation, failed to meet a standard of economic or biological “fitness.”
Before the gas chambers of Auschwitz and Sobibor, before the industrialised murder of millions, came the sterilisation clinics and “mercy killings” in German hospitals. These early atrocities were justified not on the grounds of hatred or vengeance, but on economics. The Nazi regime framed the existence of disabled and neurodivergent people as a financial burden on the state. In internal documents and propaganda, their continued care was described as wasteful, inefficient, and unfair to the productive majority. The German term Ausmerzen, meaning “to eradicate,” was used to describe this policy of quiet, systematic elimination.
The machinery of death began not with bullets or gas—but with ideas. With speeches. With normalised conversations about who “contributes” to society, and who does not. And now, nearly a century later, we are hearing faint but unmistakable echoes of that same logic.
https://publichealthpolicyjournal.com/life-unworthy-of-life-historical-amnesia-ausmerzen-and-the-rhetoric-surrounding-autism/
Lovie777
(21,070 posts)I think it is genetic.
I had a severely autistic younger brother and also I remember a great-uncle who was a lot like him - of course, back then he was pegged as "brain damaged" (my younger brother was labeled "emotionally disturbed)" - but even as a kid I knew Uncle Henry was in many ways smarter than the people around him - and my younger brother, he had savant tendencies with certain subjects, like sports.....he read extensively and knew a lot.
yardwork
(68,532 posts)The head of the FDA doesn't know that there are nonverbal people with autism in their 60s and 70s?
He's never heard of group homes?
mwmisses4289
(2,732 posts)yardwork
(68,532 posts)
BumRushDaShow
(163,096 posts)I remember back in the late '60s, such a facility was opened near where I grew up called "Northwest Center". During the '80s, when many of the "institutions" had closed or were being phased out, they expanded exponentially in the Philly metro area. Now they have locations across the state and looking it up, they were apparently bought in 2018 and now go by the name "Merakey", a non-profit entity that provides developmental and mental health services for adults. I expect they even offer rehabilitative services for individuals to be able to operate in the workplace (the federal government has hired employees from places like that to do custodial and other services work).
Marthe48
(22,317 posts)more like
Martin68
(26,619 posts)that I know of. Farther back it is difficult to discern.
yardwork
(68,532 posts)We now call a lot of things "autism" that were described in different ways over the ages. I see it all over my family tree, too.
I think a lot of "geniuses" who invented and created things were on the autism spectrum.
PSPS
(15,098 posts)Another quack on bob's payroll who has his own "beliefs" like some people "believe" the earth is flat. Forget science, go on your "gut feeling" (and whatever gets more sales for your wacky books!!111!!)
BootinUp
(50,612 posts)Quack, Quack, Quack, Quack, Quack, Quack,
Quack, Quack, Quack, Quack, Quack, Quack,
Quack, Quack, Quack, Quack, Quack, Quack,
Quack, Quack, Quack, Quack, Quack, Quack …
twodogsbarking
(16,596 posts)
liberalgunwilltravel
(991 posts)Is a bunch of quacks pushing junk science and lies. Everyone of them should lose their medical license, if they even have one. And they should all be charged with reckless endangerment.
NH Ethylene
(31,252 posts)We are as close minded as RFK if we don't consider all angles on autism. There seems to be a genetic component, but there are a number of environmental insults to the nervous system in our modern world that could conceivably account for the high incidence of autism (and yes, it's high, even considering how many kids are diagnosed with mild forms who would not have been in past decades). So many, in fact, it would be hard to pin down causative factors because there are just so many, particularly exposures during pregnancy, toxins such as pesticides, air pollution, heavy metal exposure, etc. Also the older ages of new mothers. Vaccines containing ethylmercury were a good candidate for study, back in the day, but of course studies ruled them out plus they were phased out in 2001.
RFK's anti-vaccine stance is ridiculous and dangerous, but genetic vs environmental causes of autism are not football teams where you back one or the other. A curious and open mind is needed to get to the root cause (or more likely, causes) of such a prevalent disorder.
ananda
(33,946 posts)Period.
eppur_se_muova
(40,521 posts)Autism as a medical term was only introduced in 1911. And the recognition that there is a 'spectrum' of related conditions is much more recent.
It's a classic case of "there weren't as many cases reported in the past because they weren't recognized in the past". True of many phenomena, and not just in medicine.
The number of people who died of COVID-19 initially was heavily under-reported because not every case was autopsied, so an ultimate (as opposed to proximate) Cause of Death was not established. It wasn't worth the risk of exposure to a highly contagious and fairly lethal disease for the Medical Examiners to be examining the bodies of people who obviously had COVID, but it meant they couldn't sign off on COVID as the established cause.
Deaths due to heatstroke are largely under-reported because the forensic evidence for heatstroke is far from unique, and hard to distinguish from other causes. The living patient may have suffered from heatstroke in an obvious way and under obvious circumstances as confirmed by multiple witnesses, but chances are that won't be reported as the COD, particularly if the patient was already in ill health otherwise.
This is such a well-established, known defect in the study of diseases that no "expert" has any right to be unaware of it -- but RFKJ appointed him anyway.
ananda
(33,946 posts)I really like the term neuro-divergent.
eppur_se_muova
(40,521 posts)We still don't understand it very well at all, but denying that it exists, or promoting quack conspiracy theories re. its cause(s) is no longer even remotely consistent with what few facts ARE known.
ananda
(33,946 posts)And, I know for a fact, that neuro-divergent
people are wonderful and have a lot to offer
all of us.
Response to eppur_se_muova (Reply #34)
valleyrogue This message was self-deleted by its author.
womanofthehills
(10,604 posts)My significant other who is very bright, college educated has an autism diagnosis -
But so does a friend’s child who can’t speak, swirls around, bangs his head, is not bathroom trained and will never have a job or live independently. I think instead of one long spectrum- it should be divided.
We know that pesticides, heavy metals, toxic chemicals could be involved. When saying it’s genetic - a second possibility could be lots of people in same family exposed to same toxins -
Example - Navajo SW families all living in a house built with radioactive soil, entire farm families exposed to pesticides, even a non farm family where someone is always setting pesticide bombs in their house. So many toxins in the world - just living near a factory. In NM, rows of houses around Intel are vacant because of toxic fumes being released.
Nothing is black and white.
Tanuki
(16,162 posts)The behaviors he says were unheard of a generation ago were common knowledge not only in the medical and mental health communities but to anyone who read Life magazine 60 years ago:
https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article-abstract/133/3/364/32244/Screams-Slaps-and-Love-The-Strange-Birth-of?redirectedFrom=fulltext
"On May 7, 1965, an extraordinary photo essay titled “Screams, Slaps, and Love” appeared in the pages of Life magazine. It portrayed the lives of 4 “utterly withdrawn children whose minds are sealed against all human contact and whose uncontrolled madness had turned their homes into hells.”1 Their diagnosis was “childhood schizophrenia,” the term applied at the time to the condition we know as autism. Two were nonverbal, 2 others had no language other than endlessly repeating television commercial jingles, and all 4 exhibited very disruptive behaviors such as head-banging to the point of bruising.
The article’s focus was on a novel treatment that had recently been developed for autism at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). In an age when psychoanalytic ideas dominated therapy for autism in the United States, this new intervention was grounded in behaviorism.2 The therapists in the photo essay were depicted..."
3catwoman3
(28,107 posts)
struggle4progress
(125,130 posts)Do we ask the autism experts for their views on surgical oncology? No? Then maybe we shouldn't ask surgical oncologists for their views on autism
chelsea0011
(10,186 posts)lobectomy because of her mood swings. It’s not known if she was autistic or on the spectrum or some other form of illness or not. That was a thing in the 50’s and 60’s. That would be RFK Jr’s aunt.
Aussie105
(7,395 posts)Today's 'autistic' child's brain is busy accumulating information, digesting it, categorizing it . . . he/she may be tomorrow's brilliant scientist, researcher, politician, business leader.
We are all different, we develop in different ways, different speeds, with different outcomes.
No one should judge.
The quiet introspective adult may look at the world and wonder why so many people are loudly unintelligent.
lonely bird
(2,611 posts)The first sentence is inaccurate.
It should read:
“FDA Commisioner Dr. Marty Makary tells Scripps News ‘I don’t think’” period.