Hotez is the dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Houston’s Baylor College of Medicine, and he co-directs the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development. His many books include “The Deadly Rise of Anti-Science” and the new “Science Under Siege,” which he co-wrote with Michael E. Mann.
“He picks things that seem designed to get clicks on the internet. He gravitates toward magical-seeming, spectacular explanations like Tylenol and circumcision,†said Peter Hotez. www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/outl...
— Gary Schwitzer (@garyschw.bsky.social) 2025-10-10T12:18:08.319Z
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/outlook/article/hotez-autism-circumcision-rfk-21093425.php?utm_campaign=CMS%20Sharing%20Tools%20(Premium)&utm_source=t.co&utm_medium=referral
In a White House Cabinet meeting Thursday, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said that boys who are circumcised are twice as likely to be diagnosed later with autism. Kennedy speculated that maybe it’s because circumcised boys are given Tylenol for pain.
"That’s absurd,” said vaccine scientist and author Peter Hotez, who has long disagreed with Kennedy’s pronouncements about the causes of autism.
“His statements are increasingly untethered to reality,” Hotez said Friday. “It’s actually worrisome that he’d pick circumcision as a factor to highlight.”......
Hotez is frustrated:
“One, he still doesn’t acknowledge the role that genes play in autism.
“Two, he doesn’t acknowledge actual, well documented environmental factors. Lots of studies find weak associations for all sorts of things. But the evidence for some environmental factors, like Valproic, is much, much stronger.
“And three, he picks things that seem designed to get clicks on the internet. He gravitates toward magical-seeming, spectacular explanations like Tylenol and circumcision.
= new reply since forum marked as read