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Autism Parenting Secrets
Don’t Blindly Trust “The Science”
00:50:03
Dr. William Parker returns to discuss why modern scientific research often misses the real cause of chronic conditions, including autism. He explains how incentives, study design, and interpretation can lead to misleading conclusions that affect parents’ decisions. The secret this week is… Don’t Blindly Trust “The Science”
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- [00:00]
A
Modern science is not incentivized to ask, why. Why do people get autism? It's not. They're incentivized to study it and understand the actual condition itself much better. And the same is true with the autoimmune disease or an allergy, for example, but they're not incentivized to go. And this is an important topic for people to understand. I have, unfortunately, fortunately. Or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, I've got a lot of expertise in this because I tend to study why, and it doesn't tend to be fundable in the modern scientific arena, which means that as far as incentives, a modern scientist would not. It just wouldn't be attractive to them because you can't keep your lab running. You have to pay the people in your lab or your lab will shut down.
- [00:50]
B
If you're a parent of a child with autism, you are being called to rise with love, courage and clarity. This journey isn't easy, and most parents aren't equipped, but you can be. This podcast is your invitation to rise higher, because how you navigate matters. I'm Len, and this is Autism Parenting Secrets, where you become the parent your child needs now.
- [01:17]
C
Hello and welcome. This week, we're going to go deeper into something that. That affects just about every decision you make for your child, how you interpret science. And there's more information available than ever before. Studies, headlines, expert opinions are everywhere. And yet I know so many parents, including myself, feel confused, overwhelmed, sometimes stuck. And the question is, why? And today, what we're going to focus on is that even with credible research that might be out there, that it's easy to miss the real signal that might be in that research. And if you don't know how to look at it, it's easy to draw the wrong conclusions sometimes. So my guest this week is Dr. William Parker. He is returning to the show, and he is someone who's got a very storied career at a high level. Dr. Parker earned his PhD in chemistry and spent nearly 30 years at Duke University studying biochemistry, microbiology, and immunology. And more recently, his work is really focused on how acetaminophen and oxidative stress impact neurodevelopment. So in our last conversation, we explored the potential risks of Tylenol. And in this episode, we're gonna take it further. We're gonna unpack why so many research studies continue to miss the real risk and how scientific systems can overlook what matters most and what that means for you as a parent, as you're trying to make the best decisions for your child. So this is really an episode about discernment, because the goal isn't just to gather more information. It's to understand what's actually true and what applies to your child. So the secret this week is don't blindly trust the science. Welcome, Dr. Parker.
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A
Lyn, it's a pleasure to be here. It's good to see you again.
- [03:13]
C
Absolutely. I know we saw each other at the MAPS conference a few weeks back, and I know you were quite in demand with people really valuing your opinion, and you're back on the show pretty soon after the last episode. And I know we've talked a little bit about this concept that we're going to dive deeper into today. So again, I'm going to hand it back to you in terms of framing this concept that there's science out there and yes, we need to be aware of who's generating the science. Who do you trust? And, you know, but I think the idea of how you look at papers and what questions you might ask yourself, that's something that most of us don't know. And I think you have a lot of valuable insights there. So what is it that somebody listening, what are the key takeaways that you'd like them to better understand?
- [04:02]
A
You know, at the MAPS conference, which we, we were both at just now, I did, I was in high demand and, and you know, I was talking and I gave a lecture on the connection between acetaminophen and, and autism spectrum disorder. But interestingly, I was not in the most demand for that issue. I was in the most demand for another issue that I've worked on for probably about twice as long as I've worked on. I mean, you're talking decades of work looking at what makes our immune systems unstable, going back to some research from the 1960s, even right when I, I was just in diapers at that time when some of that research was done. So, you know, it's, it's a very interesting. When you, your question about the science, I'm going to put the science in, quote, Mark. So there's science and then there's how we practice science. And so when people are looking at, you know, a student just asked me yesterday, said, well, what's. What causes celiac disease? And of course, if you, if you look up a paper, scientific paper, it'll say, well, it's polygenic and immune related disorder, which of course means they know that the immune system has a lot to do with it, and they know that there's a lot of Genetics involved, but they really have no idea what causes it. They're more describing the disease itself, itself, not what caused it. So that's, I think it's, you know, and when we look at what gives us allergies, what gives. Why did 20% of postmenopausal women have depression? You know, why do 8% of women have an autoimmune disorder? And then why do, you know, 3% of our children have autism spectrum disorder? And then the new numbers coming out from California are even more shocking than that, I can tell you that, Lynn. I've seen those. So the. As far as autism spectrum disorder. So if you look at the science, it's. I think the number one thing that I would like to get across to people is that the way that science functions the way so, and I have to be careful. So there's, there's, there's science which is. You could think of it as a machine. It's sort of, it's much like a car. All right, so, but what you do with science, how you utilize science, that is a separate issue than science itself. Right? Science is just a study of the universe and physical reality and how that works. So on the other hand, how we human beings engage in science is, Is really interesting. So you can, you can look back, for example, in 1968, and a guy named Brian Greenwood, sort of, he figured out why people get autoimmune diseases. And then 1972, a gentleman named Peter John Preston followed it up and figured out, oh, it's the same thing that's causing allergies. But then if you look at any kind of modern scientific literature about autoimmune disease and allergies, it's deep in the details, and they're not talking about some of those simple things. And by simple, we'll get into it a little bit. Just some really simple things discovered in the 1960s and early 1970s that tell us why. So it's. And the main thing I want to get across to people is modern science is not incentivized to ask why. Why do people get autism? It's not. They're incentivized to study it and understand the actual, the actual condition itself much better. And same is true with the autoimmune disease or an allergy, for example, but they're not incentivized to go. And we'll. I think that's. This is an important topic for people to understand. I have, unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, I've got a lot of expertise in this Because I tend to study why. And it doesn't tend to be. It doesn't tend to be fundable in the modern scientific arena. Which means that as far as incentives, a modern scientist would not. Is just wouldn't be attractive to them because you can't keep your lab running and you have. You have to pay the people in your lab or your lab will shut down. Right?
- [08:19]
C
So I think that's worth focusing on for a little bit in terms of the objective, right, in terms of the why, uncovering the root cause and to what end. I think what you're teeing up, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that forget about science as much as it is just the health and wellness industry, the machine, the pharmaceutical machine, there's a lack of an incentive to getting to the root cause and eradicating anything because that is not in any way profitable, right. So that the overall objectives aren't about getting to the root cause and eradicating some disease. Then again, if that's the primary objective, then that's going to translate into ultimately what gets funded, what studies are done. So is that how you would characterize it? That the goal of the science oftentimes is not revealing and coming up with suggestions on how to address the root cause?
- [09:25]
A
Well, I'm going to be honest with you, Lyn. One of the things that's hard for me to understand is that I've been in the academic realm. And in the academic realm, the focus, it's. I mean, we're not. We're not industry people, right? We are academics. And the focus is not on understanding the underlying cause of disease. It's on digging deeper and deeper into molecular mechanisms. You know, very sort of. It's. You can think of it as you've got an immune system that's very, very complicated and there's a thousand things and that may not be an exaggeration that can go wrong. If you get into immune environment where our immune system is not meant to be, and then we just get into. In academics, we get into these amazing details that keeps our labs funded if we dig deeper and deeper and deeper. So it seems to me, and again, hard for me to understand that somehow we have the same incentives as industry, but maybe for different reasons. You know, if we, if we know, for example, that that vitamin C will take care of scurvy, then nobody, you can't get funded to study scurvy. So pretty much nobody studies beriberi or scurvy or rickets because we know how to treat those. So if we said, well, all right, in 1968, somebody figured out, wow, if we wipe out all of our. We call them complex eukaryotic symbionts, but we could just call them intestinal worms. Then suddenly. And there's lots of bad ones, and there's some that are completely harmless. If we wipe them all out, then suddenly we get these propensities for autoimmune disease. And then we find out later, a couple of years later, 1972, well, and that's also allergy. And then my lab did a lot of work at Duke University saying, well, it's also depression and anxiety disorders, same root cause. But then the question is, well, why in 1973, didn't we start saying, well, wow, how do we. What we call is reconstitute the biome. How do we put this system back together so it'll function? You know, put the vitamin C back in, or the vitamin D. Right. Or the. You know, it's just. It's a. It's. And we're academics. Right? But. And so if we think about it, making. Producing vitamin C and selling it, that's not really something academics do. Right. We don't do that. And cultivating a benign or harmless intestinal worm and putting that back into the system, that's not really something academics do. So I hear what you're saying about industry is focused on this, but maybe for different reasons. And again, I'm not an expert on the social nature of how science works, even though I've been in it for decades, but it seems that it's almost a completely different set of motivations which is pushing us scientists to study these detailed, detailed details without actually backing away and looking at the big picture and saying, well, you know, we could just fix this. You know, we could take away acetaminophen and the prevalence of autism, would plummet. For example, as we talked about last time, you know, that's, again, not really an academic pursuit, but an academic pursuit might be to look at all the immune markers or all the markers associated with the microbiota function that are connected with autism spectrum disorder. That would be something that you could get your lab funded with and keep it running.
- [12:50]
C
Right? Right. And there's no way of just simplifying this with, like, one view. There's a lot of forces that are at play and a lot of great science that is being done. But the reality is. And nobody can attest to this better than you. Right. If you have a lab and you're conducting these studies, the funding is needed. Right. You need funding. And again, where the funding's coming from, can that influence what ultimately gets done? You know, absolutely. And that's where, again, it's about who's doing the research, who is funding it, what did they reveal? Sometimes, I know, parents especially, I'm sure there's many people like me where I may read the headline, I may read the summary, but I'm not going to read the full study. And a lot of times, as you were alluding to, there might be a lot of details in that full study that are really important, that aren't getting the headlines and that people aren't talking about. So can you talk a little bit more about, like, as somebody who's just listening to this, what tools do they need to have in their toolbox to better read for themselves, as opposed to just going with, let's say, what a news media, their spin on what a research study says. So how can parents be practicing more discernment and perhaps more skepticism, particularly for studies that are obviously being funded by forces that may have very different objectives?
- [14:17]
A
Right. So one of the questions that we can ask, anyone can ask when looking at a study is, what is the point of the study? Right? So if there's very few studies that are out there that are trying to really say, all right, what caused this problem? Because that's. Instead, most of the studies are out there digging deeper and deeper into the detail. So you get, then you get what we have now, which is literally over 1 million papers published in the biomedical literature every single year. And what that means is if you, if somebody tried to read every single one, I think they would have to read one every two minutes without sleeping, without taking weekends off for the entire year. And then they would sort of be caught up that, I mean, it's, it's ridiculous. And that may be two every one minute. But anyway, it's, it's a lot. It's a ridiculous number of papers. Nobody can keep up with it. So the idea then is, well, okay, let's look at the review papers. And this is, that's sort of a good idea, is to look at the review papers and see what's the gestalt, what's the overall thinking in the field and where's it going. And a lot of times those papers will tell you where things are going the next, you know, and in the field of immunology, a lot of it is, well, what's the next flight? Flavor of the month or flavor of the year and a half is usually how long they'll last or something. What's the next big molecule in immunology which is telling you what drug targets they're looking at, but it's not going to tell you what caused the problem initially. So it depends on what. If you're really interested in how do we treat this thing, where is it going? What might be the next drug down the road in 15, 20 years, then you can read these big review papers written in prominent journals that'll tell you, okay, well, we got, we've got a bunch of drug targets here, we got a bunch of drug targets here. And this, you know, for the condition of interest, whether it's, you know, autism and of course autism is complicated because it's a spectrum, it's not just a single thing. But for autoimmune disease and allergy and food disorder, you know, digestive disorders, it's a little bit more straightforward. So if, if you're interested in what caused it, it's a really different ballgame. And it's hard to even find that literature, to be honest with you in, because it doesn't. Well, I'll tell you, this is what it's just, this is reality. I was talking to a group of neuropsych students, I was guest lecturing in a class and I said, look, I said, this is the data. I showed them the data that we collected. We collected hundreds and hundreds of case reports from people that were using helminths to treat depression and particularly in postmenopausal women. And it is like a magic bullet. It's very similar to vitamin C and rickets. Right? So it's, it's quite, it's quite. Oops, sorry, that's vitamin D. Don't let me get my vitamins mixed up. Anyway, the bottom line is that if you've got a cure for scurvy, then you don't need to be doing the study. So the young students in the class, very excited. This is amazing. The data are beautiful. The seniors in the class, the ones who'd been doing research on the topic, they were angry, they were emotional and they were angry and just simply mad because they've invested a lot of time in this and we're human. So if you've invested a lot of time in something and I say, hey, I think we missed the boat, I can, I have determined, my scientific team, in collaboration with many others have determined we missed the boat on this. And this is a drug induced interaction, we just need to stop it. Then you get an angry response because it's going to, it will result in shutting down people's livelihood. So this is the kind of thing that you think about when you look at the, the scientific literature, right? Is that what is the goal here? What are you, the reader, really interested in? Do you want to know what caused something? Do you want to know what the next great treatments are? I think one of the big deals that we encounter is that if it can't be patented and brought to market, it's going to be hard to get clinical trials run on things. And we saw you see that with the Leukaforin. Right. A lot of people find that it's extremely helpful. But if you can't, you know, it's, it's just challenging with a lot of these, these products to get good literature on them because you can't run a phase three clinical trial that's randomized and placebo control with crossover because that takes, it takes tens of millions of dollars to do that kind of thing.
- [19:10]
C
Understood? Yeah. Now, you touched on so many concepts. And what I'll just focus on is just the concept that none of us like to be wrong and there's a lot of ego. And so you would think the scientific method's all about, hey, let's keep doing and let's reevaluate, let's be open to changes. But, you know, our egos don't work that way. So whether it's a person or an organization, yeah. People get vested in a particular view and aren't so excited about that shifting. And so that can keep sometimes people from, you know, kind of objectively looking at what's happening and choosing not choosing what science to ignore. Right. In terms of, in terms of the narrative they want to reinforce. And then that just also goes to the thing that you started with, where there's so much quote, unquote research that's constantly being conducted that basically whatever view you want to hold, however outlandish or even made up, it is, you can find some research studies to support, you can cherry pick in terms of what's out there that might support that view. So that's where it just gets really important to understand what's quality science, what's relevant, and to be more aware of who's conducting it, how is it designed. And again, as you alluded to, there might be aspects in that study that might not come out in what's talked about. And I think this is what happened with Tylenol, with when that announcement came out from President Trump, with RFK Jr talking about this issue, which I think we can all agree that so much research has been done there that it was great that this was getting more recognition. And obviously you've conducted so much of that research, but ultimately, how it was conveyed and then how people are interpreting that announcement may be very different than what's actually in the science. Did you want to just. Not to repeat the whole Tylenol discussion, but are there any things that you would say to parents with just that one issue that might be something that perhaps they have a misconception of what's in the science and what this might mean for them?
- [21:21]
A
Great comment, Lyn. Great comment. So, yeah, if you just take a step back, look at the science, you're like, okay, okay. So a guy in Stephen Schultz in 2008 found that, wow, the common denominator with these kids regressing into autism is acetaminophen. That is the common denominator. And then at a different time period, right around labor and delivery, there's a wonderful study out of Johns Hopkins showing these incredible associations between the amount of acetaminophen that you're born with and your propensity to get autism to be diagnosed with autism Spectrum disorder. And then, of course, there are some data during pregnancy that. So the associations there are weak, very weak compared to what you see with regressive autism and very weak with what you see compared to the time of birth. But everybody's become focused on that now. The associations are there mostly with heavy use of acetaminophen, but they're just. They're cancelled. They cancel them out in. Yeah, I was talking to a junior Duke student yesterday in statistics. He's a junior, he's only a junior. And as soon as I said, he said, well, what analysis are they using? I told him it's a Cox regression analysis and developed by a guy named David Cox. He said, oh, well, those are probably interacting variables. And he just immediately he knew exactly what the problem was. In 32 studies that have been published since President Trump made that announcement, 32 studies all with the same fundamental error. We have right now. We have 32 lines of evidence. So we can draw very firm conclusions on that. And they're looking at one line of evidence. Well, actually one half of one line of evidence. And they're analyzing the data in a way that any statistician would know not to analyze it. And the statistician would need to talk to the toxicologist to know that the oxidative stress interacts with acetaminophen. But the bottom line is everybody became focused on this one little issue. Now there I read some reports you know, people are looking at the Amish and do the Amish really have. And this is just really a giant red herring. I mean, we don't have good data on the Amish community. There's a lot of reasons for that. And this is stuff we've looked into back in the day. But in Central America, there's beautiful data on Amish, absence of modern medicine and absence of autism spectrum disorder. So there's a tremendous amount of information out there. So this is an example, which I hate to say you're right, lan. This is a great example of just cherry picking, focusing down on one issue when it just makes no sense to focus on that issue at all. Now, more often, what I see in science is you'll read a paper that's a really good, solid science paper all about, say, the genetics of autism. Very solid, incredibly solid science. Now, does that mean autism is genetic? Nope, it doesn't. It means that there's a genetic component. So a lot of the really solid, solid science is not helping us understand where the problem came from. And it might help us understand how we could address the problem. So therein lies part of the issue, right? So, for example, if you know that genes X, Y and Z are associated with autism spectrum disorder and you know what those genes do, that might help give you some clues about how to help people who have autism spectrum disorder. So that makes a lot of sense. But you know, you might be looking at a 20 year pipeline for drug development with that kind of, that kind of research, which is, that's just what we expect in research. Whereas if some guy in 1968 says, hey, hey, man, these people without worms, they are getting autoimmune disease and the people with worms are not, then, wow, okay, that means that we could cultivate some healthy worms. And I keep coming back to the worm thing. And again, I want to emphasize this is my major focus of research for decades, right? I discovered the function of the human appendix, right? And this idea of the hygiene hypothesis, the appendix is a safe house for beneficial bacteria. But this idea of the hygiene hypothesis was first coined by an epidemiologist named David Barker. And he was looking at why do we get appendicitis? So this is back in the, this is back in 1988 and he coined that term hygiene hypothesis. But the bottom line is that pursuing what makes the most sense. For example, well, let's cultivate a worm and help people so we can prevent. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Let's cultivate. That's not Really a scientific endeavor, so the scientists are going to do something else.
- [26:22]
C
And that's what you were referring to earlier, where you mentioned helminth. The therapy is the idea of this worm, for lack of a better word, worm therapy. Right. Which again, is not necessarily scientific, but it very well may be something that's actually beneficial. And that's where I think you're leading, where that's something that gets discounted.
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A
Well, not so much that it gets discounted, I think as much as we just don't think about it as scientists. I'm a scientist. I'm trained in biophysics. Right. That doesn't help me cult. I need to be a worm farmer to really fix this problem. Right. That's what the science says, that I need to be a worm farmer to fix the problem. All right? And I'm not a worm farmer. So it's not gonna. I'm not gonna get funded from the National Institutes of Health, which is where the. Almost all the funding comes from now. So my career as a scientist is not gonna move forward if I decide I should be a worm farmer. Now, based on all the data that we collected, we're really certain that we're very certain. So other people did the groundwork. We knew that. We already knew from those work in the late 60s, early 70s, that missing our worms is a huge, huge issue. And then my lab contributed that by saying, well, not only for autoimmune disease, not only for allergy, but also for neuropsychiatric issues. It's missing those. You basically, you've got this. We call it the biota, and part of it's a microbiota. But you in modern society, we just took a big chunk of it and it just vanished. It, boom, it's gone. So nobody in modern society, for practical intents and purposes, has what we would call a naturally occurring load of these organisms because we all use toilets and we all, you know, there's zero chance that my coffee here has any parasites in it. There's just no chance because of the water treatment facilities and the way that the coffee was stored. There's no chance rats or insects are going to get into it and so on and so forth. So even if we know how to fix the problem, we're as scientists when we're writing publications, that's not science. Right. That's technology.
- [28:39]
C
Right, Right. You can't go there necessarily. Okay. So in terms of the worm therapy and just putting a bow on this, so it sounds like from what you've seen with respect to those conditions, that there may be a root cause that helmet therapy may help address that can really significantly improve some of the conditions you mentioned. Right. So that's something that just isn't going to show up in the science. Is that fair to say?
- [29:08]
A
I would only edit your statement slightly and take out the word may. I mean, we're very certain that it helps with certain things and we're very certain that it doesn't help with other things. Because once you've collected hundreds and hundreds of reports about people who were sick for 20 years and then got better when they tried a certain therapy, then okay. And plus the science makes sense. You can do it in a laboratory animal model and the biology makes sense. We understand them. We published many papers looking at wild rats versus lab rats sort of as a model for, you know, hunter gatherer humans versus modern humans. So we did a lot of the basic science research. Everything added up, everything made sense. And we saw it in the patients who were, it's called self treating, they were treating themselves with helmets. So, and we did, we were able to do those kinds of studies systematically even though nobody could ever afford to run a clinical trial or when they did run a clinical trial, they did it in a way and we published papers on this such that they used a model which was pretty much guaranteed not to work. So, you know, kind of the, get it to the, you get it to the finish line and then you sabotage it. Not on purpose, we don't think. Although there's some speculation about that. But yeah, it's. You're. Yeah, we know so much. It's sort of like the scurvy and vitamin C issue. Right. We are. The rickets and vitamin D. We know so much. But unlike those vitamin issues, we just haven't done things that we need to do.
- [30:44]
C
Got it. Yeah. The system's just not set up for that. If you're okay with it, let's just go back as a illustrative example, let's go back to the acetaminophen issue. So very high level, lots of research is done over decades demonstrating there's something here that's worth paying attention to. Press conferences held not that long ago, about six months ago or so, where President of the United States saying don't use it, just don't use it, and saying that specifically for pregnant women. And then up until then, or even afterwards, from what I'm hearing from you, science research studies were done that basically said, no, there's no issue here. Right. The Tylenol's fine.
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A
Right.
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C
There's research Studies that are being done that are kind of, kind of going against what was said. And in terms of those types of studies that are refuting that, there's an issue. There's a lot to look at in terms of how those studies were conducted, what variables they considered, what they eliminated. So with that as a backdrop, can you go a little bit deeper on how the science in that case may be misleading? Some science, depending on how they conducted those studies.
- [32:03]
A
Yeah. And here we get, I think, when we talk about the scientific studies that were published after President Trump made that announcement. It's been about six months at the time that we're recording this, and there have been 32 studies published now since the announcement. That is correct. 32 saying that President Trump was wrong since the announcement. Now, you and I both know science does not work at that pace.
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C
Right.
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A
I have been working for 15 months now just trying to get it through the peer review system, our update on evidence. And there's a lot of new evidence, and we just haven't got it. We haven't. You know, it takes time, right, to just to publish one paper. So 32 studies come out in six months. So is. And there's scientific studies, supposedly. But are they really, if you look at them, no, they're all. It's basically a piling on. You know, it became popular, a popular topic. So a lot of almost editorials were published. I mean, some of them did some little bit of work analyzing data, but it all comes down to a couple of studies that are using what's called sibling controls. And last month, and most of it, I call it the super data from Sweden, there was some amazing data that came out of Sweden. And the way they analyzed that data was they basically proved that if you have no risk factors, acetaminophen will not give you autism. That's what they proved. No question about it. And that's something that we published a paper on that in 2017. We knew that already. Right. And that's what it proves, that you've got no history of mental illness in your family, you got no autoimmune disease, no obesity, you know, just on and on down the list. Then acetaminophen is not going to give the child autism. So that's what all of those 32 studies are saying. But they all misinterpret those studies in a way that any statistician, if they talk with a toxicologist, would know is not a good idea. And it ignores the VAs. It ignores 31 1/2 lines of evidence that we have telling us that acetaminophen really is a neurodevelopmental toxin. So this is a, this. I don't know, Lyn, maybe this is a unique case. I mean, you hate to use the word unique in human history, but I mean, I imagine that this has happened before. I just don't know when it's happened that somebody says something that the evidence supports and because it's so, it so offends the tribe, the medical tribe, the research tribe that everybody just piles on and what's obviously a non scientific approach in the guise of science and just says, nope, it can't be, it's wrong. I don't know that I've ever heard of anything like that before.
- [35:01]
C
Yep. No, that's fair. And again, just open question in terms of what might be actually happening in those individual studies. But I think it's, at least for me, it's making it very clear to me, at least that the conclusions that are reached in any study. Right. How that conclusion's made, what variables are considered, what's ruled out. There's a lot of subjectivity to the conclusion of a paper. And so you would think that there'd be very objective standards, rigorous and, and that wouldn't be the case. But the reality is perhaps much more so now than maybe 30, 40 years ago. The conclusions that are made may very well be, I don't want to say rigged, but controlled in a way to tell, to come to some outcome.
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A
So.
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C
So again, and I know you can't say anything with any certainty, but given all the forces that are at play, it seems like if there's ever a case for somebody reading a research study to have a healthy skepticism to kicking the tires on that conclusion based on how the study was conducted, what might be in the rest of the report, that that's even more important for people to do that now than perhaps a couple decades ago.
- [36:20]
A
Yeah. So especially when it comes to this, this issue with acetaminophen and autism. And part of, as a scientist, you want to understand all the evidence that supports your model and you want to understand everything that you're, and I hate to use the word opponents because they're not supposed to be opponents, but everything that the other scientists are saying that disagree with you, and we do this is the crazy part of it, is that we understand exactly what they're saying. We understand why they're saying it, we understand exactly what, where the flaw is. Now, do I believe that they're intentionally hurting children to protect their reputation? Absolutely. I Do not. And I'm going to use the word believe because now I'm speaking as a human, William Parker, not as a scientist. I don't believe they would do that. I think they really believe in what they're publishing. And, you know, consensus bias is a huge thing with humans. If everybody else believes it's true, it must be true. Right? And so, and then. And you know, there's other defense mechanisms we have in our psyche. If I prescribe this a thousand times, it can't be bad because I'm a good person. So a lot of these kinds of, you know, it's emotional compromise and all these biases, and they're just human.
- [37:35]
C
Right.
- [37:35]
A
I, I don't have a child who's affected. I came in this from the outside, being a biophysicist and working with toxicologists and pharmacologists and neuroscientists. So I can come at it. And I have the luxury of just stepping back, looking at all the day and saying, this makes the most sense. Let's probe this, which we have for the last decade, and see if it really is correct. And it does turn out to be correct, whereas they don't have that luxury.
- [37:59]
C
Right.
- [37:59]
A
They're coming at it from a very, very different perspective. There's an underlying assumption that, again, we know exactly what it is they have not questioned. And it's just, it's, it's really surreal, you know, so it's, it's like I said, these aren't. I wouldn't call them scientific studies. They're more like scientific sounding proclamations. Let's use that phrase, scientific sounding proclamations. And, you know, the latest, which is really fascinating, is there's some super data, but not quite as super as the Swedish data, but there's some data from more than 2 million children that came out of Taiwan. And the guys that did that analysis did a beautiful job. And they said, wait a minute, okay, we get the same result we got from the Swedish data. Everything cancels out when we do these corrections. We're not supposed to, but if you look closer at the data, there's some signs that something is really wrong with this data, because if the first sibling gets exposed to acetaminophen, then it's really associated with autism, but not the second one. So wait a minute. And, you know, you read that study and they're like, whoa, we can't conclude anything from this because something is. And they don't understand what's wrong. But, I mean, just as when I first glance at it, I'm like, okay, all right, if you have older siblings without autism, then you're probably at lower risk for autism. So it's, if you get autism induced, it's not going to be during pregnancy, which is a low risk period, Which. And so anyway, as a scientist and thinking this through, it's like, oh, yeah, there's a plausible explanation for exactly what they're saying based on the models that we know. But. And they don't understand that. But that's, I mean, again, there. People, I think, are going to eventually figure it out. The question is, how long will they figure it out and how deep in the weeds? What I just said, I don't think anybody's going to understand. And frankly, lan. But the bottom line is that, yeah, as somebody who's really deep in the weeds and understands what our model understands, what other people are saying, things make a lot of sense. If you look at the big picture. And that's just it. And going back to our earlier statement, where it's looking at, you know, what causes autoimmune disease and allergy and depression versus what causes autism, looking at the big picture is not incentivized. You're. Yeah. And one of, one of my mentors, one of the men who trained me, he said, look, William, he said people work for a living. And you know what he's, what he's saying is that they study hard. They are in the lab all the time, evenings and weekends. A lot of us sacrifice a lot of personal things for science because it's so competitive and so challenging and you just don't want somebody to walk in la dee da da da, saying, oh, yeah, what's just this, you should, you know, you don't need to do all that. It's offensive. That's, that's just the way it is. You know, it's. And like you said, there's, it's ego. I understand. It's. It's challenging. And when you look at a scientific paper, you don't see that. Right. I didn't, you know, you, you're an expert at helping non scientists look at these things. So, you know, I would defer to you on how do you see through all of that. You know, and again, if I think one of the big clues for me is are they looking at underlying causes? And pretty much nobody is.
- [41:29]
C
Right. Some may. And so again, what people consider the science, I think it's expanded what people cite as science as opposed to actual conducted research. But again, in terms of anything that you're, if there's a claim being made for you to look at the source, what was the study or what was the research and see is it something that's got more of a root cause approach? So again, if you actually take the time to read and look, I think that's where you have a lot more power to discern what's really true. And I think we can all hold hands and agree that relying on some newspaper or TV show's take on what the science means wouldn't be a good strategy to rely on that. Right. Do a little bit more digging to see what rings true for you, which is why going into PubMed or going into the Source and, and reading the research is really, really important. It's inconvenient. It takes some time. So I guess as a final message to our listeners, Dr. Parker, what would you suggest that they can keep in mind as they're doing their due diligence, trying to be more discerning? And you may have touched on some of those already. But can you, bottom line for parents, given how kind of confusing this landscape may be, what would give them a, enable them to be in a stronger position to discern what rings true for their child and what might be something that's more, let's just say, qualifies more as something that they could rely on and to factor into their decision making.
- [43:06]
A
On the one hand, I want to say that it's really good to be connected with a community of people who are skeptics and who understand the motivations behind. And it's, it's an, in this biomedical research in, in academia is. It's an industrial complex. That's how it works. All right, it's dependent on the US Government and on the NIH in particular, but it's a massive industrial complex. So to be in touch with people who really understand how it works, understands what the motivation are and understands sort of how disease happens. Why are 30% of our children right now chronically ill? You know that, and that one is super, super important. But you don't find that addressed very much in the scientific literature. So I think being connected with a community of enlightened individuals is super key because looking at an individual paper, you know, you look at those last 32 papers that came out after, in six months after President Trump made that announcement. And unless you're an expert, there's one little flaw in an assumption and started in 2013, and I'm sure the lady that made that would never have done that on purpose, but she just made an assumption and it's carried and unless you're an expert, how are you going to figure that out? Because you're looking at those 32 papers and they all make sense. Right. If there's no association, there can be causation, and this shows there's no association. So therefore it's safe, which is absolutely wrong. So I would say that I would encourage your audience to get connected with. And I think that may be a key. Get connected with people who really know what's going on and understand the system. And they may not be the same people that are in the system that are cranking out the research.
- [45:04]
C
Understood.
- [45:05]
B
Okay.
- [45:05]
C
No, that makes that. I think that's a very practical thing. And again, it's even more of a testament to the idea that as parents making decisions, we need to surround ourselves with our tribe. People who bring things to the table can maybe help us see what we can't see. And I know so many parents ultimately wind up studying the science so much they're on their way to their own degrees based on their desire to understand. So, again, yeah, who you surround yourself with really important. And again, just to ask those basic questions, when you look at that research, what was the intent? Does the conclusion that they came up with, is it really supported by what's in there? And some people are better at reading science than others. But again, I think there's some healthy tips in this discussion that it can help a parent to be more discerning. And again, over time, you know, you being able to sift through and to determine what's right for you and your family with intention, you can get to a much stronger place. So, Dr. Parker, any final thoughts for our listeners? Anything that we maybe haven't covered that you think is really important to share
- [46:14]
A
when you read a scientific paper, it's going into the details of a certain gene interacting with another certain gene with a certain regulatory molecule that affects gene expression and that affects a certain branch of the immune system. So you're wondering, okay, why do so many children today have autism? Why does my friend have multiple children with autism? And so on and so forth. You know, that there's nothing that quote unquote went wrong with the genes. So you, at that point, you know, it's hard as a. I would think, and not being a parent, I don't know. But as a, I would think as a parent, it's hard to know that that research is really going to be that relevant for me. So instead, and that's what dominates the biomedical research literature right now. And again, there's reasons for that. So I think a lot of the literature is just not going to be that helpful. And it's okay. There's no reason to have to try to understand everything that's coming out because it just may not be that useful.
- [47:22]
C
Got it? Yep.
- [47:23]
A
No.
- [47:23]
C
So that's where there's a lot. You can sift through it, determine what makes sense. But I think a key message is just relying on whatever happens to be in the headlines and what happens to be a consensus view may actually be something that's not supported by the science. Perhaps some of the science behind it, even if it's 30, 31 studies, may have a fundamental flaw in terms of what variables are being considered, what aren't being considered that are leading to conclusions that may be misleading may be absolutely the opposite of what might be happening. So just understanding that that may be what's happening again can just, I think, help us all have a healthier skepticism and to just do our own critical thinking, which is the key term.
- [48:13]
A
So let me add this, Glenn and I know we're about out of time, but the way that real science works is that you've got dozens of different lines of evidence from different labs working in different directions, all pointing at the same thing. Right. And so, for example, one line of evidence that we have connecting acetaminophen with the induction of autism might involve 15 different labs looking at certain issues with laboratory animals, but that's only one line of evidence. And then we combine that with other lines of evidence from toxicology, pharmacology, medical observations, such as the study from Johns Hopkins looking at the amount of acetaminophenin present at time of birth. So all of that points to the same thing. When you look at these 32 studies all saying that President Trump is wrong, they only are looking at one line of evidence. So it's just. It's. So you've got 32 lines of. But they're not 32 lines of evidence. They're 32 studies saying the same thing. And so that's kind of. That makes it difficult to look at any one individual study and sort anything out. Right. Again, it's back to the who's really looking at the big picture. And I think for that, it's helpful to be connected with the community.
- [49:20]
C
Fantastic. Well, I think those are fantastic words to end on. And Dr. Parker, you know, would love to have you on down the road, as obviously this is something that more and more parents are waking up to or like, looking at the science themselves. And I really appreciate you sharing your perspectives and would love to have you back on down the road. So thank you again for everything you're doing and for spreading this message.
- [49:41]
A
Thank you, Lynn. It's a pleasure to be here.
- [49:43]
B
Your child needs you. Running on all cylinders now and the fastest way to rise is with personalized one on one support. Get started today. Go to elevatehowynavigate.com.