I’m no doctor. Not a scientist either. I’m just a contracts architect with a son who is truly autistic, and I’ve lived in that trench for nearly two decades. Every single day since he was born—save for the odd trip—I’ve been there. Doctors, even those draped in the title of “autism experts,” may have their theories. I have something better: raw, high-resolution experience. The days, the nights, the laughter, the meltdowns, the eating, the cleaning, the waste—every detail etched into memory.
I don’t know if Tylenol causes autism. What I do know is that autism isn’t the neat, sprawling “spectrum disorder” people love to talk about at conferences. My son can’t talk. He won’t live independently. He is locked at the mental state of a toddler. That’s what real autism looks like—and it is rare. Most people with the label can communicate, work, live alone. My son cannot. By cramming everything from mild quirks to profound disability into one diagnostic garbage bin, we obscure more than we clarify. It helps no one. But it happens, endlessly.