Why This Doctor Is Convinced He Knows What’s Causing Autism

He says the proof is irrefutable, others aren’t sure he’s right

Doron Goldberg, M.D., is an expert in preventing genetic diseases.

An ob-gyn based in Modiin, Israel, Goldberg, 50, has helped thousands of couples who cannot get pregnant with in-vitro fertilization.

Before an embryo is transferred back to the uterus, the embryo is checked for known heritable diseases. This is called PGD, pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, he explained to me when we talked via video last month.

Every year, between two hundred and three hundred babies are born into his practice. He takes a personal interest in all of them.

“Each baby is like my own,” he said. “I am responsible for the mother and the child to be healthy. It’s important to be modest. But that’s one of the reasons I have so many patients.”

Each year he hosts a gathering at Yishpro Park for all the families in his practice. He hires a musician, organizes activities for the kids, and gives everyone an opportunity to meet and mingle.

A few years ago, Goldberg, who’s been practicing medicine for 25 years and offering fertility treatments for 15, started noticing a disturbing trend: An increasing number of children born into his practice were being diagnosed with autism.

“Three years ago, at this meeting, I noticed that ten percent of the children were already diagnosed with autism,” he said.

“This really shocked me. I didn’t understand what happened. I decided it was imperative to find out.”

“I really didn’t think that paracetamol could be the reason”

When he began looking into the potential causes of autism, Goldberg was sure about one thing: this disease could not be genetic.

Even though the majority of his colleagues—and much of what he found in the medical literature—argued that autism is “genetic,” as a specialist in obstetrics and gynecology, Goldberg knew this was wrong.

“Doctors think everything is genetics,” Goldberg said. “If you don’t have any genes for autism and can’t identify it, how can it be genetic?”

And, Goldberg pointed out, if the rates of severe autism continue to rise rapidly—as they have globally—that also can’t be explained by genetics.

Like other obstetricians, Goldberg had always assumed that Tylenol was safe in pregnancy and infancy. That’s what he learned in medical school. It’s what his colleagues assumed as well. He had no reason to question this widely used drug.

The main ingredient in Tylenol is acetaminophen. In Europe, and in Israel, it’s called paracetamol.

Then Goldberg came across a 2018 meta-analysis from scientists in Israel, including two affiliated with Hadassah Medical Center, strongly suggesting a dose dependent relationship between paracetamol use during pregnancy and autism in babies born to these moms.

Still, Goldberg dismissed any causative relationship between Tylenol and autism as unlikely.

“I really didn’t think that paracetamol was the reason,” he admitted.

But when he realized that the research from Haddassah dovetailed with a growing body of scientific evidence establishing a strong connection between acetaminophen and autism, including several papers co-authored by William Parker, Ph.D., he started to change his mind.

He printed out the research and read it carefully.

In one study, a team of scientists including William Parker, who is a biochemist by training, an expert in immune dysfunction, and a research scientist who spent over twenty years working at Duke University’s medical school, identified fourteen epidemiological studies connecting prenatal exposure to paracetamol to neurodevelopmental disorders.

Another study, published in 2023, showed 20 lines of evidence that the drug causes harm.

Goldberg found himself shaking his head.

After all, if it were true that acetaminophen was a main cause of autism, why were no medical doctors or public health officials in Israel looking into it?

Israel is a small country. It has a population of approximately 10 million, less than the number of residents in North Carolina. Goldberg began sharing Parker’s research with every medical doctor he knew, every scientific researcher, and even the head of Israel’s public health system.

There are all these lines of evidence that acetaminophen is causing autism, he said to anyone who showed even a modicum of interest.

“We need to have a scientific discussion,” he insisted.

He texted and called his colleagues and friends: pediatricians, gynecologists, autism researchers, speaking to as many people as he could in person any chance he got. Then he prepared a slide presentation for Israel’s Ministry of Health. It took three months for officials to agree to let him present it. Which Goldberg did last November.

One colleague replied by sending him yet another article that makes the connection between autism and acetaminophen.

This 2021 paper by Ann Bauer, Ph.D., and a team of international researchers (from Denmark, France, and Scotland), was published in Nature Reviews Endocrinology. It is supported by 91 other clinicians and scientists from around the world. The paper urged the precautionary principle be implemented when it comes to using acetaminophen during pregnancy.

But no one wanted to talk.

“I couldn’t find even one doctor who cared about the rising rates of autism and who was willing to act,” Goldberg told me. “I was totally alone.”

When his colleagues did engage with him, they dismissed his concerns.

Paracetamol is safe, they told him. We have no reason to change any of our protocols. The status quo is just fine.

One became downright belligerent. “I’ve been a doctor for 30 years,” this colleague said angrily. “You aren’t going to teach me anything.”

“It’s unbelievable, how the system has failed to protect our children … just unbelievable.”

Goldberg thought that sharing the existing science with his colleagues would be enough to convince them to at least have a dialogue.

He was wrong.

Some started treating him like a pariah. Others warned him that he was committing professional suicide.

“I don’t care anymore what other doctors think of me,” Goldberg admitted. “Paracetamol is the cause of autism; it should be banned. I’m in 100 percent.”

If autism is caused by acetaminophen, why do autism rates continue to climb?

Though the abundance of evidence was beginning to seem irrefutable, something still niggled at Goldberg.

If giving drugs containing acetaminophen was really causing autism, he asked himself, then why were the rates of autism continuing to rise?

Tylenol was invented in 1955. Aggressively marketed to moms right from the beginning, with a catchy slogan that this was pain relief “for little hotheads,” it’s a drug parents have been giving to their children for years.

Its use, Goldberg thought, had stayed relatively constant.

That’s when he learned about the Bexsero Protocol.

Explicit instructions to give babies three doses acetaminophen with the vaccine

Bexsero is a vaccine that protects children from meningitis caused by N. meningitidis serogroup B.

This vaccine, made by GlaxoSmithKline was licensed in 2013. According to information from the manufacturers, the vaccine is approved for use in children ages 2 to ten years old.

Meningitis is a bacterial infection that invades the protective membranes around the brain and spinal cord, causing them to swell.

We most often hear about outbreaks in young adults, especially college students living in close quarters. There are fewer than 150 cases of meningococcal B infections per year in the United States.

Though meningitis is not a common illness, it can be deadly. In 2017, there were 134 cases of and 16 deaths from meningitis B in the United States.

At the same time, the vaccine to protect against meningitis B is very reactive.

One of its most common side effects is fever.

While there are many benefits to getting a fever, high fevers in babies and small children cause parents to worry.

Very rarely, high fever during infancy can lead to brain damage, seizures, and even death.

Conventional doctors, especially pediatricians, often caution parents about fever.

Most don’t realize that fever is a naturally occurring and important part of the immune response.

The real concern is the underlying illness, injury, or environmental assault that is causing the fever, not the fever itself.

Enter the Bexsero Protocol

To keep infants receiving the vaccine from spiking dangerously high fevers, medical doctors are now instructing parents to give their babies three doses of acetaminophen prophylactically: one dose as soon as possible after the vaccine, a second dose 4 to 6 hours later, and a third dose 4 to 6 hours after that.

Countries around the world are recommending three doses of prophylactic acetaminophen (what we call baby Tylenol in America), given at ages two months, four months, and twelve months.

This protocol has not been adopted in the United States.

Some clinicians and scientists think it’s just a matter of time before we implement it here as well.

Neurodevelopmentally dangerous

To believe paracetamol is safe in pregnancy and infancy is a major misconception.

It’s never been shown to be safe from a neurodevelopmental standpoint, Goldberg insisted.

Giving three doses of acetaminophen four hours apart is ludicrous, Goldberg said.

“How can we make this mistake for two-month-old babies?” Goldberg said. “We don’t even give that much to adults.”

One group of scientists—experts in psychoneuroimmunology—is calling this globally implemented recommendation a “protocol for the induction of autism.”

Goldberg, too, is sure that this protocol is the smoking gun.

He does not believe that it is the vaccines themselves that are causing autism, as other medical doctors, researchers, fathers, and mothers have argued.

In denying the idea that vaccines cause autism, Goldberg points to a 2008 parent survey done by Stephen T. Schultz, Ph.D., along with five other San Diego, California-based researchers. This study was published in the journal Autism.

The Schultz study, which had 163 participants (83 families with a child with autism and 80 controls), found acetaminophen use after the MMR (measles mumps and rubella) vaccine was associated with autism, but ibuprofen use was not.

“This is really the greatest medical mistake in history.” ~Doron Goldberg, M.D.

Goldberg began tabulating data from different countries to see if there was a connection between the rising rates of autism and the Bexsero Protocol.

“The data from England is very clear,” Goldberg told me. “We’ve seen skyrocketing autism in England after starting the Bexsero Protocol. This proves the connection.”

His analyses have shown similar results in Australia and Ireland.

Three months ago, Goldberg sent all of the data he tabulated to Israel’s Ministry of Health.

He’s still waiting for their response.

About the author:

Jennifer Margulis, Ph.D., is an award-winning science writer. She is the author/editor of eight nonfiction books. Her writing has been published in hundreds of newspapers, magazines, and on-line sites, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and on the cover of Smithsonian magazine. In 2016, her co-authored book, The Vaccine-Friendly Plan, which has sold 250,000 copies, sounded the alarm about the dangers of giving babies and small children Tylenol. She is internationally known as an advocate for safe medicine and gentle birth, and her books have been translated into Chinese, Estonian, German, Korean, and Vietnamese.

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