Letter to the Editor

Readers take issue with assertions in autism-centered column

To the Editor:

We are writing about the latest Andrew Brady column published in Hudson Life magazine (Vol. 27-No.6). While we appreciate that your magazine provides a small disclaimer under Mr. Brady’s column, it is still an editorial responsibility to ensure that dangerous misinformation isn’t spread to the public. 

Those of us who work in healthcare frequently share a derisive chuckle over Mr. Brady’s absurd columns in which he touts unproven therapies or expounds on medical issues that are outside his niche area of training. This latest piece, however, in which Mr. Brady falsely asserts a link between antibiotics and autism, is very unfunny and frankly dangerous. We cannot state this emphatically enough: There is no scientific truth to Mr. Brady’s assertion that antibiotics contribute to autism. This is precisely the kind of false information that contributed to the deaths of so many people during the height of COVID. This is also the kind of false information that caused so many parents in the early aughts to not vaccinate their children because they were frightened by a since-debunked conspiracy theory that linked autism to childhood vaccines.

We assume that Mr. Brady pays for his editorial/ad space, but Hudson Life still retains the right and responsibility to refuse specific content when it promotes harmful untruths. Please use your editorial authority to help our community instead of hurting it.  

Meghan and Dave Bullard

York Drive ∞