A coalition of doctors, lawmakers and advocates for people with autism has spent more than a decade trying to ban a medical device that is used to deliver painful electric jolts to people with severe neurodevelopmental disabilities.
Last year, a federal ban on the devices finally seemed imminent. But the upheaval sweeping the federal government during the Trump administration’s early months could further delay a resolution, allowing continued use of the controversial devices.
Wide-ranging cutbacks have been announced at federal health agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration, whose medical devices section had been working on the lengthy and convoluted process of implementing a ban.
Regulators determined that the jolts, delivered through electrodes strapped to a patient’s arms and legs, caused long-term harm and should no longer be used. Clinicians and relatives of residents at a treatment facility outside Boston defend the use of the devices, calling them a last resort for some of the facility’s most extreme cases.
The uncertainty over the devices’ fate has been compounded by President Trump’s chief health official, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has falsely linked autism with childhood vaccines. He recently called autism a preventable epidemic that destroys families and prevents people from living a full life, a characterization described as dehumanizing by many autistic people.
Rates of diagnosis for autism — a neurodevelopmental disorder that can cause difficulties with social interaction and communication — have increased nearly fivefold among children since 2000, when officials first began collecting such data. A recent report attributed some of the increase to increased screening, as well as a broader definition of the condition.