During the recent White House news conference linking Tylenol use during pregnancy to rising pediatric rates of autism , one of the president’s side comments caught my attention: He said that there is “virtually no autism” among the Amish. Since the Amish are a relatively isolated community and tend to avoid many modern technologies, there has been growing interest in whether autism exists within Amish populations, and what light that might shed on the condition. The truth is, very little systematic data has been collected on this topic to date.

My research group at the University of Maryland School of Medicine has been studying the health of the Lancaster, Penn., Amish community for more than 30 years. Although we have not specifically investigated autism, Amish people have shared with

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