America's Autism Crisis and How AI Can Fix Science with NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The American people are not stupid. In fact, they're quite smart. And when we talk to them in ways where we show respect for their intelligence with data, allow people to disagree, but then have the evidence right there in front of people, I think people will respond with trust where the evidence actually leads. We need kind of that Silicon Valley spirit. We should stop punishing scientists who fail. If they fail productively, let them publish in a journal that's explain why they're what they what they learn from it. Like that Silicon Valley spirit I think needs to come in.
Autism funding, old drugs with new promise, and a reset on American science. Today, we're joined by Dr. Jay Badacharya, Director of the NIH with A sixteen Z Health and Bio General Partners Fanita Agarwala and Jorge Conde. We cover the NIH's new fifty million dollar autism initiative, Lukavorin's potential. And fresh scrutiny of Tylenol and pregnancy. We also dig into the replication crisis, bold funding models, rebuilding public trust, and how AI can transform healthcare from drug discovery to clinical care. Let's get into it.
Well, Dr. Badchard, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. We're stoked to have you. I'm delighted to be here. So good to talk with you. I'm a little jealous I'm not in Menlo Park. I'm happy
to be there with you on this.
Yeah, exactly. And we're talking Monday, September twenty second. There's big news coming out today. The Times piece on on you just came out. I want you to reflect on that as well. But maybe you could share with us the big news and why it's so impactful. Sure. So roughly six months ago.
When I first started this job, Secretary Kennedy challenged me to help get answers for families with autistic kids. I mean, there's the prevalence has been rising for decades, like one in 31 kids. I think is the CDC's latest numbers on this. That's an incredible number. I mean, we don't have answers. A lot of times families are they have these behavioral therapies that don't really work very well for a lot of their kids. We don't know the cause, so we don't know how to prevent it. And so I launched, worked really hard to launch this new initiative. fifty million new dollars, two hundred and fifty teams applied for large research grants. And we're gonna announce today that thirteen teams are going to be granted, you know, these grants, this for this autism data science initiative.
The other thing, there's two other things that are going to get announced today that sort of came out of this process of working with Mehmed Oz at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services and Marty McCary and Secretary Kennedy. Marty McCary is the FDA commissioner. One is a drug, a very common old drug called Leucovorin. It's basically like a folinic acid. It's called, but it's like it serves almost like a way to deliver folate to the brain, where for when some kids have folate processed. Processing deficient folate is something you get in vegetables, right? But some kids have this difficulty processing folate. It turns out that a lot of doctors have experience using folinic acid, leukovorin, in treating autistic kids.
And kids who have this folate deficiency in their brains can't that actually it actually works. And 20% of the kids, I think, to restore speech. Up to 60% of the kids, they get much better. Now, not every autistic kid is going to get better with this. It's it you have to have this. Specific thing that's happening in your brain. But you know, making that more widely available, I think, is a really good thing. The other one is a sort of a caution on Tylenol and acetaminophin. That is a, you know, obviously very common pain reliever. It's used, it's the only sort of pain reliever and fever reducer used recommended during pregnancy. But there's been new evidence that's emerged and what actually highlighted by a new study put out by the dean of the Harvard School of Public Health.
just recently actually, uh, that suggests that use in pregnancy can correlate w with subsequent autism diagnoses later on for the kids.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–5:15
2
What is the new $50 million NIH autism initiative and why does it matter?
5:15–11:18
3
How might Leucovorin and cautious use of Tylenol impact autism and pregnancy?
11:18–22:03
4
Why is the replication crisis a priority for the NIH and how is it being addressed?
22:03–35:45
5
How is the NIH changing its funding model to become more like Silicon Valley?
35:45–46:33
6
What are the challenges around allocation versus execution of NIH research dollars?
46:33–58:07
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from The a16z Show
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