President Donald Trump and Health and Human Services Department Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., have gone and stuck their necks out about as far as they can stick them! Their claim that taking acetaminophen (Tylenol) during pregnancy is associated with the development of Autism Spectrum disorder is an bold assertion, but if proven right, will be a boon to prospective parents and make the two of them look like geniuses? Right now, they look like buffoons for claiming a drug as ubiquitous as Tylenol (acetaminophen) is the cause of a disorder that has increased in frequency the last 30 years.
Experts in Autism were quick to sharply criticize these claims stating the “Trump administration has backed itself into a corner by saying that we will know the causes and treatment for autism by September…they are relying on faulty data and weak evidence to implicate acetaminophen as a cause…. acetaminophen is one of the few safe options pregnant women have available to them to treat pain and inflammation.”
Yesterday, during a Zoom call, the three family doctors with whom I shared call, surveyed ourselves as to whether we either delivered, or took care of, an infant who later became autistic. All four of us answered we had not been involved with the care of any autistic children. I pointed out that the babies I delivered or cared for are now between the ages of 39 and 51. (The last baby I delivered was on December 18, 1986). Our term of doing obstetrics ended before the majority of autism cases appeared. According to Google, the incidence of autism began to increase in the mid-1990’s to early 2000’s. In 2000, according to CDC data, 1 in 150 births resulted in an autistic child and by 2020, that number had increased to 1 in 36, a huge increase. In 2014, the incidence was 1 in 31.
I’m absolutely certain that most, if not all, of the pregnant women I took care of, took at least some acetaminophen during their pregnancy. But there was no autism. So why is acetaminophen thought to be the culprit? Because Trump and RFK Jr cite the results of results of 46 “relevant studies [that] found some evidence of a weak association with autism risk and the use of acetaminophen.” On the contrarian side, however, are the autism experts who cite a Swedish study of 2.4 million children that “found no relationship between in utero exposure to acetaminophen and subsequent occurrence of autism.”
The Trump-RFK message, then, is we can’t say for sure that Tylenol causes autism, but we’re worried enough about an association that we think it wise to minimize the amount of acetaminophen the developing infant is exposed to. Don’t take Tylenol unless you absolutely have to, because although causation has not been proven, there is enough concern to eliminate Tylenol from your list of “safe drugs.”
Let’s hope that pregnant women heed this advice, and we begin to see a decline in autism and other neurodevelopmental conditions.
References: Brooks M. Autism Experts Rebuff HHS Report on Tylenol-Autism Link, New Indication for Leucovorin. Medscape 2025 September 23.
Google: “What years have the highest incidence of Autism?” Google.com
