The announcement claiming an association between the use of acetaminophen or TYLENOL during pregnancy and autism in children was irresponsible and filled with baseless, oversimplified evidence and misinformation, causing harm to those who experience pregnancy.
The announcement was made on Sept. 22 by U.S. President Donald J. Trump and the U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has initiated a label change on TYLENOL that states an increased potential risk of neurological conditions in children if consumed while pregnant, according to a Sept. 22 press release.
What RFK, Jr. and Trump didn’t mention was the confounding evidence.
Multiple medical organizations and agencies have stated that there is no causal link between autism and TYLENOL, including the World Health Organization and the American Academy of Pediatrics.
An April 9 study by the Journal of the American Medical Association with a sample of over 2 million children found no association with neurological risks if someone takes TYLENOL while pregnant.
TYLENOL is the safest over-the-counter drug during pregnancy to treat fevers; it is untreated fevers during pregnancy that have been known to increase health risks in children, according to the FDA.
This harmful misconception may induce internalized hatred and self-blame in women whose children have autism.
Increasing parental guilt and creating the idea that they have caused autism in their children over something that has not yet been officially scientifically proven is insane to me.
My brother has Down syndrome, which admittedly is very different from autism.
However, if an announcement similar to this were made that would relate to my mother’s pregnancy and brother’s diagnosis, I would hate to see her think that all of the health complications he has suffered due to his Down syndrome are her fault.
I especially would hope she wouldn’t blame herself for simply taking medications that were supposed to protect her and her baby’s health.
Trump said that a few decades ago, autism rates in children were 1 in 10,000, but now it’s reached 1 in 31.
This is true according to a report by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services published on Apr. 15, which said that 1 in 31 children born in 2014 have been diagnosed.
However, there can be many potential contributing factors to this increase, such as broadened diagnostic criteria and increased services being provided.
In 2013, DMS-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) was released and combined autistic disorder, Asperger’s and pervasive developmental disorder into one diagnosis – autism spectrum disorder (ASD), according to the Southwest Autism Research & Resource Center.
A universal standard for autism screening also was not developed until 2007, with the American Academy of Pediatrics recommending a newly developed universal screening for kids to be conducted at 18 and 24 months.
The American Academy of Pediatrics even wrote an article in 2016 about how kids have been diagnosed with autism at younger ages since they released their recommendation and diagnosis rates increased.
I simply find it baffling that these factors, which very well contribute to higher rates in autism diagnoses, were not mentioned in Trump and RFK, Jr.’s announcement.
In Trump’s speech, he said communities who do not take as many medications, such as the Amish have no cases of autism.
“The Amish, yeah, virtually I heard none. See, Bobby (Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.) wants to be very careful with what he says and he should, but I’m not so careful with what I say,” Trump said. “But you have certain groups, the Amish as an example; they have essentially no autism.”
However, the Amish have a different approach when seeking medical care that would make receiving an autism diagnosis less likely.
Amish and Mennonites tend to not to seek preventative healthcare because of their religious beliefs and instead prefer natural remedies or relying on God, according to a 2021 report by the National Library of Medicine.
And although there are lower diagnosis rates, that does not mean there are no cases of autism.
Many in the community can go undiagnosed because they do not attend public schools, have less access to medical care and neurodevelopmental and mental disorders are highly stigmatized.
The idea being spread by Trump and RFK, Jr. that autism is an “epidemic” has only made ableism more normalized and once again is making neurodevelopmental disorders more stigmatized.
The narrative around the word epidemic typically is that there is a highly contagious disease outbreak, according to Merriam-Webster and I believe this connotation causes people to dehumanize those with autism.
However, autism is not a disease as it is not something that can be “cured” and it does not have one singular identifiable cause, according to the Cleveland Clinic.
There were multiple statements Trump made that promoted harmful beliefs about pregnancy.
“That’s, for instance, in cases of extremely high fever that you feel you can’t tough it out; you can’t do it. I guess there’s that. It’s a small number of cases, I think,” Trump said. “But if you can’t tough it out, if you can’t do it, that’s what you’re going to have to do.”
It’s unfair to expect pregnant people to “tough it out.” While there is still no causal evidence linking TYLENOL to autism, many women are going to be unmedicated when it is not necessary.
It feels especially misogynistic to hear a man, someone who will never fully understand the process and complications that come with pregnancy, telling pregnant people to “tough it out.”
There is also the gender pain gap, which is when women and people assigned female at birth experience pain that goes undertreated, diagnosed late and is not taken seriously, according to a 2025 report by the National Center for Biotechnology Information.
People assigned female at birth experience specific pains, such as pregnancy and childbirth, that are particularly affected by this gender pain gap, according to the same report.
This announcement is going to make this gender pain gap worse.
Pregnant people are being blamed for this claimed “epidemic” and may begin to suffer consequences for something that is not scientifically proven.
Trump is spreading harmful misconceptions and covering them up as factual science.
At the very least, I hope Trump and RFK, Jr. will one day announce that they are working on finding alternatives if one of the only over-the-counter pain medications offered for pregnancy really does increase the chance of neurodevelopmental disorders in children.