President Donald Trump on Monday made a sweeping — and medically unfounded — announcement linking Tylenol use during pregnancy to autism.
Standing alongside Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other top federal health officials, Trump warned of a “very increased risk” of autism from acetaminophen, despite decades of research showing it to be the safest pain medication option for pregnant people.
The White House is now directing the Food and Drug Administration to revise warning labels and notify doctors to recommend that women “limit Tylenol use during pregnancy unless medically necessary,” like treating a fever, “if you can’t tough it out,” Trump said. But the administration didn’t release new data or evidence to back the change.
Multiple studies, including a 2024 study from the Journal of the American Medical Association involving over 2 million children, found no causal link.
“In my opinion, it’s not so simple to say autism is caused by acetaminophen or by any single environmental trigger,” said Dr. Walter Zahorodny, a clinical pyschologist and director of the CDC-sponsored New Jersey Autism Study at Rutgers University. “It is, however, quite likely that prenatal use of acetaminophen does increase risk of autism. It’s not the cause of autism. It’s possibly one of many causes that occurs in context of a genetic background.”
While Zahorodny disputed Trump’s claim, he said he does see positive aspects to Trump’s announcement.
“I understand, I think, Mr. Trump’s motivation. I interpret that to be that he thinks that autism prevalence has increased a long time, and he wants to understand why,” said Zahorodny. “And one thing that seems to have garnered sufficient research information is the hypothesis that acetaminophen is related to autism risk. There are very good studies which point to that. And after identifying a possible risk factor, you also want to take steps to identify what the right interventions or treatments might be. I think the approach, though controversial, is basically positive because it’s action-oriented. And it accepts the fact that autism has increased significantly and that we don’t understand the primary environmental drivers or triggers for autism.”
Zahordony, who has been tapped to advise Kennedy, has called autism “an urgent public health crisis” and emphasizes that autism prevalence has “increased very dramatically.”
According to the CDC, the rate of autism spectrum disorder in New Jersey is 1 in 32 children, which is higher than the national average of 1 in 54. Data shows the rate has been increasing steadily over the past few decades.
But a range of experts worldwide immediately noted there’s no conclusive evidence to support the possible association between autism and acetaminophen – the active ingredient in Tylenol and other widely-used medications.
“Available evidence has found no link between the use of paracetamol during pregnancy and autism,” said the European Medicines Agency (EMA). Paracetamol is a widely-used name for Tylenol outside the U.S.
