Trump makes unproven claim linking Tylenol to autism, contradicting doctors who say it’s safe: Live updates

Public health announcements are typically short, clear, confident, and supported with reams of citations and studies. That way, the public is getting clear, medically sound advice, with little room for doubt or disagreement.

That wasn’t the case during the Trump administration’s much-watched set of announcements today around autism, where the president himself repeatedly admitted to making opinion-based claims instead of scientific ones, and his agencies undercut many of the White House’s biggest arguments.

On the subject of the MMRV vaccine, Trump said he believed individuals should take the component vaccines separately, rather than as one shot.

“This is based on what I feel,” Trump said.

On another vaccine, for hepatitis B, Trump urged parents to buck the usual practice of vaccinating babies or young children against the disease and waiting until they are teenagers.

“You know, I’m making these statements from me,” Trump said of this statement. “I’m not making them from these doctors. They talk about different results, different studies. I talk about a lot of common sense.”

Later, Trump admitted he didn’t even know why vaccines were combined or given in clusters at all.

“For some reason, they insist that you put it all into the body, and maybe that’s the drug companies they make more money that way,” Trump said. “Maybe it’s the doctors because they don’t want to be doing this so much. Maybe it’s the doctors they get maybe more money. Who the hell knows what it is?”

In the fine print of the administration’s announcements on autism, the core agencies involved further undercut the White House’s claims it had stumbled on Tylenol and its active ingredient as a key cause of autism.

“Given the conflicting literature and lack of clear causal evidence, HHS wants to encourage clinicians to exercise their best judgment in use of acetaminophen for fevers and pain in pregnancy by prescribing the lowest effective dose for the shortest duration when treatment is required,” one press release noted.

“It is important to note that while an association between acetaminophen and neurological conditions has been described in many studies, a causal relationship has not been established and there are contrary studies in the scientific literature,” another read.

Public health experts aren’t the only ones expressing alarm over the Trump administration’s recent autism press conference, where the president made multiple unsupported claims about vaccines, autism, and common and well-studied pain medications.

“This has maybe been the most uninformed and dangerous ‘health’ press conference held by the U.S. government in my lifetime,” Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, wrote on X. “Don’t listen to Trump or RFK Jr. when it comes to vaccines, Tylenol, or anything having to do with your health—talk to your doctor. My god.”

“Here is my advice to pregnant women,” added Ashish Jha, the Biden administration Covid-19 coordinator, on X after the Monday announcement. “Talk to your doctor about the risks and benefits for you and your baby from any medicine. Do not take advice from politicians.”

Their petition failed. Today, Kennedy Jr, better known as RFK, is head of an agency with an almost two trillion-dollar budget and a little over 80,000 employees. On Monday, speaking from the White House, Trump and the US secretary of health and human services said women should not take acetaminophen, also known by the brand name Tylenol, “during the entire pregnancy.” It was announced that the Food and Drug Administration would begin notifying doctors that the use of acetaminophen “can be associated” with an increased risk of autism, but neither Trump or Kennedy Jr provided any peer reviewed medical evidence to support this. They also raised unfounded concerns about vaccines contributing to rising rates of autism.

“I’m absolutely speechless,” Dr. Craig Spencer, Associate Professor of the Practice of Health Services, Policy and Practice at the Brown University School of Public Health, wrote on X after the press conference announcing the administration’s claims. “Like, wow. This is the worst ‘health’ press conference I maybe have ever seen. And I watched every one during Covid. How are we doing this again???”

It was back in May when Trump unveiled The Maha (Make America Healthy Again) Report, the administration’s blueprint for “making our children healthy again”. This report reflected Kennedy’s most contentious views on vaccines, pesticides, prescription drugs, and a description of America’s children as overmedicated and undernourished.

Read Alex Hannaford’s in-depth look at the massive shift.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom is boosting the recently formed West Coast Health Alliance to coordinate public health advice between Washington, California, and Oregon, pointing to President Trump’s recent remarks in the White House about vaccines and autism, where the president repeatedly admitted his claims were based on his feelings and were not necessarily true.

“Exactly why we’re sticking with science,” Newsom’s office wrote on X.

The president and Newsom have been feuding online for months, and it looks like public health could be their latest battlefront.

Inside sources told Bloomberg News that the website would let users search for specific drugs and then connect them with manufacturers, allowing them to pay out of pocket at a discounted price.

One name reportedly being considered for the website was “TrumpRx”, although the plans are still under discussion.

As expected, medical experts widely pushed back against the Trump administration’s claims on Monday that Tylenol and vaccines were linked to rising rates of autism.

“The announcement on autism was the greatest display of ignorance, unfounded blather, dangerous advice, recycled old nonsense and outright malpractice advice since Trump recommended bleach for Covid,” Arthur Caplan, professor of medical ethics at NYU, wrote on X. “A total laughingstock and embarrassment.”

Dr. Karam Radwan, director of the Neurodevelopmental Clinic at UChicago Medicine, told The Associated Press there is no credible evidence of a causal link “at any level” between acetaminophen-based medicines like Tylenol and autism.

He also warned pregnant women avoiding the medicine to treat fevers and pain carries health risks, which experts say can impact mother and child alike.

“Acetaminophen is safe and often the only safe choice that they have to treat their fever,” he said. “If they are choosing not to treat their fever for their fear, that could have consequences as well.”

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists sounded a similar alarm.

“The conditions people use acetaminophen to treat during pregnancy are far more dangerous than any theoretical risks and can create severe morbidity and mortality for the pregnant person and the fetus,” Dr. Steven J. Fleischman, the group’s president, said in a statement.

In between the president making numerous unsupported claims today about a link between autism and commonly, evidence-supported treatments like vaccines and Tylenol, the Trump administration also announced a series of major changes that could impact the treatment of autism and beyond.

Here are the key updates:

The FDA has initiated a process to change the label of acetaminophen-based drugs like Tylenol to warn pregnant women that taking the drugs “may be associated” with an increased in autism diagnoses in children, even though outside experts and the FDA itself admits no causal link has been proven and “there are contrary studies in the scientific literature.”The FDA has also initiated the approval of leucovorin calcium tablets to treat patients with cerebral folate deficiency (CFD), a neurological condition linked to “developmental delays with autistic features” such as challenges with social communication, according to the FDA, a process that will coincide with a potential label update for the treatment. The FDA hailed this step, plus allowing state Medicaid programs to cover the treatment, as “opening the door to the first FDA-recognized treatment pathway” to treating autism symptoms. The National Institutes of Health will also award $50 million to 13 projects as part of the Autism Data Science Intiative.

President Donald Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made an announcement declaring that they had found a link between autism and acetaminophen, commonly known as Tylenol.

This came despite the fact that little evidence of a link exists.

Trump and Kennedy, both of whom have repeated the debunked link between vaccines and autism, had said the the US government would reveal “what has caused autism epidemic” by September.

“So taking Tylenol is not good, all right, I’ll say it it’s not good for this reason,” Trump said. “They are strongly recommending that women limit Tylenol use during pregnancy unless medically necessary.”

Throughout his announcement, Trump repeated numerous conspiracy theories about autism, including easily debunked claims about mercury in vaccines and the idea that certain populations do not develop autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

Read the full story from The Independent’s Eric Garcia, who himself is autistic and is a nationally recognized author and journalist on the subject.

During his remarks Monday announcing administration efforts to investigate autism, President Trump made multiple exaggerated claims that Cubans and Amish people don’t get autism because they are not as exposed to vaccines or Tylenol.

“It doesn’t exist,” Trump said of autism in the Amish community, adding that it was because these communities “don’t take all of this junk,” including vaccines.

Speaking about Cubans, the president claimed there wasn’t autism there because the island nation lacks the funds for medicines like Tylenol.

“There’s a rumor, I don’t know if it’s so or not, that Cuba, they don’t have Tylenol,” Trump said. “Because they don’t have the money for Tylenol, and they have virtually no autism.”

In fact, according to experts, that is not the case for either group. Autism is documented in both communities, and different Amish communities have different views on vaccines.