Does Tylenol cause autism? Well, according to the Trump administration, it just might.

“Taking Tylenol is not good,” President Donald Trump asserted in a major announcement regarding recent scientific assessments his administration has made into addressing the growing problem of autism. Trump noted that pregnant women may want to avoid taking Tylenol unless they spike a very high fever. “Don’t take Tylenol,” the president said. “Don’t take it. Fight like hell not to take it.”

He concluded, “There’s a lot of common sense in this.”

This announcement follows the lead of the Department of Health and Human Services, which launched an effort to investigate autism — an issue that HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has long sought to understand. Indeed, Kennedy mostly deserved his reputation of being an anti-vaxxer, which comes from his oft-repeated assertion that childhood vaccines may have a causal link to autism.

However, no study has linked vaccines to autism, and he’s largely backpedaled. Yet, as Kennedy has pointed out, the apparent autism rate has increased dramatically since 1992, with now one in 31 children in the U.S. being diagnosed with the condition.

So, why did the Trump administration suddenly make its claim against Tylenol?

Trump’s warning against Tylenol is tied to recent studies. As Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary explained, “We now have good data from large studies and the Harvard School of Public Health Dean has made a very conclusive statement that he believes the association is causal. So when you have that weight of evidence, you have to take it seriously and err on the side of safety, especially since the vast majority of low-grade fevers do not need to be treated.”

The primary active ingredient in Tylenol is acetaminophen, a medication that first gained use as a pain reliever in the 1950s and was later marketed by Johnson & Johnson as an aspirin-free alternative for children under the name Tylenol.

The studies referenced by the Trump administration observe a possible link between autism and Tylenol. Therefore, a “Dear doctor” letter is being sent to physicians across the nation, warning, “Research shows a potential association between acetaminophen use during pregnancy and adverse neurodevelopmental outcomes.” However, the letter adds, “Prudent use is needed during pregnancy and for infants and toddlers.”

The current maker of Tylenol, Kenvue, issued a statement pushing back against the Trump administration’s characterization of the drug: “We believe independent, sound science clearly shows that taking acetaminophen does not cause autism. We strongly disagree with any suggestion otherwise and are deeply concerned with the health risk this poses for expecting mothers.”

However, many on social media took note of the fact that, in 2017, Tylenol posted, “We actually don’t recommend using any of our products while pregnant.” Note that there’s a difference between “don’t recommend” and “don’t take this drug.” Nonetheless, the post is intriguing in light of today’s debate.

Dr. Makary defended the administration’s action, arguing, “We have an epidemic of autism that has increased 400% in recent decades, and we don’t have a known cause. Now this may be a cause, but when you have enough evidence to suggest an association and you have no other plausible cause, we have a duty to notify parents and doctors.”

Meanwhile, the administration also expressed hope in an older, long-established drug that offered promise as a treatment for autism symptoms. “Only recently have we recognized that some kids with autism actually have an autoimmune disease,” Makary explained. “The mechanism may be that the body is creating antibodies that block the folate receptors on their brain, restricting the ability of folate to get into the cerebrum. And so what that does is it actually creates a situation where you could have high levels of folate in your diet.”

The potential treatment drug in question is leucovorin, which is a type of folic acid metabolite and has been used to counteract the side effects of various chemotherapy drugs.

Predictably, this announcement has generated intense responses, especially from the anti-Trump crowd, that are little more than knee-jerk contrarianism. For example, social media has started to see a rash of leftist pregnant women ingesting Tylenol to “prove” Trump wrong. One would think that rather than simply doing the opposite of what the administration advises, especially when it comes to the health of one’s baby, a mother would take the time to research the issue and confer with her doctor before engaging in potentially dangerous behavior.

Yet the above reaction serves to capture the nation’s broader problem in a nutshell. America’s authoritative institutions have lost the public’s trust. In its place, politics has been injected. Instead of a common respect for institutions that are purported to be apolitical, every expert opinion or recommendation these institutions may make is now viewed as little other than an expression of political opinion and dependent upon who resides in the White House.

This was certainly true during the Biden administration, particularly in its handling of the COVID pandemic and its underhanded and overt efforts to promote certain views and censor others — often by pressuring Big Tech companies like Google to do so. However, with the Trump administration seeking to right the ship behind Kennedy as HHS secretary, it will be difficult because many will also question the trustworthiness of HHS and CDC recommendations under his watch.

(Updated)

Update 9/26: Dr. Marty Makary sat down with Bari Weiss of The Free Press to discuss this decision. He began with this level-headed observation:

There are a number of pathways involved in autism, each of which may be a cause. As we unlock the science behind these different pathways, we arrive at a point in our investigation where there is enough information that should be made available to the public in real time.

One finding that we believed rose to that level was the association between prenatal acetaminophen and autism—an association that was affirmed in a Harvard review published four weeks ago. One of the co-authors of the study, the dean of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said that there is a causal association between prenatal acetaminophen and the neurodevelopmental disorders of ADHD and autism spectrum disorder. When the dean of the Harvard School of Public Health is waving a flag in the air about an expanding epidemic that barely existed a generation ago, an epidemic that affects over two million kids in a way that makes their lives brutal, and we know that most acetaminophen prescribed is unnecessary, do you have a moral obligation to let the public know about this body of research?

We felt that we had an obligation to do so. We did not limit the availability of acetaminophen. But we made the information available.