After U.S. President Donald Trump suggested that taking Tylenol during pregnancy may cause autism, health experts pushed back, emphasizing that no scientific evidence supports the claim and warning that statements from public officials can spread dangerous medical misinformation.
Research has increasingly examined prenatal exposures, including medications such as acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol. However, major health agencies — including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institute of Health (NIH) — have found no conclusive evidence that acetaminophen use during pregnancy causes autism.
Politics in medicine
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has been studied for decades as scientists work to understand its causes, which include both genetic and environmental factors. Dr. Karen Wilcox, Chair of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the U’s College of Pharmacy, said there is no “scientific consensus” that a link between Tylenol and autism exists.
Wilcox added that misinformation about medicine often spreads rapidly when amplified by authority figures. “When trusted individuals, for example, our government officials, make statements, people tend to believe them, and when it’s replicated throughout social media, it makes it seem like it’s more true,” she said.
Dr. Jim VanDerslice, Division Chief of Public Health at the School of Medicine, said that while misinformation in health is common, it is less typical for it to originate from high-level officials, although the occurrence is “more common than it has been in the past.” He explained that scientific understanding is built through a cumulative process that involves research, peer review and consensus.
“We have a fairly well-established set of procedures around establishing what is the most likely state of affairs in science,” VanDerslice said. “There’s no one study that can establish the truth as to what happens. The one truth is really hard to get at.”
He explained that government agencies like the NIH and CDC rely on meta-analysis and systematic reviews that evaluate multiple studies before deciding on official guidance.
“There are groups where the work they do is to evaluate all the studies and to say, ‘Okay, if we only take the best studies, the weight of evidence is saying this,’” VanDerslice said. “That process has been well-established and transparent.”
VanDerslice said he had not found credible evidence supporting the recent Tylenol-autism claim. “The sources that I feel are credible basically have not supported the statements that were made recently by the president,” he said.
Navigating misinformation
VanDerslice also discussed challenges of countering misinformation, especially when fear-based claims spread faster than balanced scientific communication.
“It doesn’t take much to spread a message which causes fear,” VanDerslice said. “Being able to pull into a message to say that something is safe doesn’t have the same psychological response. Fearful messages get your attention.”
He said messages about children and health risks tend to elicit particularly strong emotional reactions. “We care a lot about children, especially when it’s your children,” VanDerslice said. “Something that comes up around a risk to a child, you’ve got both the fear and now it’s your kid. Those kinds of things distort messages.”
To identify reliable information, VanDerslice recommended that people examine the source and motivation behind a claim and compare information across multiple outlets.
“I think one of the main things is the source,” he said. “Statements are made with a purpose. The biggest thing is having to make the effort to look at more than one place.”
Both experts said that understanding how to evaluate information is key to combating misinformation. “We all have to learn to check our sources,” Wilcox said. “When it comes to health information, misinformation can do real harm.”
John Hedberg | Oct 29, 2025 at 7:21 am
I believe the HHS Secretary and his entire command staff informed the President that there appears to be a causal link between neurological disorders and acetaminophen use during pregnancy and early infancy, if I remember the press conference. This is evidently reflected in the data from other countries besides the United States.
While the “gold standard” science is being implemented to prove or disprove the evident causal relationship suggested by the data, the Trump Administration HHS Team has recommended that pregnant women and early infants avoid use if possible, as a precaution, to use the lowest effective dose if avoidance is not possible, and to do so in consultation with their qualified physician, all of which are in accord with existing sound medical advice.
This is all precautionary while the current data is studied in official lab and/or clinical studies which probably should have been done long ago: the fact that they weren’t suggests some significant culpable negligence on the part of decades of corporate-funded public health officials.
These same public health officials demanded mask adherence and social distancing rules based on zero science during the Pandemic, and told us that the mRNA COVID-19 products were vaccines with 90+% effectiveness at preventing infection, that they absolutely prevented transmission, when neither turned out to be the case: misinformation! In fact, they censored the mRNA inventor, Dr. Robert Malone, when he warned mRNA “vaccines” (which never met the definition of the word) should be pulled from the market immediately due to the danger of the technology he developed, like Henry Ford being censored for misinformation over factual statements about mass production he invented and implemented.
These same evidently corrupt public health “experts” recommended public school lockdowns even though the CDC and WHO data showed that COVID had near zero mortality in children, that it had lower mortality in people under 40 than pneumonia did. This data was backed up in practice when private schools remained open around the country during the Pandemic, and there was no corresponding rise in mortality among either students or teachers under 40, yet the CDC recommendation to keep public schools closed remained in place despite the long-term evident health risk to millions of innocent children.
These were the same public health “experts” who consistently disseminated actual misinformation while suppressing real public data they suppressed AS “misinformation”, hiding the crimes of the malfeasant who knew of the myocarditis link between young people and the mRNA vaccines, who knew that the data indicated young people were at more serious risk from the mRNA technology than they were from COVID mortality and should have been warned, but who explicitly suppressed incoming public health data indicating vaccine injuries, labeling it as “misinformation” to shield the culpable from accountability and keep the products they continued to recommend on the market, products which (coincidentally?) raked in $billions in revenue while therapeutic treatment alternatives to the “vaccines” were kept from the public so that the EUA (Emergency Use Authorization) would be allowed to continue.
So, the Trump Administration’s HHS Command Team has recommended avoiding acetaminophen use, if possible, in consultation with a doctor, while the gold standard science which should have been done decades ago, and wasn’t, is finally completed to make sense of the suggested causal relationship with child neurological disorders, many of which are still almost entirely unknown among populations who don’t use this country’s pharmaceuticals.
This precaution seems justified by the scientific data while further studies are being completed, so if the University “health experts” seem beholden to some other priority above the scientific data, that would certainly be a shocker after the last 5 years of public behavioral data revealing the health priorities of supposed experts and how they failed to protect the public even when science showed the public was at serious risk, showing that they somehow (miraculously?) seemed to promote the best interests of the funders of their research first, both corporate and political, apparently prioritizing other factors over public safety, even while they were taking public salaries, at the grave risk and cost to millions of innocent people.
So far, the evidence simply suggests that a causal relationship exists between “health experts” and their corporate and political funders, of course! Perhaps some of the public health “experts” here at the U will implement some gold standard scientific studies to explore that relationship? (No one is holding their breath while we wait, believe me!😉)
Did anyone seriously think the Make America Healthy Again movement (putting the health of American children and adults first, ahead of paid corporate and political interests) just came out of nowhere? Honestly? 🤔💛