President Donald Trump held a press conference at the White House, along with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (Secretary of Health and Human Services), as well as deputies from the Food and Drug Administration, on Sept. 22, 2025. During the press conference, they announced that they would be updating drug labeling to discourage the use of acetaminophen by pregnant women, saying that there was a link between the painkiller and autism.
Trump stated that the rise of autism in children in America is mainly caused by the overuse of painkillers, such as Tylenol, by pregnant women. He also suggested that vaccines being overused may be another cause of the rise in autism, even though this claim has been debunked by decades of research. In the conference, he stated that in the past couple of decades, the number of kids with autism has gone from 1 in 20,000 to 1 in 10,000, and now 1 in 31, with him even saying that it’s one in 12 for boys. He then went on to say that many groups of people never take vaccines and pills, and don’t have autism, with him naming the Amish as one of these groups. But the main claim he was making was that pregnant women shouldn’t take Tylenol due to the risk of giving autism to their child. He said that pregnant women should be cautious about using it, and should only take it for an extreme fever. He then went on to criticise pregnant women for taking Tylenol due to them not being able to, quote “tough it out”. He then goes on a long rant about vaccines and why they should be taken separately and not all at once.
After his huge claim on Tylenol’s correlation with rising autism, many doctors and health professionals commented on his claims and how true or false they really were. Believe it or not, there is some actual evidence that shows there could be a link between acetaminophen and Autism, ADHD, and other developmental conditions. It’s a topic that has been researched for many years now. However, there is also just as much evidence and research that these painkillers are not the cause of the rise in autism. One major piece of evidence for this is that while the rates of autism in children have greatly risen, the rates of painkiller usage have remained stagnant for many years, with some statistics saying that it has slightly decreased. This means that Tylenol and other painkillers containing acetaminophen are most likely not the cause of rising autism in children. One of the largest studies on this subject was done this year in Sweden, where doctors analyzed nearly two million children. They would study siblings, one exposed to Tylenol, and another who wasn’t exposed to the painkiller. And it was discovered that there was absolutely no increased risk of autism. This is a huge piece of evidence that acetaminophen doesn’t cause autism.
Doctors are currently still studying the link between acetaminophen and autism. Though Trump’s claims on the subject have some evidence behind them, they are not proven and require much more evidence and reasoning. Hopefully, medical professionals can get a better understanding of the drug’s effect on pregnant women, as well as find out what could be the cause of the huge rise in autism in children.
