Tylenol, Autism, and the Temptation of Easy Answers

Update (Sept. 22): Rumors are now circulating that Donald Trump will announce folinic acid as a “cure” for autism, while doubling down on the Tylenol-autism narrative. Both claims have no basis in established science. The strongest studies show no causal link between Tylenol use in pregnancy and autism, and folinic acid is not a cure—at best, it has been studied in narrow contexts with limited results. Framing autism this way risks turning vulnerable families into targets for profit and fuels stigma, not solutions.

So, RFK Jr. made an announcement. Again. This time it’s about Tylenol in pregnancy and autism. He’s promising a big report, citing “new science,” pointing fingers at acetaminophen (the one drug pregnant people have been told for decades was the “safe” option), and dangling folinic acid like it’s the missing puzzle piece.

I want to pause here, because whenever these headlines hit, the ground shifts under parents, under disabled adults, under communities that are already fighting stigma. Words like these don’t just hang in the air—they ripple. They settle in people’s minds as suspicion, as blame, as “what if I caused this.” And I need you to hear me: we’ve been down this road before, and it’s paved with harm.

Historically, Tylenol wasn’t even a household thing until the mid-20th century. It started as a children’s syrup in 1955, went over-the-counter in 1960, and became the go-to adult and pregnancy pain reliever by the 1970s, especially after aspirin was connected to bleeding risks and Reye’s syndrome. That’s the arc. The supposed “villain” of this week’s headline was marketed as the gentler alternative.

Now line that up against autism. In the 1960s, autism diagnoses were barely a blip—two to four children out of ten thousand. By the 1980s and 90s, the numbers ticked upward, not because something suddenly invaded children’s brains en masse, but because the criteria expanded, awareness spread, and parents who’d once been told their child was “schizophrenic” or “just difficult” were finally being heard. By 2022, the CDC reports one in 31 eight-year-olds identified as autistic. That rise is real in the data, but the story behind it is diagnostic shifts, advocacy, visibility. Not a sudden spike of Tylenol bottles flying off pharmacy shelves.

And here’s the clincher: the best research we have doesn’t support a causal link. The Swedish cohort—nearly 2.5 million children born between 1995 and 2019—looked at acetaminophen use during pregnancy. Yes, if you just run the raw numbers, you see a slight bump in autism and ADHD. But when you compare siblings (same family, same genetics, same environment, different exposures)? The risk disappears. No signal. No cause. What you’re left with is confounding, not conspiracy.

That matters, because every time someone with a platform like RFK Jr. says “we’ve found the cause,” what parents hear is “you caused it.” And what autistic people hear is “your existence is a mistake that could’ve been prevented.” That’s not science. That’s stigma wrapped in speculation.

I’m not saying don’t study acetaminophen. Of course we should keep asking questions, testing hypotheses, digging into environmental and genetic interactions. But let’s be honest about what we know and what we don’t. Right now, what we have are associations, some inconsistent signals, and one of the most rigorous analyses we’ve seen saying flat out: no causal link. That doesn’t make a flashy headline, but it does make for a more honest conversation.

Autism isn’t a puzzle to be solved by ripping bottles of Tylenol off shelves. It’s a complex, multifaceted neurodevelopmental reality, shaped by genetics, environment, and, yes, the way our society chooses to define and diagnose it. The danger is that announcements like this one reduce it to a single culprit, a single “fix,” when what autistic people actually need is support, acceptance, services, and respect.

So when you see the headlines this week, remember: causation isn’t correlation, and speculation isn’t science. Remember the parents who will blame themselves all over again. Remember the autistic kids and adults who will have to live under that shadow. And remember that our job—yours, mine, everyone reading this—is to resist the easy scapegoats and fight for the harder, more human truth.

Because truth without denial, care without condition—that’s the ethic worth standing by.