Kaiser brought up a good point yesterday, that most people heard a worm ate part of Robert Kennedy, Jr.’s brain and thought that explained everything — when it very much doesn’t! For me, I never saw it as, “oh, the worm ate his brain and that’s why he’s like this.” My takeaway was: “ingesting RFK’s brain killed that worm.” In other words, his brain is a lethal substance. The thing about RFK, though, is that he’s never been content to just mortally endanger organisms inside his body; he’s on a mission to croak his gospel of medical disinformation at full pitch, regardless of the consequences to life forms on the outside. One of his more pernicious campaigns has been to insist that taking Tylenol while pregnant causes babies to be born autistic. The president cosigned the false claim, and then other MAGAts were all too happy to follow suit. Well, Denmark just did an actual study, the findings were published on Monday, and guess what: NO COLLUSION between Tylenol and autism.
Among more than 1.5 million children born between 1997 and 2022, including 31,098 exposed to Tylenol in the womb, autism was later diagnosed in 1.8% of exposed children and 3% of the unexposed group, Danish researchers reported in JAMA Pediatrics.
The lack of an association persisted after researchers accounted for individual risk factors including the dose of the drug and the trimester of pregnancy in which it was used, the report said.
A 2024 Swedish study also found no link between autism and pregnancy use of Tylenol, a brand name for acetaminophen and paracetamol.
A 2025 review by U.S. researchers of 46 earlier studies did suggest a possible link between prenatal acetaminophen exposure and neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in children, but the researchers said the study does not prove the drug caused those conditions. They advised that pregnant women should continue to use acetaminophen as needed, at the lowest possible dose and for the shortest possible period.
In September, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it was initiating the process for a label change for acetaminophen to warn that its use by pregnant women may be associated with an increased risk of autism and ADHD. At the time of the FDA announcement, U.S. President Donald Trump said pregnant women and infants should not take the drug because of its link with autism.
Since then, national and international medical groups have decried the president’s comments, saying they were not evidence-based.
A month after the FDA said it would recommend limiting Tylenol use in pregnancy, U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. said evidence does not show that Tylenol definitively causes autism but that it should still be used cautiously.
The FDA declined to comment on the status of its planned label change.
1.8%. That’s it. I mean, I guess it’s on brand, cause we always knew this administration only cared about the 1%. Unfortunately, RFK will not be taking any of this research into account and changing his views based on the evidence. Unlike the scientific method where you first gather data and then draw a conclusion, the MAGA method is to spew a hateful soundbite and then gather lies and an angry mob to sell it. Plus let’s be real, RFK will probably be too preoccupied with maiming some recently-deceased animal. So instead of the FDA wasting time and resources on a useless edit to Tylenol labels, how bout we start slapping warnings onto election ballots? Like large, clearly printed reminders detailing the worst side effects possible when voting is not handled with care and facts. FFS.
Once again, Tylenol is the SAFEST pain reliever to use when pregnant. If you need it, take it! Just please, don’t take medical (or any other) advice from the whacko who wrote this in his journal: “I was standing in front of my parked car on I-684 cutting the p3nis out of a road killed raccoon, thinking about how weird some of my family members have turned out to be.”
Photos credit: Matilda Wormwood, Pavel Danilyuk and Vlada Karpovich on Pexels