Amidst falling trust in federal health agencies, President Donald Trump’s second administration claims to be working toward restoring trust and transparency within science and health care while continuing to make baseless claims about vaccines, acetaminophen and their correlation to autism.
In February 2025, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a known anti-vaccination activist, was named Secretary of the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Kennedy has since pushed for research linking vaccinations and autism, a claim debunked by decades of research. Kennedy has also cut $500 million in funding for mRNA vaccine development. Despite the Commonwealth Fund reporting that mRNA vaccines saved around $1 trillion in medical costs and millions of lives during the COVID-19 pandemic, Kennedy claimed that those vaccines “fail to protect effectively against upper respiratory infections like COVID and flu.” Trump has also questioned vaccines, particularly the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine. Though it’s easy for many people to consult medical professionals and find research that has been supported, it’s worrying that some parents may still be hesitant to vaccinate their children because of such statements, especially as it could lead to outbreaks of measles and polio, which are making a comeback.
Autism seems to be a large focus of Kennedy’s research. In April 2025, he pledged “a massive testing and research effort,” claiming that he would determine the cause of autism in five months. Though he described how “hundreds of scientists from around the world” would be involved in the research, he did not elaborate on the nature of the research or how much funding it would require. The Autism Society of America asserted that autism is “a complex developmental disability shaped by genetic, biological, and environmental factors,” and that Kennedy’s statements about autism being an “epidemic” or contagion are “harmful, misleading, and unrealistic.”
Vaccines aren’t the only thing Trump’s second administration has tried to link to autism. Trump’s war on Tylenol first started in September 2025, when Kennedy claimed that acetaminophen, a key component of Tylenol, is linked to increased risk of autism when taken during pregnancy. Several sources, including a Johns Hopkins University study cited by a White House article and the HHS, acknowledge the “lack of clear causal evidence” between acetaminophen intake and autism. Despite this, Trump took to social media platform Truth Social and told pregnant women to not use Tylenol “unless absolutely necessary” and added an additional order without providing any reasoning or evidence: “Don’t give Tylenol to your young child for virtually any reason.” In the very same week, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the makers of Tylenol for hiding the link between acetaminophen and autism,while Kennedy conceded that the association “is not sufficient to say it definitely cause[s] autism,” though he claimed the data “is very suggestive.”
Considering that Tylenol is one of very few medications deemed generally safe to take during pregnancy, Trump’s unsupported claims are worrying for many. The Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicinedescribed how a lack of treatment for fevers “increases the risk of miscarriage [and] birth defects,” particularly within the first trimester, and “untreated pain can lead to maternal depression, anxiety, and high blood pressure.” As a result, hesitancy to use Tylenol — which, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, is “one of the few options available to pregnant patients to treat pain and fever” — can be life-altering.
It is true that few studies have observed an association between acetaminophen intake during pregnancy and autism in children: In 2024, a Swedish study that analyzed the records of nearly two million children originally found a small link between acetaminophen and autism. However, when those same researchers accounted for the effects of genes on autism by comparing siblings who had been exposed to acetaminophen with those who had not, the link disappeared. Though some studies have found an association between acetaminophen and autism, no studies have determined a causal relationship — that is, it is completely unsupported to say that Tylenol and acetaminophen cause autism.
These instances of misinformation and fearmongering over vaccines and medication serve as a reminder to trust supported research and medical professionals over someone who had difficulty pronouncing the word “acetaminophen.”
A version of this article appeared on p.15 of the October 30, 2025 edition of the Daily Nexus.
