The bonkers wellness myths that fueled Trump’s autism announcement

In a long-awaited and much-dreaded announcement on Monday evening, President Donald Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claimed today that the government has uncovered two potential explanations for autism. In a formal White House announcement they asserted that the use of Tylenol during pregnancy and folate deficiency in pregnant people could contribute to the condition. No other scientific or public health body agrees, but their conclusions conveniently line up with Kennedy’s frequent attacks on the pharmaceutical industry. The HHS secretary also promised to continue investigating the discredited theory of whether vaccines cause autism, a claim he’s frequently made or hinted at during his long career as an anti-vaccine activist.  

Autism is a neurological disorder that currently affects 1 in 31 children. Symptoms can vary widely in severity; while some autistic people need few accommodations, others require significant support with basic daily tasks. Kennedy has repeatedly depicted autistic people as burdens on society, proclaiming in a speech earlier this year, “These are kids who will never pay taxes. They’ll never hold a job. They’ll never play baseball. They’ll never write a poem. They’ll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted.” 

The announcement was far from a surprise. Scientists and public health experts— as well as Tylenol’s parent company Kenvue—have been bracing for it for most of the month, after the Wall Street Journal reported on September 5 that HHS planned to claim a link between use of acetaminophen and autism. Donald Trump also teased today’s announcement during a Sunday memorial service for MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk, telling the crowd, “I think we found an answer to autism,” and promising them, “we won’t let it happen anymore, and how to get at least somewhat better when you have it.” Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine advocacy group that Kennedy led before he entered the presidential race, has long claimed a link between acetaminophen and autism.

“I’ve been waiting for this meeting for twenty years, actually,” Trump proclaimed at the start of his rambling and frequently incoherent remarks from the White House; he was accompanied by not just Kennedy, but acting HHS Assistant Health Secretary Dorothy Fink, National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya, United States Commissioner of Food and Drugs Marty Makary and Dr. Mehmet Oz, Administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Two mothers of autistic children, introduced only as Jackie and Amanda, were there, and they both expressed their profound gratitude to the Trump administration.  

When introducing the findings, Trump claimed that people are “taking something” that leads to autism. Turning to Kennedy, he asked him to confirm that Amish people take “no vaccines” and have “essentially no autism,” a common anti-vaccine canard that he mangled in its delivery. Trump also repeatedly struggled to pronounce the word “acetaminophen,” the generic name for the name-brand drug Tylenol, which was central to the announcement he was making. 

“It’s not good,” he proclaimed. “I’ll say it. It’s not good.” He also urged pregnant women to “tough it out” instead of taking Tylenol. 

Andrea Baccarelli, the dean of faculty at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the lead author on a recent review of 46 studies that found a link between maternal use of acetaminophen during pregnancy and later autism diagnosis in offspring, said in an emailed statement that he and his colleagues acknowledged that acetaminophen was “the only approved medication for pain and fever reduction during pregnancy, acetaminophen remains an important tool for pregnant patients and their physicians.” For pregnant women, his team recommended “the lowest effective dose of acetaminophen, for the shortest possible duration, after consultation with their physician about their individual risk-benefit calculation.” 

Trump also frequently departed from prepared remarks to denounce vaccines and how they essentially contaminate infants. “They pump so much stuff into those beautiful, little babies,” he proclaimed. 

“Ideally a woman won’t take Tylenol,” the president of the United States added, “and on the vaccines it would be good instead of one visit where they pump the baby, load it up with stuff.” Instead, he suggested that the same child would visit the doctor “four or five times” to get their vaccines. This schedule is not recommended by any legitimate public health body. Trump also denounced giving a Hepatitis B vaccine to infants, calling on people to wait until their children are “twelve years old.” This argument was likely due to his mistaken belief that Hepatitis B is only sexually transmitted and thus not necessary for infants. (Hepatitis B can be transmitted from mother to child during birth, attacks the liver, and can cause lifelong consequences, which is why the vaccine is recommended for infants.)

“Nothing bad can happen,” Trump declared, at another point in his remarks, referring to not vaccinating children. “Only good can happen.” 

Trump also teased another announcement: a new treatment for autism. “We’ve learned some pretty good things about certain elements of genius that can be given to a baby,” he said. “And the baby can get better!”

In slightly more well-prepared remarks, Kennedy claimed to have “fast-tracked research and guidance” on autism, a departure from what he claimed was “fruitless” previous research from the National Institutes of Health. Contrary to his previous claims that he would discover the causes of autism by September, Kennedy acknowledged that he did not meet that goal, despite the government’s new claims regarding Tylenol and folate. Instead, he claimed that NIH research teams were still testing “multiple hypotheses” regarding the causes of autism. He also said that the FDA would immediately add a warning label to acetaminophen and change he guidance for pregnant people—while still encouraging physicians to use their best clinical judgment. Kennedy added that autism is a “complex disorder” and promised they were “continuing to examine a multiplicity of causes,” which includes vaccines.  

“Whatever the answer is, we will tell you what we find,” Kennedy stated. While the press conference continued, HHS sent out a far more cautious press release, which read in part:

“The FDA is responding to prior clinical and laboratory studies that suggest a potential association between acetaminophen use during pregnancy and adverse neurodevelopmental outcomes. FDA also recognizes that there are contrary studies showing no association and that there can be risks for untreated fever in pregnancy, both for the mother and fetus.”  

In his remarks, NIH director Bhattacharya said his agency, which oversees US medical and public health research and has a budget of $48 billion, would invest millions of dollars in new research on autism, claiming that the agency previously didn’t do that “for fear it would produce a politically incorrect answer.” (In fact, the NIH allocated $100 million to autism research in 2022 alone.) FDA commissioner Makary, for his part, declared they were making a “historic shift in medical culture” to “end the suffering we are watching,” calling children with “severe autism” in his words “hard to watch.” And Dr. Oz, bringing up the rear, praised Trump for “bust[ing] through the clutter,” and promised to make prescription leucovorin—the new treatment that Trump had alluded to—covered by Medicaid.  

Although some preliminary studies have shown that the leucovorin—a form of vitamin B also called folinic acid that is commonly used both to augment chemotherapy and combat its side effects in cancer patients—can improve social skills in autistic people, the only evidence-based use of it is for autistic people with a rare condition called Cerebral Folate Deficiency. 

During his remarks, Kennedy seemed to suggest a more robust connection, claiming that research had also revealed that “folate deficiency in a child’s brain could lead to autism.” 

This questionable statement reflects a widespread myth in the wellness community concerning an extremely common gene mutation called MTHFR, which can inhibit the ability of cells’ mitochondria to process folic acid. Influencers blame this mutation for a grab bag of problems, including autoimmune conditions, irritable bowel syndrome, and migraines, despite the fact that essentially no high-quality evidence exists to back those claims. Once more, all roads seem to lead to Kennedy’s previous organization: in 2022, Children’s Health Defense speculated that an MTHFR mutation might put someone “at higher risk of injury from a Covid vaccine.” The group has also claimed without good evidence that children with the mutation are “more vulnerable to the effects of environmental toxins and neurotoxins such as aluminum and mercury.” The group has long pointed to the use of those elements in vaccines as a cause of autism, though scientists disagree.

Experts agree that for most people, the MTHFR mutation is not clinically relevant—that’s why major medical organizations, including the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics, and even the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, recommend against testing for the mutation. Nevertheless, MTFHR testing is a booming business, as are folinic acid supplements. The consumer advocacy group Public Citizen has reported that Dr. Mehmet Oz, the head of the US Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, is a stakeholder in one company that sells the vitamins. Some wellness influencers have encouraged pregnant people who test positive for MTHFR not to take folic acid—a dangerous piece of advice considering that those supplements are the only proven way to prevent neural tube defects like spina bifida. 

Journalist and pediatrician Emily Willingham has a good rundown here of what exactly MTHFR is and isn’t. She also explains how it relates to Kennedy’s apparent obsession with mitochondrial dysfunction (and the ways in which supplement companies have monetized his obsession). Just last month, he bemoaned the “mitochondrial challenges” he had observed in children as he walked “through the airports” and “down the street.” He never specified what those challenges were.

Autistic self-advocates have decried Kennedy’s rhetoric on autism for years, calling it blatantly ableist and dehumanizing.

In April, the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network said in a statement that they were deeply troubled by Kennedy’s persistent claims that he would “prevent” or “cure” autism. “It is disgusting that Secretary Kennedy is calling for efforts he believes will reduce the amount of autistic people who exist, whether through a ‘cure’ or ‘prevention,’” the group wrote. “Our existence is not a ‘cataclysm,’ as he called autism in his Fox News interview.”  

Scientists believe that autism is likely caused by a blend of genetic and environmental factors. The Autism Science Foundation released a statement earlier this month saying that blaming Tylenol or folic acid deficiency—or any other singular cause completely ignores the complexity of the condition.

“It is disingenuous and misleading to boil autism’s causes down to one simple thing,” said Dr. Alycia Halladay, Chief Science Officer at the Autism Science Foundation said in the foundation’s statement. “We know that autism is incredibly complicated, and we need to move away from studies that simplify it down to one exposure without any other considerations.”

In a statement earlier this month, Tylenol’s parent company, Kenvue, disputed the conclusions of the HHS study, writing, “We have continuously evaluated the science and continue to believe there is no causal link between acetaminophen use during pregnancy and autism.” The company has not yet issued an update statement. 

In its own statement earlier this month, the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine underscored its conviction that acetaminophen is safe for use during pregnancy, and warned that an untreated high fever and pain “carry significant maternal and infant health risks.”  The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) said the same in their own statement released yesterday, calling the suggestion that acetaminophen causes autism “irresponsible.”

“Today’s announcement by HHS is not backed by the full body of scientific evidence and dangerously simplifies the many and complex causes of neurologic challenges in children,” ACOG added. “It is highly unsettling that our federal health agencies are willing to make an announcement that will affect the health and well-being of millions of people without the backing of reliable data.”

Harvard’s Baccarelli noted that his team had discussed the study with Kennedy and National Institutes of Health head Jay Bhattacharya in recent weeks. Baccarelli previously served as an expert witness on behalf of a group of plaintiffs who sued manufacturers over an alleged link between acetaminophen and autism. A federal judge dismissed the case because of insufficient evidence of the purported link between acetaminophen and autism.  

As the press conference drew to a close, Trump returned to once again foster suspicion against “the drug companies,” denounce vaccines, Tylenol, administering Hep-B vaccines to infants, and to present confused and incoherent guidance for chickenpox and MMR vaccines, as Fink and Kennedy stood woodenly behind him. Trump also told a rambling story about a “beautiful, perfect child” who worked for one of his employees at Trump Tower. The child, he recalled, developed a high fever after getting a vaccine. 

“They get fried,” the president declared. A few minutes later, as if he were at a rally, he yelled into the microphone, “Don’t take Tylenol,” and then meandered into some disconnected observations about subsidizing drug costs in other countries and Ozempic, which he called “the fat pill.” But in the end, Trump claimed, “We’re going to save a lot of children from a tough life.”