Trump's ‘big reveal’ on paracetamol-autism ‘link’ rooted in Kennedy's ‘absurd’ beliefs: Tracing journey of the claims

Back in April Robert F Kennedy, Jr. promised to share a “cure” for autism by September. He came good on the timing, not on the science.

When President Donald Trump made his since-debunked “very big” announcement that Tylenol (acetaminophen or paracetamol) and childhood vaccinations “cause autism”, right by his side was the Secretary Health and Human Services, Robert F Kennedy, Jr, or RFK Jr, who had promised this “cure” back in April. The deadline promise was kept, but the science does not hold up.

U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. looks at U.S. President Donald Trump while he makes an announcement linking autism to childhood vaccines and to the use of popular pain medication Tylenol for pregnant women and children, claims which are not backed by decades of science, at the White House, in Washington, D.C., U.S., September 22, 2025. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque(REUTERS)

September 22, 2025, therefore is another time Kennedy — this time through Trump — has spread unproven claims about drugs or vaccines and autism.

RFK Jr's autism claims

Though RFK Jr is widely known to be an anti-vaxxer — he was among the more prominent spreaders of misinformation during the Covid pandemic, another being Trump — he spoke about autism specifically at his first official press briefing after becoming health secretary (equivalent to health minister in other countries such as India) in April 2025.

He said without further explanation that autistic children will never pay taxes, hold a job, play baseball, write a poem, go out on a date, and that “many of them will never use a toilet unassisted”.

Several news and information fact-checked his claims. PBS reported that a 2023 study by US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officials and university researchers found that the vast majority of people on the autism spectrum do not have those severe problems.

When the most recent reports in 2025 from the CDC found that autism rates in 8-year-olds rose from 1 in 36 in 2020 to 1 in 31 in 2022 — five times higher than in 2000 — Kennedy saw that as a gotcha moment, repeating his claims. He also said autism could not just be genetic, but an external “toxin” had to be the main cause since he saw it as an epidemic.

But the CDC said there was an uptick because there's now better awareness and thus more screening for autism. It was “not necessarily" because the condition was now more common.

Linking vaccines with autism

RFK Jr has claimed, among his many anti-vaccine positions, that vaccines cause autism.

In 2023, when he was trying to get the Republican ticket to contest as president (eventually he backed Trump), in a viral video he described the novel coronavirus causing Covid-19 as a “bioweapon” made by China. He claimed it targeted some ethnicities such as Caucasians and Black people while some Jews and Chinese people were immune.

But experts called his claims absurd, as evidence for it did not agree — in fact, there was evidence to the contrary. Eminent epidemiologist Dr Michael Mina wrote on X (formerly Twitter) at the time: “Beyond the absurdity, biological know-how simply isn’t there to make a virus that targets only certain ethnicities.”

What now?

On autism, RFK Jr got Trump to come good on his promise made in April, that he would share a “cure” in five months. "By September, we'll know what has caused the autism epidemic and we'll be able to eliminate those exposures," he had said.

The Tylenol (paracetamol) and autism “link” claim is likely to spread confusion globally over one of the most widely-used drugs for fever, body ache and other flu-like symptoms.

Medical experts have strongly pushed back, some calling Trump's comments dangerous. The World Health Organization has also debunked the claims.

The US health agency CDC pointedly says there's no link between vaccines, or any ingredients in them, and autism.

In fact, the US US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), in a notice to doctors, admitted that “no causal relationship has not been established”

In language much milder than Trump's, the notice said doctors should consider limiting the use of Tylenol. "To be clear, while an association between acetaminophen and autism has been described in many studies… there are contrary studies in the scientific literature," the FDA wrote.