RFK Jr Says Evidence Is ‘Not Sufficient to Say’ Tylenol Causes Autism — One Day After Texas AG Claimed It Was in Lawsuit

AP Photo/Alex Brandon

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. admitted that the evidence was “not sufficient to say” Tylenol causes autism — just one day after Texas filed a lawsuit citing his previous comments to make that claim.

On Tuesday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against Johnson & Johnson and Kenvue, the parent company and manufacturer of Tylenol, claiming that acetaminophen, the drug’s active ingredient, causes “a significantly increased risk of autism and other disorders,” like ADHD.

“For years, the scientific evidence has shown that acetaminophen can cause ASD and ADHD in children whose mothers ingested the drug while pregnant and that the more acetaminophen ingested, the greater the risk,” the complaint argued, citing numerous controversial and debunked claims by Kennedy and President Donald Trump about acetaminophen to claim a causal link between the drug and autism or ADHD.

As Mediaite reported, the complaint omits mention of studies that contradict these claims, notably a 2024 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) that reviewed the health records of over 2.5 million children born in Sweden over a 25-year period and found “no significant associations” between prenatal acetaminophen use and children’s risk of autism, ADHD, or intellectual disability, and further “suggest[ed] that associations observed in other models may have been attributable to familial confounding.”

Paxton also contracted with a Chicago attorney, Ashley Keller, the lead counsel for a group of more than 600 plaintiffs who sued Johnson & Johnson and Kenvue in personal injury lawsuits claiming that prenatal use of Tylenol caused neurodevelopmental harms like ASD and ADHD to their children.

Those cases were all tossed out of court after a federal judge excluded all six of the plaintiffs’ proposed expert witnesses, finding that their proffered testimony was fundamentally “unreliable and inadmissible” due to “fatal” and “overarching methodological flaws,” “cherry-picking isolated findings,” “misrepresent[ing] study results and refused to acknowledge the role of genetics in the etiology of either ASD or ADHD,” and exhibiting a lack of “relevant expertise.”

Kennedy was asked about Tylenol on Wednesday, and offered this response, according to a report by USA Today:

“The causative association… between Tylenol given in pregnancy and the perinatal periods is not sufficient to say it definitely causes autism. But it is very suggestive,” Kennedy told reporters, citing animal, blood and observational studies.

“There should be a cautious approach to it,” he added.

As it has been previously noted many times before, Kennedy holds no science or medical degrees, has a long track record of promoting conspiracy theories and unfounded claims about vaccines and autism, including debunked research by Andrew Wakefield, who lost his medical license for fraud and “serious professional misconduct.”

Kenvue issued a statement responding to Kennedy’s latest comments. “We agree, as Secretary Kennedy said, that the best message to pregnant women is to consult their healthcare professional before taking acetaminophen, which is what our Tylenol label tells consumers to do,” the statement said. “We also agree that there is no definitive causative association between taking acetaminophen and autism.”

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