Kenvue Stock Drops on Report Rfk Jr Will Link Autism to Tylenol During Pregnancy

Until you have a controlled study on pregnant women who use and don't use the drug, you won't really know for sure.

1: https://www.scribbr.co.uk/fallacy/the-genetic-fallacy/#:~:te...

And one of the reasons you don't let morons take over your party is that if they ever are right, they won't be believed. If these are actual risks with Tylenol then oops, that take is being lumped in with the antivax hysteria.

I've seen this kind of thing mentioned before. As a non USA person, I don't know what the deal is with RFK and autism. Wasn't it vaccines last month?

Luckily for those of us who care, there are private and foreign government organizations who still take healthcare and science seriously. Unfortunately the only sane solution seems to be to ignore the US authorities on this for the time being.

I do not have at all the right background to evaluate this research so treat this opinion for what it's worth, but it seems incautious for the authors to close with this note near the end. People like RFK are looking for an explanation for that 20-fold increase. But the hazard ratios in the studies with positive results seem to be along the lines of 1.05-1.20. They do also note changes in diagnosis criteria before this sentence, but it still seems like if they're going to mention a 20-fold increase, they should be even more explicit that any association with increased Tylenol use could only ever explain a very small part of that.

Maybe we should. We're talking about pregnant women and autism, along with taking a different painkiller. And if the theory is wrong, it'll only take a few years to find out, presumably.

For people who don't have children: most medical advice regarding pregnant women and infants is overwhelmingly cautious and errs on the side of, "if we don't have enough studies confirming it's 100% safe, it's better to stick to the less questionably safe way." I'm not sure why this would be any different.

All you’re stating is that you’ve found an echo chamber - which is true of Hacker News (and Reddit, and BlueSky). It’s also true of TruthSocial. I guess my annoyance is that this is Hacker news not DNC news - and as such, I’d hope for more than one (or even two!) perspectives.

I don’t think RFK has shot his credibility - even if he did withdraw from the DNC on October 9, 2023, less than two years ago. His perspective seems stable 20 years on after he wrote “Deadly Immunity” in 2005.

If you think he lost credibility, it wasn’t recent.

Being afforded better care during pregnancy should correlate with better attention (and diagnosis of conditions) to offspring.

If one were cynical one might say this was a good call by Andrea Baccarelli, the Dean of the Faculty, to commission a meta study looking for correlations between common treatments and NDD diagnoses in the current climate of funding going toward whomever can put forward a thread to follow in pursuit of autism.

>> The researchers noted that while steps should be taken to limit acetaminophen use, the drug is important for treating maternal fever and pain, which can also harm children.

also:

>> Baccarelli noted in the “competing interests” section of the paper that he has served as an expert witness for a plaintiff in a case involving potential links between acetominophen use during pregnancy and neurodevelopmental disorders.

Huh, but digging in a little more does show some stronger studies... hmmmm...

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6822099/

Yes but that is the whole RFK brand. He and his supporters always try to have their cake and eat it too. Claim something, things go wrong and blame others for misconstruing RFK's comments.

The way this is going - RFK is going to make claims based on this paper and when people get harmed, he and his supporters will claim that people who followed RFK's assertion didn't hear him correctly. He clearly said the policy was based on this paper and people should have done more research and read this paper. See this paper says there is correlation and not causation. So, you cannot blame RFK for this mishap.

EDIT: Indeed it is! The US government is scooby-doo villains? https://www.npr.org/2024/08/05/nx-s1-5063939/rfk-jr-central-...

You may not owe people who you feel are disgusting quacks better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it.

"Autism rates have gone down 500% during my r/e/i/g/n/ administration!"

When you go to the doctor because you child is on the spectrum. "Fill out this form Mam", on it is the question "Did you take Tylenol during the pregnancy?"

- You check "Yes" -> Your fault, should have known better. No help for you.

- You check "No" -> Well then it can't be autism, that's "scientifically" proven. No help for you.

The claim is that Tylenol is a factor that increases the risk of autism. It is not the cause of 100% of all cases.

That said, the first synthesis of Paracetamol in the USA was Johns Hopkins in 1877, so maybe the answer is they went to Baltimore.

I wonder whether the political actors in question don't understand correlation != causation, or whether they hope that enough of the populace does not understand it in order to further some goal. But what goal? Buying cheap drug shares? Seems ... silly.

Or is it, perhaps, possible that, if there is indeed a real increase in the rate of autism, it's because of something that has nothing to do with our modern pharmaceuticals?

Could it perhaps be related to the increases in various kinds of air pollution? Water pollution? Pesticides or herbicides in our foods? Or even the dramatic increase in EM signals being broadcast everywhere?

Until there are reputable studies that can actually show something resembling a causal link, getting angry at the medical community, pharmaceutical manufacturers, or vaccine makes for saying they are not responsible is pointless and counterproductive. So far as everyone knows, it really wasn't them.

And while there may be some small subset of people "accusing suffering parents of being crazy", by and large that's also not something that's happening.

Like cutting funding for autism research [1] and kids with autism on Medicaid [2]?

[1] https://www.disabilityscoop.com/2025/06/02/nih-autism-resear...

[2] https://nebraskaexaminer.com/2025/09/05/nebraska-lawmakers-h...

What? Who is supposedly calling parents of autistic children "crazy"?

True. Infact I'd go so far as to say the medical community causes many of the health problem.

Speaking about empathy most people don't have it, not just the medical community. Even the victims will be victimizers at some point, it's very twisted situation.

( Btw, you have a very obvious pseudonym...)

How many other medications would that apply to? Countless, I imagine. That’s why we have dosages on every bottle.

It’s like saying jumping on subway tracks when there’s no train is entirely reasonable when there are ample warnings on the platform to not do that.

“ Regardless of any autism links” - there you go again with the innuendo. My dude if you want to warn about how dangerous Tylenol is in and of itself when misused, go right ahead, but leave autism out of it, you’re playing right into the “Tylenol cause autism” fearmonger’s hands.

This is very true. ( and no, he is not exaggerating)

One gram every 2 hours is 12 grams which is on the lower end of toxic doses.

Despite common belief, concurrent alcohol consumption surprisingly does not increase risk, since alcohol competes for CYP2E1 and reduces the rate of production of the toxic metabolite NAPQI. Similarly for chronic liver disease. The use of NSAIDS (ibuprofen, etc) with cirrhosis is absolutely less safe than tylenol at therapeutic doses.

A person in power makes unsubstantiated (and often disproven claims), and makes major decisions that affect all our lives based on those claims.

And the response ignores the fact that the people in power are making decisions based on complete nonsense and pointing to something fairly trivial that everyone knows about anyways.

I mean, I haven’t been to a doctor who hasn’t pointed out that there are limits to how much acetaminophen one can take. There’s a reason anything above a 650mg dose is prescription only. Theirs is a reason if you’re suffering from a severe fever doctors will give you both acetaminophen and ibuprofen and have you alternate them.

If there is a tiny minority that is apparently unaware of the fact that Tylenol in high doses can have adverse effects or at the very least not even aware of the fact that most medications need to be taken as prescribed or within the suggested limits, that’s a minuscule part of the problem relative to people in power making decisions based on unproven claims.

I don't know how you jumped from "it's dangerous to take in to high amounts, even 4 times the recommended dose is dangerous" to "the recommened dose is dangerous".

When taken correctly it is very safe and had fewer side effects then NSAIDs like ibuprofen.

One could also take a look at pages like cheddar which track what they claim is unusual flow in options.

Much better that he be in Big Wellness’s pocket which is an order of magnitude bigger, unregulated, and doesn’t need to provide evidence for their claims.

Untreated symptoms are also bad for the baby, and other OTC painkillers are worse than acetaminophen. You have to become informed and choose the least bad option for your situation (trimester, medical history, etc) rather than let a demagogue point your outrage at a random imperfect solution.

Because there's no clear evidence to the contrary. Research and published papers would be more convincing here than an accusation.

> pregnant mothers should just deal with for the good of their unborn child

There's a number of things they should be restricted from for the good of the child of course, as men request. Blessed be the fruit. /s

Who's to say that the mother experiencing a ton of pain doesnt also affect the fetus?

where's your proof that its safe to leave a prefnant woman in pain?

I wonder if Americans know how much of their society and culture bled incompletely into other countries via movies. Like for example after communism fell the youth here got hooked on American rap and hip-hop so we were using slang from those songs like friends calling each other the N word without knowing the context behind it since that's how black rappers addressed each other and they were rock stars here.