Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy will release a report linking autism to a common over-the-counter pain medication.
In addition to discussing the potential role of acetaminophen, often sold under the brand name Tylenol, in causing autism, the report will also suggest the use of a medicine derived from folate, a nutrient found in some foods and dietary supplements, to treat the disorder, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
Per the Journal, the report is expected to be released by the end of this month—in line with Kennedy Jr.’s promise earlier this year that “we will know what has caused the autism epidemic” by September.
The report may also discuss Kennedy Jr.’s long-debunked claims that vaccines cause autism after he said in April that parents need to “do their own research” when deciding whether to have their kids receive the vaccine for measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR).
“I do believe he will bring up the Tylenol connection, but I do also believe that he will look at vaccines and vaccine components,” said Brian Hooker, the chief scientific officer of the Children’s Health Defense, in a video.
Kennedy led that organization, which funds research and lawsuits challenging vaccine requirements, from 2015 to 2023.
Multiple large studies have shown that there is no link between childhood vaccination and autism, including a study published earlier this year using data from 1.2 million Danish children.
The evidence is less decisive on the role that pain medications taken during pregnancy may play in the neurodevelopmental disorder, which affected one in 31 8-year-olds in the U.S. as of 2022.
Last month, a group of researchers analyzed the results of six studies investigating the potential link between prenatal Tylenol exposure and autism in children in the journal Environmental Health.
They concluded that there was “strong evidence of a relationship between prenatal acetaminophen use and increased risk of autism in children” across the six studies.
However, a 2024 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found no association between acetaminophen and autism, analyzing data from 2.4 million Swedish children.
That study used matched sibling controls, a method to reduce confounding effects from differing genetics between mothers.
Dr. Brian K. Lee, an epidemiologist at Drexel University and one of the study’s co-authors, told the Daily Beast that confounding variables could explain the results of studies that found a link between the pain medication and autism.
“The problem is that the moms who use acetaminophen are different in many ways from the moms who don’t use acetaminophen,” Lee said.
Lee compared the assertion that acetaminophen use is responsible for autism to the assertion that coffee drinking causes cancer, a claim that several medical researchers made in the 1980s (coffee is now thought to reduce the risk of several cancers).
“The problem was that a lot of coffee drinkers also smoked cigarettes,” he said. “You would see the strong statistical association between coffee and cancer, which, in reality, is actually being explained by cigarette smoking.”
When it comes to folate-based treatments for autism, a review of 12 studies evaluating the use of a folate-derived supplement for autism documents improvements in communication and multiple behaviors associated with the disorder.
The authors of that 2021 paper wrote that “further studies would be helpful” to confirm their findings.
Despite his claim to be intent on finding the root cause of autism, Kennedy’s department has defunded more than 50 autism-related studies since taking office.
Several of those studies aimed to test the relationship between environmental conditions, such as exposure to toxic workplace chemicals, and autism.
As HHS prepares to pick the winners of a $50 million initiative to fund new autism research, some autism researchers suspect that the initiative will favor studies that support Kennedy Jr.’s preferred explanations for rising autism diagnoses.
“We need to stop trusting the experts,” Kennedy told Tucker Carlson during a June interview. “Trusting the experts is not a feature of democracy. It’s a feature of religion and it’s a feature of totalitarianism.”
The report on autism will be spearheaded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which had two whistleblowers file a complaint this week that they were stripped of their positions after they raised objections to anti-vaccine bias among the Institute’s leadership.
By the end of this month, the embattled health official might also erect further obstacles to accessing the Covid vaccine—with an influential Centers for Disease Control (CDC) panel that he has overhauled due to meet on September 18—and revamped dietary guidelines.
The former director of the CDC, Dr. Susan Monarez, has claimed that she was fired after Kennedy insisted that she pre-approve any changes to the childhood vaccine schedule that the panel may make.
The Daily Beast has contacted HHS for comment.
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