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Tylenol and Autism

By September 26, 2025Commentary1 min read

RFK, Jr. is a nut, he is especially a nut on vaccines and autism.  In fact he appears to be a nut on autism period.  He got the President to make an ill-advised statement linking tylenol and autism.  The only study that in any manner suggested there might be such a link was done by a doctor who makes a lot of money being an expert witness in cases suing the manufacturer of tylenol.  I suspect RFK, Jr. may make a little money on that as well.   There are several very large, well done studies finding absolutely no link.

But don’t trust me.  Here is an eminent statistical expert (you should read his book if you want a commonsense understanding of statistics) explaining why the supposed link is garbage.  This stuff matters because RFK, Jr. is bringing a whole new level of distrust of supposed sources of health advice.  Trump needs to dump him fast before we have a real disaster.   (Briggs Post)

Kevin Roche

Author Kevin Roche

The Healthy Skeptic is a website about the health care system, and is written by Kevin Roche, who has many years of experience working in the health industry through Roche Consulting, LLC. Mr. Roche is available to assist health care companies through consulting arrangements and may be reached at khroche@healthy-skeptic.com.

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Join the discussion 3 Comments

  • joe K says:

    I have not read any of the studies showing a link between tylenol and autism nor have I read any of the studies showing no link between autism and tylenol. As such, I can make no comment on the validity of the studies. That being said, quite a few medical studies, especially attribution studies (correlation proves causation) have notoriously poor track records. Tylenol has been around far too long for medical science to not have found a link until now, which makes me dubious of the conclusion. Further, as I have previously noted, there is a much higher correlation with the age of the parent at birth (the older the parent, the higher the risk).

    A second point is when reviewing any science study, whether medical , climate science, covid, or other field of science, the authors will often reveal their bias or agenda (hidden or otherwise) very early. Look for signs of the agenda and adjust you skepticism of the conclusions as needed.

    Again, I have no insight or opinion on the autism cause, just noting that any, and all, medical attribution studies should meet a higher level of skepticism than given by the advocates.

  • Mark Pittman says:

    You’re being lazy. There are papers from Mount Sinai, Johns Hopkins and Harvard that show some sort of causality, using the published “gold standards.” None of those papers are addressed by Briggs. Those institutions are imminently more respectable than the institutions cited by Briggs. I’m not saying the link is conclusive, but peer-reviewed studies by some of the highest quality medical institutions show some form of a link. To argue against that means one has to perform one’s own research or to find methodological problems in those studies. To date that hasn’t happened.

    Whether RFK Jr. is a nut or not isn’t relevant. Don’t cherry pick a paper you can pull apart and avoid papers that have direct science. AGAIN, they could be wrong, but there has to be a significant proof they are wrong, or didn’t include important areas, etc., that open them to claiming their claims are either overbroad or mistaken.

    • Kevin Roche says:

      Anyone who reads this blog knows that I am never “lazy”; that I read everything extensively. This isn’t the first time this BS about Tylenol and neurodevelopment has come up. Those papers are not gold standard, gold standard would be an actual randomized clinical trial, which really isn’t ethically possible to do. And people from those institutions you mention are just as motivated by money as anyone else and just as capable of bias and ignoring confounding and making other methodological mistakes. The Harvard guy makes a lot of money as an expert witness for trial lawyers, including in the Tylenol case–you think he is unbiased? If you spend any time looking at the research you will see ample serious critiques of every one of the studies that supposedly show a link. And you will find papers, like one from Sweden based on a very large population study, showing zero link. One of the problems is that people don’t want to accept that real autism is primarily genetic, parents feel like they are too blame, so they are desperate to identify some other cause. There likely isn’t one.

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