President announces 'taking Tylenol is not good' as the federal position on autism; the medical and scientific community disagrees on the record.

Pay attention. Monday afternoon. Roosevelt Room. The President of the United States and the Secretary of Health and Human Services together at the lectern. Cameras. The American flag. The seal. The whole picture.

The announcement: the federal government has decided that Tylenol causes autism. That is not a paraphrase. The President said, on camera, taking Tylenol is not good. He said it more than once. He said, also on camera, that there are communities without access to Tylenol that have no autism. That is also a real quote.

Buddy. Three problems. Three.

Problem one. The science. There is no established causal link between acetaminophen and autism. No. The research that exists is, per FactCheck.org, Nature, the Autism Science Foundation, the New England Journal of Medicine, and Kenvue’s own filings, limited, conflicting, and inconsistent. The largest sibling-controlled study, out of Sweden, found no association. The peer-reviewed literature does not say what the President said it says. The lectern said it anyway.

Problem two. The communities. There are no communities without access to acetaminophen that also have no autism. There are no such communities anywhere on earth. Acetaminophen has been generic since the 1950s. The Amish, who get cited a lot in this conversation, use Tylenol. I checked. There are Amish pharmacies. The President said the line about no autism anyway.

Problem three. The mechanism. The President directed the FDA to begin the process of adding a safety label to acetaminophen products warning pregnant women. The FDA did, in fact, file a Federal Register notice the same week. The FDA’s career staff, per multiple reports, pushed back internally. The label change is now moving through the agency. On a political timeline. With a political directive.

I have been arguing with televisions for thirty years. I will tell you something. The average person cannot tell you the chemical name of acetaminophen. The average person can tell you the brand name. Tylenol. The President said Tylenol on a Monday afternoon, in the Roosevelt Room, next to the man who is supposed to protect public health, and the country, by Tuesday morning, was afraid of Tylenol. The pregnant women I know were texting their OBs by Tuesday afternoon. That is the real damage. The damage is not in the press release. The damage is in the kitchen.

I’m arguing with the television. The television is on cable news. The cable news is showing Tylenol bottles. The Tylenol bottles are blameless.