Overview
- At a White House Cabinet meeting Thursday, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said boys circumcised early have twice the autism rate and called it “highly likely” due to Tylenol given after the procedure.
- President Donald Trump reiterated his advice that pregnant women and newborns should not be given Tylenol, despite mainstream guidance that acetaminophen is appropriate when clinically indicated.
- Kennedy conceded the evidence is not proof and later accused the media of distorting his remarks, sharing a non–peer-reviewed preprint as support while defending his focus on acetaminophen.
- The most-cited research is a 2015 Danish analysis that reported higher autism diagnoses among circumcised boys but collected no information on painkillers; critics flagged methodological flaws and stressed it shows correlation, not causation.
- Medical groups including ACOG and SMFM endorse acetaminophen use in pregnancy when needed, and Tylenol maker Kenvue says studies show no causal link, while researchers note larger, higher-quality analyses have not found a causal association.