Marc Short, Former VP Chief of Staff, Weighs In on New Tylenol Warning

The Trump administration linked Tylenol to autism and urged pregnant women to avoid the common pain medication despite the lack of widely accepted scientific evidence supporting the risk.

“So taking Tylenol is not good — I’ll say it — it’s not good. For this reason, they are strongly recommending that women limit Tylenol use during pregnancy unless medically necessary,” President Donald Trump said Monday at a White House event alongside Robert F. Kennedy Jr., his health secretary.

The administration also said it has initiated approval of leucovorin calcium tablets as a new treatment for a condition associated with autism. The drug, also known as folinic acid, is currently used to treat side effects of certain cancer drugs and anemia.

Monday’s announcement was the latest example of how Kennedy and Trump have sought to upend health guidance and practices, sometimes relying on cherry-picked evidence. Trump also has a record of promoting unfounded medical theories.

The White House didn’t present new evidence to explain the change. Decades of research into autism has failed to identify a single cause.

Marc speaks with Joe Mathieu and Kate Davidson on the late edition of Bloomberg's "Balance of Power."

Trump went far beyond his public health officials in decrying the effects of acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, saying the drug should only be taken by pregnant women in cases of extremely high fever.

“If you can’t tough it out, if you can’t do it, that’s what you’re going to have to do - you’ll take a Tylenol, but it’ll be very sparingly,” Trump said.

Shares of Kenvue Inc., which makes Tylenol, rose as much as 7.2% when markets opening in New York on Tuesday, rebounding after slumping about 7.5% on Monday.

“We believe independent, sound science clearly shows that taking acetaminophen does not cause autism,” Kenvue said in an emailed statement. “We strongly disagree with any suggestion otherwise and are deeply concerned about the health risks and confusion this poses for expecting mothers and parents.”

Tylenol is the company’s largest brand, making up a mid-to-high single digit percentage of Kenvue’s total sales, according to Morningstar analyst Keonhee Kim.

Still, the company may have avoided a worst-case scenario. In 2023, a New York judge dismissed a class-action lawsuit against Kenvue filed by parents who took Tylenol during pregnancy and gave birth to a child with autism or another neurodevelopmental disorder, citing a lack of scientific evidence. The ruling is currently being appealed.

The Trump administration didn’t release any new data that dim the prospects of Kenvue winning its appeal, Filippo Falorni, a Citi analyst, said in a note. Additionally, while health officials may blunt sales by worrying parents, investors had feared an “outright ban of Tylenol,” he said.

“Given the lack of new scientific evidence, we’d expect a positive stock reaction tomorrow,” Falorni wrote Monday.

Vaccines for Children

Trump used the event to also criticize vaccine policies for children, suggesting that schedules for shots should be spread out. Trump said he believed children should not be administered shots that address multiple diseases, and said he thought vaccines — such as the one for measles, mumps and rubella, which has been given for more than five decades — should be taken over a long period of time.

“On the vaccines, it would be good, instead of one visit, where they pump the baby, load it up with stuff. You’ll do it over a period of four times or five times,” Trump said. Kennedy has long expressed concerns about the fact that children take more vaccines now than they did in the mid-1980s.

Trump said the National Institutes of Health would also be announcing 13 major grant awards to study autism.

The Food and Drug Administration issued a notice to physicians on Monday about the risk of acetaminophen during pregnancy. The agency recommended doctors “consider minimizing” the medicine for routine, low-grade fevers, while noting that a “causal relationship has not been established” between autism and Tylenol.

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