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Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Friday claimed that “mainstream media” had mischaracterized his remarks about circumcision and autism rates, doubling down on the Trump administration’s assertion that Tylenol could be a potential cause of the neurological and developmental disorder.
In a Cabinet meeting on Thursday, President Trump reiterated his personal belief that pregnant women and newborn infants shouldn’t be given acetaminophen, the active ingredient in over-the-counter Tylenol.
Adding on to this, Kennedy said in the meeting, “There’s two studies that show children who are circumcised early have double the rate of autism. It’s highly to likely because they’re given Tylenol. Oh, you know, none of this is positive. but all of it is stuff that we should be paying attention to.”
Following these remarks, numerous outlets reported headlines saying Kennedy had linked circumcisions to autism. The secretary accused news outlets like the New York Post and USA Today of having “distorted” his comments or reported them with “misleading framing.”
“As usual, the mainstream media attacks me for something I didn’t say in order to distract from the truth of what I did say,” Kennedy wrote on the social media platform X. He cited a 2015 Danish study on autism spectrum disorder and circumcision among boys under the age of 10 as supporting his claim of linking the condition to acetaminophen.
Researchers in that study noted the hypothesis linking acetaminophen exposure in utero and early life to autism but clarified that their study had no data regarding what pain relievers were used in the boys they included in their research.
“So we were unable to address the paracetamol hypothesis directly,” they wrote.
While Kennedy suggested there was an indirect link due to the use of acetaminophen following circumcision, the researchers in the study he cited said their findings hinted at a possible link between the act itself and future neurological development.
“Our findings suggest that circumcision may somehow trigger the development of ASD in a small fraction of young boys. These findings obviously do not prove the suggested associations,” they stated in their findings, noting that theories regarding early life pain and stress and increased risk of neurodevelopmental, behavioral problems “remain incompletely conceptualised.”
