Trump's Misleading Statements on Autism: A Fact-Check

Mon Sep 29 2025 01:41:53 GMT+0300 (Eastern European Summer Time)

President Trump's recent claims linking Tylenol to autism have drawn sharp criticism from health experts. This article fact-checks his statements regarding autism diagnoses, vaccines, and their implications.

In a recent declaration, President Trump, accompanied by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., claimed to have found a connection between the painkiller Tylenol and rising autism diagnoses. He presented various statistics aimed at highlighting the increasing rates of autism in the United States and suggested concerns over vaccine protocols. Health experts swiftly rebutted his statements, calling them misleading and unsupported by scientific evidence. This article examines the credibility of Trump's assertions and provides insights from medical professionals.

US President Donald Trump has attracted condemnation from health experts, after he sought to claim there was a link between the widely used painkiller Tylenol and autism.

Accompanied by his Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, Trump reportedly suggested doctors would soon be advised against recommending paracetamol—a common pain reliever—to pregnant women due to alleged risks of autism. Medical professionals, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, have criticized these claims, stating they are not backed by reliable data.

During the conference, Trump alleged that autism diagnoses in the US have risen sharply in recent decades, citing a statistic of one in 31 children diagnosed with autism by 2025. This figure aligns with data from the CDC but ignores the complexity of diagnostic criteria evolution and increased awareness surrounding autism.

Trump also suggested that California had a particularly pronounced autism issue compared to other states. According to CDC estimates, about one in 12 eight-year-old boys were diagnosed with autism in California in 2022, attributed largely to state-funded screening initiatives.

Furthermore, Trump questioned the safety of the combined MMR vaccine, expressing that vaccines should be administered separately. This assertion, framed by a historical yet debunked narrative linking vaccines with autism, poses risks of vaccine hesitancy among parents, making them susceptible to measles and other preventable diseases.

Experts roundly debunked Trump's assertions regarding the Amish community having virtually no autism, indicating methodological flaws in previous autism studies among this population. Medical professionals stress the lack of a direct causal link between medical practices or lifestyle choices and the diagnosis of autism.

Trump's history of skepticism towards vaccines continues to raise alarms, with his previous comments hinting at an incitation of distrust in established medical recommendations.