RFK Jr. Admits He’ll “Make” Proof for His Bogus Tylenol Conspiracy

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has drawn widespread criticism for manipulating science to fit his agenda, admitted that he is working to “make the proof” to support his controversial claim that the use of acetaminophen, or Tylenol, during pregnancy causes autism.

Kennedy mentioned Tylenol at a Thursday Cabinet meeting because, he said, he’d been disturbed by a social media video: “Somebody showed me a TikTok video of a pregnant woman at eight months pregnant—she’s an associate professor at the Columbia Medical School—and she is saying ‘F Trump’ and gobbling Tylenol with her baby in her placenta,” he recalled. It is not immediately clear what video he was referring to, and babies are not in the placenta, but attached to it, in pregnancy.

The health secretary went on to cite a number of studies that allegedly support his Tylenol suspicions. Then he made an eyebrow-raising statement about the existing evidence: “It is not proof,” Kennedy said. “We’re doing the studies to make the proof.”

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics and American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, it is safe for women to use acetaminophen occasionally “as directed for fever and pain relief during pregnancy,” and patients should talk with their obstetrician about pain relief, as with all medications, during pregnancy.

RFK Jr.’s stated plan to invent evidence to back up his controversial claim to the contrary has already drawn ridicule online. “Ah yes,” wrote Dr. Michelle Au, a physician, public health advocate, and Democratic state legislator in Georgia, “the scientific method famously instructs us to predetermine a conclusion and then do studies to ‘make the proof.’”

But “make the proof” is a fitting credo for a man reshaping the public health system as Kennedy is now. The health secretary in June dismissed the CDC’s entire Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices; installed his own hand-picked members, including vaccine skeptics; and fired Susan Monarez, the former director of the CDC, for refusing to “commit in advance to approving every ACIP recommendation, regardless of the scientific evidence,” as Monarez testified last month.