The pharmaceutical company behind Tylenol privately acknowledged the likelihood of an association between its drug in pregnancy and neurodevelopmental disorders like autism in children seven years ago, company documents obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation show.
“The weight of the evidence is starting to feel heavy to me,” said Rachel Weinstein, U.S. director of epidemiology for Janssen, the pharmaceutical arm of Johnson & Johnson, in 2018. Johnson & Johnson marketed Tylenol at the time but in 2023 spun off its consumer products division into a separate company called Kenvue.
Legacy media headlines and vocal public health experts have dismissed the conclusion of President Donald Trump and Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that Tylenol taken in pregnancy and early infancy has driven rises in autism. But one stakeholder has for years viewed the evidence as credible enough to act upon, at least privately: The makers of Tylenol.
The DCNF obtained the company documents from the law firm Keller Postman LLC, which brought a class action lawsuit against Kenvue in the Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Take a basic lesson in logic: correlation does not equal causation. 100% of mothers of autistic children breathed oxygen, so does oxygen cause autism?