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| Image from Unsplash |
I worked on a thought-piece as a follow up to this blog post and a think-piece I did in April.
Autism spectrum disorder is a neurodevelopmental condition that affects communication, social engagement, and behavior, and exists along a continuum of severity. Its causes remain multifaceted, encompassing genetic predispositions, prenatal environmental exposures, and their interplay.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s most recent surveillance, released in April 2025 and based on 2022 data, reported ASD prevalence at 1 in 31 among eight-year-olds across 16 U.S. sites, an increase from 1 in 36 in 2020, which the CDC attributed to greater diagnostic awareness and access to services rather than a true rise in occurrence.
At the beginning of September, Tylenol emerged as the administration’s focal concern, with the president reiterating calls for caution at last week’s announcement. Officials at the briefing cited observational studies by Mount Sinai and Harvard School of Public Health, suggesting associations between prenatal acetaminophen exposure and elevated ASD risk. Causation remains unproven, with the administration pledging new research grants to investigate further.
Against this backdrop of scientific ambiguity, public reactions took over social media. While some users pointed to history, noting that autism predates acetaminophen’s introduction in the 1950s. The term “autism” was first coined in 1911 by Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler to describe symptoms of schizophrenia. He drew from the Greek word autos (“self”) to describe patients who withdrew into their inner world. Others, including pregnant women, ingested Tylenol on camera to “disprove” the purported link.
Substance Misuse
The latter acts, while framed as defiance, amount to substance misuse, which is the use of a legal or illegal substance in a way that harms the body, mind, or social functioning. For pregnant women, the stakes are even higher, as this behavior compounds risks to both maternal and fetal health.
Prenatal substance exposure occurs when agents cross the placental barrier, posing risks to fetal development. In severe cases, such as with opioids or stimulants, newborns may experience withdrawal and face heightened risks of addiction later in life. While isolated doses pose low acute risk, prolonged or high exposure may heighten neurodevelopmental vulnerabilities, per recent meta-analyses.
Advocacy, at its essence, is important because it drives social change, fosters meaningful dialogue, and elevates voices that are too often overlooked, like those in the autism community. There are many ways to advocate from writing informed commentaries, promoting evidence-driven discussion, to centering lived experience.
The administration’s focus on Tylenol poses a legitimate reason for citizens to pause and ask questions and even push back. The issue arises when the impulse to push back in ways that endanger oneself—or others. In its September 23 response, the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine echoed this, urging reliance on peer-reviewed research rather than personal anecdotes or performative defiance.
Taking Tylenol to challenge a theory neither disproves it nor improves public health. While people have the right to question authority, both the government and medical experts, that right carries responsibility, and when vulnerable lives, including the unborn, are at stake, that responsibility is even heavier. In a multi-opinionated age, true advocacy should unite us around evidence and empathy, not spectacle.
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