The Great Tylenol Tragedy of 2025

Michael Cohen

America has always had a flair for spectacle. Yesterday, we got a medical announcement that could’ve doubled as an SNL sketch. Picture it: the Oval Office transformed into a carnival stage, with Donald J. Trump standing center ring, flanked by his handpicked “medical dream team”: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Dr. Mehmet Oz. The subject wasn’t foreign policy or the economy. No, the issue at hand was Tylenol. Yes, the little white pill sitting in nearly every medicine cabinet in America.

Trump declared, with all the gravity of a wartime address, that Tylenol is “no good” and that pregnant women should “fight like hell” to avoid it. The cause? A supposed link to autism. The evidence? Dubious at best. The presentation? A master class in political theater.

RFK Jr., a man whose scientific qualifications end at “once attended family dinners with actual doctors,” nodded seriously as if he’d just cracked the genetic code. Dr. Oz, meanwhile, stood by like a mascot of pseudoscience, his TV career having sold more miracle cures than a 19th-century patent medicine salesman. If snake oil had a human form, it would’ve worn a tailored suit and smiled politely beside the Resolute Desk.

Now, to be fair, science is messy. Some studies have suggested an association between acetaminophen use in pregnancy and neurodevelopmental issues. Others found no such link. This is what grown-ups in lab coats call “inconclusive.” But in the Oval Office, inconclusive became gospel. Trump, who has a gift for boiling complexity down to slogans, simply declared: Tylenol causes autism.

https://www.meidasplus.com/p/the-great-tylenol-tragedy-of-2025