When the White House talks about medicine, doctors and patients listen. Should they?
On September 22, 2025, President Trump, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and other officials held a White House event where they claimed that taking Tylenol (generic name: acetaminophen in the US, paracetamol in the UK) during pregnancy increased the risk of autism in children. At the same event, a drug called leucovorin was highlighted as a potential breakthrough in the treatment of autism.
The problem is that the best science does not suggest this linkage between acetaminophen use and later rates of autism. President Trump and his team cherry-picked science purporting to show that link, while ignoring stronger evidence that refutes it. In the case of leucovorin, a drug that can treat a condition called cerebral folate deficiency, there is simply no good evidence to suggest that it will help most children with autism or related conditions.
My colleague, Michael Barnett, and I wanted to know if this event might have single-handedly influenced how medicine is practiced in the United States. So we accessed the Epic database, which now covers a majority of American healthcare. We looked at how often pregnant patients received Tylenol in emergency departments before and after the White House press event. The results were clear, as we just reported in a new manuscript published in the medical journal The Lancet.
Here's what we found: There was an immediate decrease in Tylenol use in ERs among pregnant women (but not among non-pregnant women). We also looked at two other treatments that are offered in ERs: opioids and IV fluids. There were no changes in how often those were given. This means that thousands of women did not have their pain or fever treated in ERs, likely because they were needlessly afraid.
We think that's unfortunate because, among the options for pain control and fever reduction, Tylenol is the safest option. It's sad that thousands of people had to suffer for no good reason. At one point, Tylenol orders decreased by 20% compared to usual rates (overall, we found a 10% decrease during the study, which stretched from late September to early December).
We also looked at millions of pediatric clinic visits to see if rates of leucovorin prescriptions changed among children ages 5 to 17. The effect there was massive. At one point, new leucovorin prescriptions more than doubled, and over the entire study period, the rate increased by 71%, compared to what would have normally been expected during the same time. In a time in which public trust in health, medicine, and science is under attack, it's regrettable that so many families will have been misled into thinking that this medication could somehow miraculously change the lives of children with autism. At the same time, a leucovorin shortage has now occurred, which is problematic because leucovorin leucovorin is a critical component of several chemotherapy regimens.
It's important for people to know that it often takes years and even decades for very high-quality research to reach patients. But President Trump and his team were able to change medical practice virtually overnight, based on misunderstandings of the science around this topic. At the end of the day, people still look to the White House for guidance. The administration could have used that opportunity to promote the highest quality science — perhaps using that lectern to promote vaccinations against measles and other preventable diseases — rather than what happened here.
Dr. Jeremy Faust, MD., is an emergency medicine physician working in a busy hospital in Boston and a public health researcher. Follow his Substack, Inside Medicine, and find him on Instagram and Threads @jeremysamuelfaust.
