Tylenol = Autism?

Okay, I'm finally gonna talk about it. It's been a couple of days since President Trump and Health Secretary RFK Jr. stood up on a stage and told the world Tylenol causes autism. If you somehow missed it, here's a quick recap:

At the start of Trump's term, he and RFK Jr. promised to have found the cause of autism by November and a cure sometime after that. It is now September, and on the 22nd, the world was told that Tylenol use during pregnancy and in young children causes autism. Trump said, "fight like hell not to use it [Tylenol]." Now, as many people have pointed out, the main use for Tylenol during pregnancy is to lower a high fever, which can be very dangerous to the unborn child. If women stop taking Tylenol for their fevers because of the fear surrounding a child's potential autism diagnosis, that could cause a lot of other issues if the fever goes unresolved.

A study published by the National Library of Medicine states that between 40 and 65% of women take the active ingredient in Tylenol, acetaminophen, while pregnant. If there was a connection between Tylenol use and autism and other neurological conditions, wouldn't there be a higher number of people diagnosed? Furthermore, in 1960, Tylenol became an over-the-counter drug, meaning it was readily available to pregnant women and young children. Now, the autism rates in the 60's and 70's were around 2-4 for every 10,000 children. Now that's not very many children at this point, as it was still considered a rare condition. Now, let's look at the requirements for diagnosis in the 60s versus now. This is what the DSM-II published in 1968 says are the requirements for autism, which at the time was considered childhood schizophrenia. Here it is:

"This category is for cases in which schizophrenic symptoms appear before puberty. The condition may be manifested by autistic, atypical and withdrawn behavior; failure to develop identity separate from the mother’s; and general unevenness, gross immaturity and inadequacy of development. These developmental defects may result in mental retardation, which should also be diagnosed."

and then the requirements for diagnosis in the DSM-3:

A. Onset before 30 months of age

B. Pervasive lack of responsiveness to other people (autism)

C. Gross deficits in language development

D. If speech is present, peculiar speech patterns such as immediate and delayed echolalia, metaphorical language, pronominal reversal.

E. Bizarre responses to various aspects of the environment, e.g., resistance to change, peculiar interest in or attachments to animate or inanimate objects.

F. Absence of delusions, hallucinations, loosening of associations, and incoherence as in Schizophrenia.

I think you get the point, and as you probably know, the DSM-5 outlines so many behaviors associated with ASD. So the thing is, I feel that it will be a long while before we will be able to compare data about autism to the past because the criteria for diagnosis have changed so drastically that they are completely different. Most scientists believe that autism is 60-90% genetic, and other factors involved include, but are not limited to:

diabetes or obesity in the mother

older parents at the time of conception

de novo mutations

pollution

etc.

Autism Spectrum Disorder is a complex neurodevelopmental disorder that cannot be chalked up to just Tylenol. I very much hope that what our president has said does not damage the autistic community and scare mothers away from one of the only medicines allowed during pregnancy. Thank you for the time spent reading this, and here's a link to to a Reddit post that explains all the things they said during their speech + fact checking:

US-Fact Checking Trump and RFK's remarks on the cause of Autism