2026年4月6日 美国东部时间上午6:00 / CNN
作者：莎拉·奥弗莫勒
美国总统唐纳德·特朗普称孕妇不应服用泰诺，因其“与自闭症风险大幅升高相关”，这一言论令主流医学界震惊。六个月后的今天，他的评论仍在全美范围内引发连锁反应。
根据医学期刊《柳叶刀》近期发表的一份报告，对去年9月以来医院处方的初步分析显示，白宫宣布该政策后的最初几个月里，急诊室中服用对乙酰氨基酚（泰诺的通用名）的孕妇患者数量有所减少。
一名州总检察长已对泰诺的制造商提起诉讼，称其未披露相关风险。在自闭症错误信息引发担忧的背景下，研究人员成立了一个独立团体，以与政府相关举措形成抗衡。
就连曾公开主张泰诺与自闭症存在关联的一名科学家也认为，特朗普夸大了对孕妇的风险。
与美国卫生与公众服务部部长小罗伯特·F·肯尼迪关系密切的生物化学家威廉·帕克博士，多年来一直声称对乙酰氨基酚与自闭症有关——这一主张构成了特朗普政府反泰诺立场的基础。
但在最近接受CNN采访时，帕克承认，孕期服用对乙酰氨基酚与自闭症之间的所谓关联，仅得到了“最薄弱的数据”支持。
帕克转而表示，该风险更多与给新生儿服用对乙酰氨基酚有关，但这一关联并未得到主流研究的证实。事实上，帕克的结论所依据的研究人员称，他误解了他们的研究结果。帕克则认为，是他们误解了数据。
“重大影响”
关于泰诺安全性的争论已经蔓延至法庭和会议厅。
去年10月，得克萨斯州共和党总检察长肯·帕克斯顿起诉泰诺制造商健维优（Kenvue）以及该药物的最初研发者强生公司，指控其“向孕妇群体进行误导性营销”。
帕克斯顿声称，这些公司明知对乙酰氨基酚作为泰诺的唯一活性成分，在妊娠早期接触会导致“自闭症及其他疾病的风险显著升高”。
今年2月，得克萨斯州一名法官驳回了健维优提出的驳回此案的请求。
健维优表示，“独立、可靠的科学研究”已证明对乙酰氨基酚不会导致自闭症。包括美国妇产科学院在内的主要医学协会也驳斥了此类说法，并称对乙酰氨基酚是孕期最安全的止痛退烧药。
2025年9月22日，在联邦卫生官员提出孕期使用对乙酰氨基酚与自闭症存在关联后，唐纳德·特朗普总统与卫生与公众服务部部长小罗伯特·F·肯尼迪一同回答记者提问。
安德鲁·哈尼克/盖蒂图片社
“传播虚假信息[已产生]重大影响，”波士顿大学荣誉教授、自闭症研究卓越中心主任海伦·塔格-弗卢斯伯格博士今年3月在一场由自闭症研究人员召集的活动中表示。
为了扭转舆论态势，并对抗他们眼中基于错误信息的运动，塔格-弗卢斯伯格和其他自闭症专家于今年1月成立了一个独立团体，以协调研究工作，对抗政府调整后的政策方向。
“所有这一切都对科学产生了极为重大的影响，”塔格-弗卢斯伯格在该团体的首次会议上说道。
从研究者到影响力人物
与此同时，帕克仍认同特朗普政府将泰诺与自闭症联系起来的整体立场——尽管他在孕妇用药问题上与总统的说法存在分歧。
作为一名生物化学家兼免疫学家，帕克承认自己是科学家而非医生，他不接诊患者或做出诊断。
帕克表示，作为杜克大学的研究员，近20年前，在开展消化道和自身免疫性疾病研究后，他开始研究对乙酰氨基酚与自闭症之间的关联。
他和合著者于2017年发表了关于所谓关联的“第一篇真正有分量”的论文——用他对CNN的话来说——文中称对乙酰氨基酚可能是“自闭症患病率上升的一种解释”。
但当时他的研究并未引起太多关注。
帕克于2021年离开杜克大学，创立了自己的实验室WPLab，研究免疫系统与对乙酰氨基酚之间的关联。
去年春天，肯尼迪宣布将在六个月内公布自闭症病因的相关答案，帕克的理论随即受到关注。
尽管帕克拒绝透露他与肯尼迪和特朗普政府的联系，但他此前告诉《大西洋月刊》，去年夏天他曾与卫生部长以及包括美国国立卫生研究院院长杰伊·巴塔查里亚在内的其他卫生官员讨论过自己的研究。
他也受到了肯尼迪核心圈子的欢迎。帕克于今年3月参加了由托尼·莱昂斯主持的每周MAHA行动电话会议，莱昂斯是肯尼迪的竞选筹款人，同时也是斯凯霍斯出版公司的总裁，该公司将于6月推出帕克的著作《泰诺与自闭症》。
“对乙酰氨基酚导致了绝大多数，即便不是全部的自闭症谱系障碍病例，”他对听众说道。
在帕克看来，这种关联如此明确，至少不需要再开展更多关于对乙酰氨基酚的研究。
但将焦点放在孕期用药上让他感到困惑和些许沮丧。
“为什么每个人都只关注一条证据线索？”帕克对CNN说道，“这根本比不上在分娩期间、生命最初两个月，甚至最初三年使用对乙酰氨基酚的风险。”
自闭症研究人员也感到沮丧——对帕克持续将泰诺使用与自闭症联系起来的做法感到不满。
帕克部分援引了卡罗林斯卡学院和德雷克塞尔大学发表的瑞典数据，但这两所大学的科学家对他对研究结果的解读提出了质疑。
“如果我们提出的只是一些关联，就开始据此采取干预措施，最好的情况不过是浪费时间和金钱，”领导过一项常被引用的、称对乙酰氨基酚与自闭症无关联研究的卡罗林斯卡学院毒理学家蕾妮·加德纳博士说道，“但最糟糕的情况是，我们实际上可能造成了潜在的伤害。”
各大医学组织均建议，对乙酰氨基酚是孕期唯一安全的止痛和退烧药。
联邦政策重心的转变
本届政府对自闭症的看法导致联邦资金流向发生重大转变，用于自闭症病因研究的资金大幅增加，但整体联邦科学研究经费遭到削减。
美国国立卫生研究院去年宣布的一项5000万美元的自闭症病因研究倡议，将为相关项目提供资助，例如研究遗传因素、环境暴露以及饮食与自闭症的关联。
近期，肯尼迪解散了为政府研究提供咨询的一整个自闭症专家小组——跨机构自闭症协调委员会，并任命了一个新委员会，其中包括支持已被证伪的疫苗导致自闭症理论的人士。至少一名新任命的成员伊丽莎白·姆珀尔博士支持对乙酰氨基酚与自闭症存在关联的说法，她去年9月在接受得克萨斯州一家新闻电台采访时表示，“我大约20年前就意识到了这个问题。”
美国食品药品监督管理局局长马蒂·马卡里博士在特朗普团队9月22日的发布会现场，站在展示医学文章的展板前。
凯文·拉马克/路透社
包括被肯尼迪从跨机构自闭症协调委员会解雇的前成员在内的研究人员和倡导者，对本届政府采取的狭隘研究重点表示惋惜。
包括塔格-弗卢斯伯格在内的几名成员于今年1月成立了独立自闭症协调委员会——这一名称明显指向重组后的政府专项小组。
今年3月，在全国新闻俱乐部一间镶木墙板的房间里，新成立的非政府组织成员围坐在长桌旁，讨论他们已经察觉到的影响。
自闭症科学基金会创始人艾莉森·辛格表示，自闭症研究的整体经费有所增加，但由于联邦削减开支导致科学家们陷入困境，非政府组织正挺身而出资助相关研究。
她在会议上透露，自闭症相关研究的私人资助占比已从2020年的17.5%跃升至去年估计5.6亿美元总经费中的40%。
这场持续了大半天的首次会议，包含了几场关于自闭症遗传驱动因素的报告，但大部分时间都在讨论成员们认为迫切需要的其他研究和政策议题：自闭症患者的医疗可及性、治疗成本、治疗质量以及生活质量。
由肯尼迪任命人员组成的新一届政府对应小组今年尚未召开过会议。
From ERs to courtrooms, Trump’s warning that pregnant women shouldn’t take Tylenol is causing shockwaves
2026-04-06 06:00 AM ET / CNN
By Sarah Owermohle
Six months after President Donald Trump shocked mainstream medicine by saying pregnant women shouldn’t take Tylenol because it is “associated with a very increased risk of autism,” the effects of his comments are still rippling across the country.
Early analysis of hospital prescriptions since September suggests fewer pregnant patients in emergency rooms were taking acetaminophen, the generic name for the drug Tylenol, in the first few months since the White House announcement, according to a recently published report in the medical journal, The Lancet.
A state attorney general has sued Tylenol’s makers, arguing they did not disclose the risks. And amid concerns about autism misinformation, researchers have founded an independent group to rival government efforts.
Even a scientist who has prominently argued that there is a link between Tylenol and autism thinks Trump oversold the risk to pregnant women.
Dr. William Parker, a biochemist with ties to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has argued for years that acetaminophen is linked to autism — claims that have formed the basis of the Trump administration’s anti-Tylenol stance.
But in a recent interview with CNN, Parker admitted the alleged link between acetaminophen use in pregnancy and autism is supported by only the “weakest data.”
Instead, Parker says the risk is more associated with giving it to newborns, a link that mainstream research does not support. In fact, researchers whose work Parker has based his conclusions on say that he’s misinterpreting their results. Parker says they’re the ones misinterpreting the data.
‘Significant repercussions’
The debate over Tylenol’s safety has spilled into courtrooms and conference halls.
In October, Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Tylenol maker Kenvue and Johnson & Johnson, which originally developed the drug, for “deceptively marketing Tylenol to pregnant mothers.”
Paxton alleges the companies knew that early exposure to acetaminophen, Tylenol’s only active ingredient, leads to a “significantly increased risk of autism and other disorders.”
In February, a Texas judge rejected Kenvue’s request to dismiss the case.
Kenvue has said “independent, sound science” has shown acetaminophen does not cause autism. Major medical associations including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists have also pushed back on such claims and said acetaminophen is the safest pain reliever to use during pregnancy.
President Donald Trump, alongside Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., answers questions on September 22, 2025, after federal health officials suggested a link between the use of acetaminophen during pregnancy and autism.
Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
“The dissemination of false information [has had] significant repercussions,” Dr. Helen Tager-Flusberg, a professor emerita at Boston University and director of the Center for Autism Research Excellence, said in March at an event convened by autism researchers.
In an effort to take back the narrative and organize against what they see as a movement based on misinformation, Tager-Flusberg and other autism experts founded an independent group in January to coordinate research and counter the administration’s shifted focus.
“All of this has very a significant impact on science,” Tager-Flusberg said during the group’s first meeting.
From researcher to influencer
Parker, meanwhile, still agrees with the Trump administration’s overall push to link Tylenol to autism — even if he differed with the president’s statement on use by pregnant women.
A biochemist and immunologist, Parker acknowledges that he is a scientist, not a doctor. He doesn’t work with patients or make diagnoses.
As a researcher at Duke University, Parker said he started looking into acetaminophen and autism nearly two decades ago after work on the digestive tract and autoimmune disorders.
He and his co-authors published their “first real good” paper, as he put it to CNN, on the purported link in 2017, writing that acetaminophen could be “one explanation for the increased prevalence of autism.”
But his work didn’t pick up much traction then.
Parker left Duke in 2021 and started his own lab, WPLab, studying links between the immune system and acetaminophen.
When Kennedy announced last spring that he would have answers about autism’s causes in six months, Parker’s theories quickly moved into focus.
While Parker declined to comment about his contact with Kennedy and the Trump administration, he previously told The Atlantic that he spoke with the health secretary, and other health officials including National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya, last summer about his research.
And he’s been welcomed by Kennedy’s inner circle. Parker appeared in March on the weekly MAHA Action call led by Tony Lyons, a Kennedy campaign fundraiser and president of Skyhorse Publishing, which will release Parker’s book, “Tylenol and Autism,” in June.
“Acetaminophen causes many, if not most, cases of autism spectrum disorder,” he told listeners.
To Parker, the connection is so clear that there is no need for more research on acetaminophen, at least.
But the focus on use during pregnancy has left him befuddled and a little frustrated.
“Why is everyone focused on one line of evidence?” Parker told CNN. “It’s nothing like the risk of using acetaminophen, say, during labor and delivery or during the first two months of life, or even the first three years of life.”
Autism researchers are also frustrated — by Parker’s continued efforts to link Tylenol use to autism.
Parker has relied in part on data from Sweden, published by the Karolinska Institutet and Drexel University, whose scientists dispute his interpretation of their work.
“If we come up with these things that are just associations and we start to intervene on them, the kind of the best-case scenario is that we’ve wasted our time and money,” said Dr. Renee Gardner, a toxicologist at Karolinska Institutet who led an oft-cited study that says there is no link between acetaminophen use and autism. “But the worst-case scenario is that we actually do potential damage.”
Acetaminophen is advised by major medical organizations as the only safe pain and fever reliever during pregnancy.
The federal shift in focus
The administration’s views on autism have resulted in a big shift in federal funding, leading to an infusion of money into research on the causes of autism, but cuts across federal scientific research overall.
NIH’s $50 million initiative to study the causes of autism, announced last year, will fund projects such as research on genetic factors to environmental exposures and on diet.
More recently, Kennedy dismissed an entire panel of autism experts advising government research, the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee, and appointed a new committee that included people who have supported the disproven theory that vaccines cause autism. At least one of the newly appointed members, Dr. Elizabeth Mumper, has backed the link between acetaminophen and autism, telling a Texas news station in September that “I became aware of this problem about two decades ago.”
Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary stands in front of a board displaying medical articles during the September 22 announcement from Trump.
Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
Researchers and advocates, including former members Kennedy dismissed from the IACC, have lamented the narrow focus this administration has taken.
Several of them, including Tager-Flusberg, this January formed the Independent Autism Coordinating Committee — a pointed reference to the reassembled government panel.
Meeting in March around a long table in a wood-paneled room of the National Press Club, members of the new, nongovernmental group discussed the impact they were already seeing.
Overall funding for autism research has increased, but with scientists left in limbo by federal spending cuts, nongovernmental organizations are stepping in to fund studies, said Alison Singer, founder of the Autism Science Foundation.
Private funding for autism-related studies surged from 17.5% of total funding in 2020 to 40% of an estimated $560 million last year, she said during the meeting.
The inaugural meeting, which spanned most of the day, included some presentations on genetic drivers of autism but largely dwelled on other research and policy the members said is badly needed: access to care, costs, quality of treatments and of life for people with autism.
Their reconstituted government counterpart, now stocked with Kennedy appointees, has not yet met this year.
