On September 22, 2025, the Trump administration is set to announce a controversial link between Tylenol (acetaminophen) use during pregnancy and an increased risk of autism in children, drawing from select studies like an August 2025 review by Mount Sinai and Harvard researchers that suggest a possible correlation. This announcement, expected to be led by President Donald Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., also highlights leucovorin as a potential autism treatment, despite pushback from medical experts and Tylenol’s manufacturer, Kenvue, who insist that decades of research, including a 2024 Swedish study of 2.4 million births, show no causal link between acetaminophen and autism. The administration’s move, framed as a “historic” step to address rising autism rates (now 1 in 31 for U.S. 8-year-olds, per the CDC), has sparked heated debate, with critics warning that it may sow confusion and limit safe pain relief options for pregnant women. This bold claim raises a provocative question: could the individual responsible for the infamous 1982 Tylenol poisonings, which killed seven people in Chicago, have been motivated by an early awareness of the drug’s potential risks, including unverified concerns about neurodevelopmental effects?

The 1982 Tylenol murders, where cyanide-laced capsules led to a nationwide panic and sweeping changes in drug packaging, remain unsolved, with no clear motive ever established. The perpetrator’s identity and intentions are still a mystery, but the Trump administration’s forthcoming announcement invites speculation: did the poisoner know or suspect something about Tylenol’s side effects, perhaps even its potential impact on fetal development, that was not yet widely recognized? At the time, acetaminophen was considered one of the safest pain relievers, including for pregnant women, and no public discourse linked it to autism—a condition not fully understood in 1982. If the poisoner believed Tylenol posed hidden dangers, they had no clear channel to report such concerns, as whistleblower protections and mechanisms for anonymous reporting to regulatory bodies like the FDA were far less developed. The idea that the poisonings were an extreme, misguided attempt to draw attention to unverified risks is speculative but underscores the era’s limited avenues for raising alarms about pharmaceutical safety.

This juxtaposition of past and present controversies highlights a broader tension between public health policy, scientific evidence, and distrust in institutions. While the Trump administration’s announcement leans on selective studies to challenge Tylenol’s safety, the medical community, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, maintains that acetaminophen remains the safest pain reliever for pregnant women when used as directed. The 1982 poisonings, though unrelated to autism, exposed vulnerabilities in the pharmaceutical supply chain and fueled public skepticism about drug safety—a skepticism that resonates with today’s debates. Whether the poisoner acted out of some prescient concern or for entirely different reasons, the lack of a mechanism to safely report suspicions in 1982 mirrors ongoing challenges in balancing emerging science with established medical guidance. The Trump administration’s move, while controversial, forces a reexamination of how we address potential risks in widely used medications, even as it risks overstating unproven claims.