25.09.2025

RFK and Pam Bondi in front of a portrait of his dad, Bobby

Destruction of reason

Trump’s announcement that paracetamol causes autism is just the latest in a long line of smoke-and-mirror operations.The intention is, argues Ian Spencer, to distract from the real issues

You would have thought that, in announcing to the world that there is a link between one of the most widely used medicines and autism, Trump would at least learn how to pronounce ‘acetaminophen’ (paracetamol in the UK, usually tylenol in the US). But neither he nor his health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, are any more concerned about appearing foolish than they are about scientific consensus.

With some help, Trump finally managed to pronounce the word on the fourth attempt and then went on to say that the US Food and Drug Administration would be immediately informing physicians that tylenol in pregnancy is “associated with a very increased risk of autism” in the foetus and - in case that was not alarming enough - he got his point across by saying “so taking tylenol is … not good”.

Trump then conceded that women with a very high fever, who could not “tough it out” could, on a doctor’s advice, take tylenol. As if to then deliver the scientific coup de gras, he went on to confidently assert that there are certain groups of people, such as the Amish, who do not take vaccines or pills, and they have no autism. Then, turning to Kennedy for back up, Trump said, “Bobby wants to be very careful what he says, and he should, but I’m not so careful with what I say.”¹

I am not sure whether I was more surprised by learning that there was a link between paracetamol and autism or that Bobby Kennedy wants to be careful with what he says! After all, on September 5 the manufacturers of tylenol, Kenvue, had seen a large fall in their share price on earlier announcements by Kennedy that he was investigating a link between the drug and autism.²

US federal funding for autism research and programmes comes primarily from the National Institutes of Health, which spends over $300 million annually on research and is coordinated by the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee. However, recent reports from May and September indicate significant funding cuts and the imposition of a new ‘Autism Data Science Initiative’ under the current administration.

Beyond direct research funding, individuals with autism in the US may also be eligible for federal benefits like Supplemental Security Income. It should then come as no surprise that the subject of autism is treated by the Trump administration in terms of a ‘rising tide’ or ‘epidemic’, which Trump has described as “meteoric”.

Charlatans

There is, of course, nothing new in charlatans confidently asserting that there is a link between vaccination and autism. Andrew Wakefield was struck off the UK medical register for what is regarded as one of the most damaging medical hoaxes of the last 100 years. In 2010, The Lancet retracted Wakefield’s 1998 paper, which asserted that there was a link between the combined mumps, measles and rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism. The journal’s editor in chief described Wakefield’s article as “utterly false” and asserted that The Lancet had been deceived. Not only did Wakefield carry out highly questionable research to support his fraudulent claims, but he also covered up his financial interest in administering separate vaccinations.³

MMR panic

Since the original Wakefield hoax, there have been numerous, large-scale, reputable studies that have dismissed the association between MMR and autism.⁴ However, it can be shown that the resultant crisis of confidence in vaccination caused unnecessary deaths and disability from epidemics of diseases which had largely been conquered by the introduction of MMR. However, anti-vaxxers still cite Wakefield’s work, and Trump and Kennedy continue to repeat the lie of the link between vaccines and autism.

Similarly, with acetaminophen, the bigger, the more reputable the study, the weaker the association between it and autism. A Swedish study drawing on data from 2.5 million children found no reliable association. A Japanese study with data from 200,000 children found no evidence of a causal link.⁵

Moreover, we know that there is evidence that fever, because of an immune response to infection, may have a harmful effect on the foetus. So, far from being a causal factor in neurological damage, acetaminophen may be providing a safe way of mitigating such harm.⁶ But, of course, the fact that women take acetaminophen when they have a fever is enough to create a spurious correlation, which can be exploited by those whose real aim is to restrict access to medicines or provide a cover for cuts in support for those with autism.

We have, of course, been here before. Neither Trump nor Kennedy have ever let the facts get in the way of a headline-grabbing press conference. Trump had no qualms in blaming the Wuhan Institute of Virology for Covid, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Kennedy has made wild claims, either unsupported or fully refuted by reputable evidence, and this has taken a bewildering variety of forms.

In 2022, at an anti-vax demonstration in Washington DC, Kennedy made an unfavourable comparison between Anthony Fauci, the former chief medical advisor to the US president from 2021-22, and the Nazi doctor, Joseph Mengele, in the context of an attack on the recommendation for US citizens to be vaccinated against Covid.

As always, it is worth following the money. An Associated Press investigation revealed that Kennedy’s anti-vaccine charity, called Children’s Health Defense, saw its revenue double in 2020 to $6.8 million, as the coronavirus pandemic took hold.⁷

On November 20 2024, Kennedy expressed his scepticism that HIV is the causal agent of AIDS. Instead, he attributed the disease to the recreational use of ‘poppers’ - the drug, amyl nitrate, known to be widely used in the gay community and beyond.⁸ In doing so, Kennedy was simply drawing on yet another wholly discredited charlatan, Peter Duesberg, a one-time professor of biology at the University of California, Berkeley.

Duesberg made his name from path-breaking work on the development of cancer, but later put forward the (now refuted) hypothesis that HIV is a harmless virus and did not cause AIDS.⁹ Instead, he attributed the disease to the use of recreational drugs. In the late 1980s and early 1990s this was latched onto by those wishing to resist calls to spend money on AIDS research and drugs such as azidothymidine. Duesberg also went on to provide scientific credibility to Thabo Mbeki’s refusal to support the use of anti-retroviral therapy in South Africa and is therefore partly responsible for thousands of deaths. Now, as we know, anti-retroviral therapy has transformed the outcome of what was once an invariably fatal disease.

Robert F Kennedy’s tenuous grasp of facts came under intense scrutiny during the Senate Finance Committee meeting on September 4, where Senator Maria Cantwell labelled the health secretary a “charlatan” and criticised his decisions to limit the availability of Covid vaccines to those over 65 and who were at high risk owing to underlying health conditions.

Oregon Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat, said that RFK Jr has “elevated conspiracy theorists” and “crackpots” in his short tenure as health secretary. He went on to say that Kennedy’s priority is to take vaccines away from Americans.¹⁰

Kennedy was criticised during the senate hearing, during which he stated that he did not know how many Americans died from Covid. It is widely accepted that by 2023 there were over 104 million confirmed or presumptive instances of Covid in the USA and over one million deaths from among those cases.¹¹ But it seemed that the Secretary of Health and Human Services did not have that information at his fingertips.

Kennedy went on to say that “no-one really knows” how many died, because “there was so much data chaos coming out of the CDC” (Centre for Disease Control), which is now overseen by him. The CDC’s own data is that 1,231,440 Americans died of Covid between January 2020 and August 2025.

Attacks and cuts

The anger in the Senate hearing also focused on the political interference at the CDC, which has included the firing of every panel member charged with recommending vaccines, along with a total of 600 employees. Kennedy also dismissed its director, Susan Monarez, after less than a month in office, reportedly because she refused to commit to firing career agency officials and backing his advisors if they recommended limiting vaccine access.

Kennedy justified her dismissal to the Senate hearing on the basis that the CDC “failed miserably during Covid”, during which Trump was president in his first term of office, and for which, Kennedy argues, Trump deserves a Nobel Prize!

On September 17, Susan Monarez - along with Debra Houry, the chief medical officer, who resigned after a decade at the CDC - got the opportunity to reply, at a meeting of the Senate health, labour and pensions committee. Both expressed concern about the restriction of vaccines without rigorous review.

Lost lives

Monarez said: “The stakes are not theoretical. We already have seen the largest measles outbreak in more than 30 years, which claimed the lives of two children. If vaccine protections are weakened, preventable diseases will return.” The pair said that the prospect of future pandemics is what keeps them up at night and expressed scepticism that the US would be prepared.

The pattern of attacks on the working class finds its most graphic expression in war, with massive profits for arms manufacturers. As a result, workers continue to face huge attacks on living standards to pay for the weapons. Similarly, reductions in healthcare expenditure, public health measures, education and housing will all be targets to finance rising defence budgets in the drive to war.

The cuts - whether to the World Health Organisation, which played such a crucial role in the AIDS and Covid pandemics, or to funding for the care of those with autism - are being justified with reference to conspiracy theories, which are as bizarre as they are refutable by rigorous science.

This is why reason itself is under attack. Scientists who retain their integrity are dismissed. Charlatans are elevated and placed in charge of agencies who are supposed to be ‘promoting public health’. Competing assertions, confidently made by those in power, are given credibility by the bourgeois press, loyal to their masters. The damage done by Wakefield and Duesberg was amplified by the media and people paid for it with their lives. The same is true regarding Trump and RFK Jr. They, along with the class they represent, are the real guilty parties.