Tylenol Cover-Up May Have Damaged Millions of Children
In September 2025, The Atlantic‘s Tom Bartlett introduced William Parker to the world with a skeptical eye
He portrayed Parker as a renegade scientist “on the fringes of academia” whose work had “regularly been rebuffed” by journals — noting that one peer reviewer derided Parker’s hypothesis as “outrageous” and “illogical” (2).
The article — pointedly titled “RFK Jr.’s New Tylenol–Autism Whisperer” — implied that Parker’s influence on the Health Secretary was cause for alarm (2).
It emphasized that Parker lost his lab at Duke University and now toils in relative obscurity, suggesting his claims aren’t taken seriously by “fellow scientists.”
In reality, Parker’s credentials and research output tell a different story.
Far from a lone crank, Parker spent nearly 28 years on Duke’s faculty and authored almost 200 scientific papers over his career (10). Even after his lab’s closure, he remains productive: in 2024 alone, Parker and collaborators from at least five universities published four peer-reviewed studies related to acetaminophen’s risks and other important topics (1, 8, 11, 12).
Two of those papers dealing with acetaminophen’s risks (1, 11) have been viewed over 35,000 times each — an unusually high readership for scientific articles, indicating widespread interest.
Parker’s recent publications appear in reputable journals and include co-authors from Duke, UNC Chapel Hill, Northern Kentucky University, and others. This context undercuts the narrative of Parker as an isolated fringe actor.
If his work has faced unusual resistance in the publication process, it may say more about the sensitivity of his topic than the quality of his science.
Multiple journal editors have indeed fast-tracked rejections of Parker’s manuscripts for dubious reasons (“formatting errors” or “inappropriate subject matter”), and at least one reviewer dismissed his data as “bizarre” while blandly asserting Tylenol’s safety — all before the weight of evidence was even considered (10).
Such experiences, which Parker has spoken about publicly, illustrate the academic bias against challenging the medical status quo.
That bias isn’t merely theoretical. Parker’s clash with Duke University’s leadership suggests that commercial interests and institutional politics may have played a role in marginalizing his research.
In 2021, Duke abruptly declined to renew Parker’s contract and shut down his laboratory — even rejecting an offer from an anonymous donor to fully fund Parker’s salary and experiments to keep the lab open (10).
Internal emails from Duke’s Department of Surgery revealed that keeping Parker’s acetaminophen-autism research was deemed “not in [the] strategic best interest” of the department (10).
Why would a university turn away outside funding for a productive scientist?
One clue: at the time Parker’s lab was forced out, two high-level Duke administrators — including the Chancellor for Health Affairs — were simultaneously serving on the Board of Directors of Johnson & Johnson, the then-parent company of Tylenol (10). Both had been on J&J’s board since the early 2010s.
This entangling of interests was reported by The Epoch Times and acknowledged by Parker. It raised eyebrows: was Parker’s work threatening to a major corporate donor or stakeholder?
Duke has never confirmed any link between the boardroom and Parker’s fate, but the optics are hard to ignore. Parker himself suspects he was “ousted” for pursuing research that challenged a pharma-funded scientific status quo (10).
“Mistakes have been made, but the individuals treating fevers based on what they were told are not the ones who made those mistakes.” — William Parker, reflecting on how parents and doctors were misled to overuse Tylenol (and stressing that blame lies with flawed science and policy, not those who trusted it).
Despite these setbacks, Parker didn’t quit. He founded a nonprofit research outfit (“WPLab”) and continued investigating the acetaminophen-autism connection outside the ivory tower. If anything, being freed from Duke made him more vocal.
By mid-2025, as rumors swirled that HHS under RFK Jr. would vindicate his warnings, Parker was simultaneously excited and cautious. He had long sought mainstream recognition of the hazard, yet he understood the stakes: acknowledging Tylenol’s role in autism could spark panic, lawsuits, and finger-pointing.
Parker has repeatedly emphasized that no one should jump to unscientific or punitive responses. Parents who gave their children Tylenol in good faith are not at fault — they followed standard medical advice.
Pediatricians who recommended it were likewise acting on prevailing guidance. “We are not blaming the parents or the physicians,” Parker urges; the focus should be on correcting policy and informing future choices, not guilt or shame (13).
He also stresses that medical decisions should be made with a doctor: even knowing what we know, there are situations (like severe infections or high fevers in pregnancy) where the benefits of acetaminophen might outweigh risks.
The science isn’t yet able to prescribe clear alternatives in every scenario. In Parker’s words, “many uncertainties about the use of acetaminophen exist” and it’s “not [his] job to tell individual patients and doctors what to do” (13).
His job, as he sees it, is to ensure that regulators, physicians, and the public are aware of the science — all of the science — so they can make informed decisions going forward (13).
See more here substack.com
Header image: Walgreens
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