Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stunningly claimed Thursday there may be a link between circumcision and autism — due to distribution of Tylenol to infants following the procedure.

“There’s two studies which show children who are circumcised early have double the rate of autism, it’s highly likely, because they were given Tylenol,” Kennedy told President Trump during a cabinet meeting.

Kennedy didn’t specify the research to which he was referring, but a 2015 study out of Denmark that tracked nearly 343,000 Gen Z boys suggested that circumcised males were more likely to develop autism before the age of 10 compared to their uncircumcised peers.

Researchers hypothesized that pain and stressful surgery early in life can increase the risk of neurodevelopmental, behavioral or psychological problems later on.

However, some critics called the research “flawed”… Another possible explanation for the purported link is that boys who undergo circumcision are more likely to interact with health care workers, leading to a higher detection rate of autism.