(New York) The Texas attorney general announced Tuesday that he had launched proceedings against the American laboratories Johnson & Johnson (J&J) and Kenvue, accusing them of “deceptive marketing” for having claimed that Tylenol (paracetamol), their flagship drug, “was safe for pregnant women”, highlighting “risks of autism”.
“Large pharmaceutical companies have betrayed the United States by profiting from pain and promoting drugs without taking into account the risks,” said Ken Paxton, quoted in a press release, the day after filing his complaint.
“These companies have lied for decades, knowingly putting millions of people at risk to line their own pockets,” he continued.
Present in Doliprane or Dafalgan as in Tylenol (in the United States or Canada), paracetamol, or acetaminophen, is recommended for pregnant women for pain or fever, when other medications such as aspirin or ibuprofen are contraindicated, particularly at the end of pregnancy.
Mr. Paxton also accuses Johnson & Johnson of having “attempted to evade its responsibilities by illegally offloading its legal responsibility to a different company.”
He refers to the split made by J&J in February 2022 by which the group retained the professional activities and brought together the consumer products in Kenvue, a new independent company listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
Contacted by AFP, Johnson & Johnson recalled this separation and stressed “that all rights and responsibilities associated with the sale of these products available without a prescription, including Tylenol (acetaminophen), are held by Kenvue”.
For his part, Kenvue said he was “extremely concerned about the perpetuation of misinformation about the safety of acetaminophen.”
In its statement sent to AFP, the company assures that it is “the safest pain-relieving option” throughout pregnancy and that, without this treatment, a pregnant woman risks having a fever potentially dangerous for her and the fetus, or “taking riskier alternative treatments”.
“We will vigorously defend ourselves against these allegations and respond through legal channels,” the group added.
Around 11 a.m., its stock lost 3.12% and that of J&J lost 1.04%.
Kenvue fell on Wall Street at the beginning of September after the publication of press information assuring that the American Minister of Health Robert Kennedy Jr was going to link Tylenol to the development of autism in children.
On September 22, President Donald Trump himself recommended against paracetamol for pregnant women, also associating it with a high risk of autism for children.
Since then, MM. Trump and Kennedy continue to push these unfounded theories about the causes of autism.
