Copyright © HT Digital Streams Limit all rights reserved. The Tylenol bottle says women who are pregnant should talk to a healthcare professional before taking the medicine. (Reuters) Summary The CEO behind Tylenol thought he found a way to work with the Trump administration. Then everything went off the rails. The CEO of the company that Tylenol gets a text message earlier this month that contains nothing but a single link to a substack post. In the Post, a promoter of Covid-19-fed information linked autism with Acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol. The text was from the country’s top health official, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. At that moment, it was clear to CEO Kirk Perry that his efforts to convince Kennedy that there was no science behind such claims. Perry faced a full -fledged crisis on Monday. In an extraordinary public announcement that contradicted the widespread medical consensus and even his own top health advisors, President Trump warned that Acetaminophen is a potential cause of autism, requesting that they expect mothers to have “difficult” without the drug if they could. “Taking Tylenol is not good,” the president told the world as Kennedy, the secretary of health and human services, looked at. The claim sent the medical company in panic mode. And it threw Kenvue, the company that makes Tylenol, in a crisis – only 70 days in Perry’s term of office as CEO. Tylenol set the gold standard for corporate crisis management in 1982 after people died of taking his pain medication tampered with with cyanide and fed with cyanide. In a case now studied everywhere by business students and businesses, the brand won the public confidence with a quick recall, a redesign of its bottles to be tamper resistant and many coupons. A clerk pulls Tylenol from the shelves at a pharmacy in New York during the 1982 revocation crisis. The game this time could be even higher. A direct assault on the trademark by the US president can open the company to legal challenges. This is one of the reasons why Kenvue’s stock has reached a low over the past week. Perry and his team also struggle with the possibility that millions of pregnant women around the world will avoid Tylenol if they have fever, infections or other symptoms. If you can increase these ailments that are untreated, birth defects can increase and contribute to an increase in autism yourself, according to leading medical organizations and regulators in other countries. For the past few days, Perry regularly spoke to his friend, Pastor Brian Tome of Crossroads Church in Cincinnati. Tome reminded Perry of Bible verses that can be encouraging in difficult times, and that Jesus said that his followers should “take up his cross daily and follow me.” “He doesn’t like what he’s going through,” Tome says of Perry. “He certainly wishes it was different, but I see no bitterness in him and I think it is because of his faith.” Perry was raised in Detroit by young parents who were for Ford meeting workers, and Perry was the first in his family to graduate from the university. He attended the University of Cincinnati after working at Wendy’s for about a year and a half to save the teaching. He met his wife, Jacki, in a pig -like shaky grocery store in Ohio when he was 18. They are married in his senior year of university and have four children. He often said he was leaning on religion when his then 6-year-old daughter was treated for kidney cancer. When a doctor told him and his wife that their daughter’s emergency colon operation was successful, he fell to the floor and cried. He said that he realized that God did not suffer his daughter, but that God was with them when bad things happened. Earlier this year, Perry, 59, retired after a career in marketing that included stints at Google and Procter & Gamble. His last job was CEO of the Market Research Firm Circana. He was excited to coach high school football, do missionary work with his wife and hunt with friends. Then Kenvue called. “Possibly the shortest retirement ever,” he wrote on LinkedIn this summer. Kenvue became independent two years ago when Johnson & Johnson divided his consumer health unit. In addition to Tylenol, The Summit, NJ, the company contains other well-known brands such as Band-Aid, Johnson’s Baby Shampoo and the Neutrogea and Aveeno lines of shampoo and ice. J&J said the name Kenvue indicated knowledge and sight. From the beginning, Kenvue fought attacks connecting Tylenol with autism, but it did not receive much attention. About 500 lawsuits were submitted to Kenvue and other manufacturers of Acetaminophen products with federal courts, claiming that the use of the drug during pregnancy caused autism and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder in children. The lawsuits are based on a series of studies suggesting that a relationship between acetaminophes and autism, although other studies found no association. Dr Andrea Baccarelli, dean of the Faculty of Harvard Th Chan School of Public Health, was an expert witness for plaintiffs. A Federal Judge in New York concluded that Baccarelli’s opinions on cause were not allowed in the litigation. Kenvue argued in court that there was no credible evidence of a causal link. The judge opposed Kenvue in December 2023 and the cases were rejected, although the plaintiffs appealed and some lawsuits were filed in state courts. Tylenol continued to sell well, although Kenvue’s beauty department was blowing. In July, the board of directors dismissed its CEO, a J&J veteran who has led the company since the spinoff, and brought Perry while looking for a permanent substitute. Perry thought his challenge would be to reverse the beauty marks. On his first call with analysts to discuss quarterly results on August 7, he said he had to streamline the product portfolio because the company made too many items that produced only a small fraction of its sales. The company included a review of an overview of strategic alternatives that some analysts believe includes the sale of assets – or even the entire business. The review is still underway. A week later there was an early sign of the problems coming. A magazine called BMC environmental research on August 14 published the results of an analysis by researchers from Harvard’s Public Health School and other institutions. They have analyzed previous studies on the subject, saying that a majority of studies found a link between acetaminophen and neuro development disorders, including autism, although they no longer said that there is definite evidence of cause. The study is co-author of Baccarelli, the Harvard Dean, whose knowledgeable testimony was thrown out in court. Baccarelli has been finding its findings with Kennedy and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the director of the National Institutes of Health, discussed, Baccarelli said in a statement from Harvard. The phone calls took place in early September, a university spokesman added. Kennedy reaches out to Kenvue to set up a meeting with Perry. They arranged to meet the week of September 8. Days before the meeting took place, the Wall Street Journal reported that Kennedy also worked on a report that would say that pregnant women’s use of Tylenol may have been linked to autism. The Tylenol bottle says women who are pregnant should talk to a healthcare professional before taking the medicine. In the meeting with Kennedy, Perry and Kenvue’s chief scientific officer, Caroline Tillett, made their case that there was no clear evidence connecting autism and acetaminofen, and that there were no good alternatives to acetaminofen during pregnancy. Kennedy agreed that there were no safe alternatives, according to people who are familiar with the matter. He booked to do additional research and asked the managers to follow up follow -up meetings with Dr. Mehmet Oz, head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services, and set up Bhattacharya. Perry and Tillett got away from the meeting and thought it went well, and that Kennedy’s request to set up additional meetings with Oz and Bhattacharya was a good sign that they could work with the administration. But days later, Kennedy Perry sent the link to a substack written by Sayer Ji, the founder of an Information Platform for Alternative Health called Greenmedinfo who spoke with prominent members of Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again movement at events. JI argued that vaccinations, prenatal ultrasound and “stressors” from caesarean section include factors that can increase the autism risk. Maybe the meeting wasn’t as much success as they thought. The Kenvue Council of Directors held a regular meeting on the week of September 15. Perry and his management team informed the board about Kennedy’s threatening autism report, but according to a person familiar with the case. Certainly nothing that painted it but anything but routine business. A few days later, Trump began drawing up his autism announcement and announced on Friday, September 19 that he was planning to hold a press conference. In a packed football stadium for the memorial service for murdered conservative activist Charlie Kirk, Trump promised a Monday announcement about “an answer to autism”. The company issued a statement that was stronger that was stronger than the previous public comment. Science clearly shows that taking acetaminofen does not cause autism, it said. “We do not agree with any suggestion and are very busy with the health risk it expects for mothers.” Kenvue canceled his meetings with Oz and Bhattacharya on Monday. “Taking Tylenol is not good,” President Trump said on Monday when Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And looked at other officials. At the beginning of his press conference broadcast from the Roosevelt room of the White House, President Trump aired Easternly on the Roosevelt room of the White House for the first time, as he said it was associated with a ‘very increased’ risk for autism. The president switched to referring to the rest of the news conference as Tylenol. ‘Taking Tylenol is not good, well, I will say that. It’s not good, ‘he said, while Kennedy assisted. The president acknowledged that he deviated from the health leaders he chose to lead him: “Bobby wants to be very careful with what he says,” Trump said with reference to Kennedy. “But I’m not so careful with what I’m saying.” The US guidance for food and drug administration on the connection between acetaminophen and autism was much more nuanced. “To be clear, although a connection between acetaminophen and autism has been described in many studies, a causal relationship has not been determined and there are conflicting studies in scientific literature,” according to the official notice released by Trump’s administration on Monday. That nuance went out the window when social media blew up. A tweet of 2017 from the Tylenol account that reads: ‘We do not actually recommend using any of our products while we are pregnant,’ was seized by lawyers for Kennedy’s Maha initiative. Official social media accounts for health and human services shared the post with the note: ‘No caption needs.’ The White House Social Media accounts also recycled the post, with a photo of Trump being a “Trump was right about everything” hat. Tylenol’s own social media posts tried to counteract the noise. Tylenol posted a series of Instagram posts this week, which led people to the FAQ page of the website and reiterated that the position on acetaminofen for pregnant women did not change. “We do not recommend that pregnant women take medication without talking to their doctor,” Kenvue said in a statement, adding that the 2017 tweet was “incomplete and did not address our full guidance on the safe use of Tylenol.” Ji, the skeptic of the vaccine whose substack Kennedy sent to Perry, said in an email that his readership has grown with the growing interest in information on Tylenol autism. Its substack, which has 43,000 subscribers, is currently listed under the fastest rising publications in health politics category, according to the rankings of substack. Kenvue has a crisis communication firm. It is also evaluating its potential liability, if the statements of Trump and his administration cause a new round of lawsuits. The limitation status is interrupted until a child reaches the age of 18 in lawsuits for personal injuries. This means that a mother who took Tylenol during pregnancy and has a child with autism can take years to submit a suit. On Friday morning, Perry sent a memo to Kenvue employees. “It is difficult for me that it is clear to me that this team is led by science and passionate to care for others,” he wrote. “Moments like this are when you see a true character, and I was incredibly proud of how each of you showed up.” Write to Peter Loftus on peter.loftus@wsj.com, alyssa lukpat at alyssa.lukpat@wsj.com and Sara Ashley O’Brien on sara.obrien@wsj.com Catch all the business news, market news, news reports and latest news updates on Live Mint. Download the Mint News app to get daily market updates. More Topics #Genitstate Read the following story
Inside the crisis at Tylenol
