Earlier this month, the head of a big company got a text message.
In the message, there weren't any words, no photos, no gifts.
Just a link.
Kirk Perry, who is the CEO of Kenview, which makes Tylenol,
received a text message that had a link to a substack post.
that was written by an online health influencer that talked about the purported link between acetaminophen,
which is the active ingredient of Tylenol, and autism.
And who did this text message come from?
It came from a pretty important person,
the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. That text message,
according to our colleague Peter Loftus,
was the moment that the head of the company that makes Tylenol realized he had a big problem on his hands.
His attempts to convince the Trump administration,
including RFK Jr., that Tylenol was safe and failed.
Within days,
President Trump held a press conference where he gave a damning condemnation of the decades-old painkiller,
saying it potentially causes autism.
But with Tylenol, don't take it.
Don't take it.
and it threw the company into a whirlwind of chaos.