Global health experts are aghast that President Donald Trump announced an unproven link between autism and commonly used painkillers and vaccines, and they're warning others to ignore his advice.
The U.S. president, along with his Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., advised pregnant women not to take acetaminophen, which is used in Tylenol and other products and marketed internationally as paracetamol, but health officials in other nations disputed his claims as unscientific and dangerous, reported The Guardian.
“We know that vaccines do not cause autism,” said the World Health Organization spokesperson Tarik Jašarević. “Vaccines, as I said, save countless lives. So this is something that science has proven, and these things should not be really questioned.”
Wes Streeting, the UK health secretary, was even more blunt in his criticism of Trump and Kennedy, a longtime skeptic of vaccines who promised to determine the "cause" of autism within months of starting his job.
“I trust doctors over President Trump, frankly, on this," Streeting said. "I’ve just got to be really clear about this: there is no evidence to link the use of paracetamol [acetaminophen] by pregnant women to autism in their children. None."
“So I would just say to people watching: don’t pay any attention whatsoever to what Donald Trump says about medicine," Streeting added. In fact, don’t take even take my word for it, as a politician – listen to British doctors, British scientists, the [National Health Service].”
MHRA, the UK’s healthcare regulator, released a statement within hours of Trump's announcement disputing the link between paracetamol use during pregnancy with autism, and the agency's chief safety officer warned that “untreated pain and fever can pose risks to the unborn baby," which contradicts Trump's encouragement that pregnant women "tough it out" rather than use medicine.
The European Medicines Agency also stood by its advice, saying its guidelines were “based on a rigorous assessment of the available scientific data and we have found no evidence that taking paracetamol during pregnancy causes autism in children," and Australia's Therapeutic Goods Administration confirmed paracetamol was safe for use in pregnancy and rejected any link to neurodevelopmental conditions.