{"id":38765,"date":"2025-09-23T14:34:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-23T14:34:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/38765\/"},"modified":"2025-09-23T14:34:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-23T14:34:07","slug":"head-of-irish-autism-charity-horrified-by-trumps-paracetamol-comments-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/38765\/","title":{"rendered":"Head of Irish autism charity \u2018horrified\u2019 by Trump\u2019s paracetamol comments \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The head of Ireland\u2019s national charity for autistic people has said he was \u201chorrified\u201d by US president Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s remarks linking autism<\/a> to the use of paracetamol.<\/p>\n

On Monday, Mr Trump claimed he had found \u201cthe answer to autism\u201d<\/a>. <\/p>\n

He said pregnant women should limit their use of acetaminophen \u2013 more commonly known as paracetamol, or by the brand name Tylenol in the US \u2013 because, he claimed, it raised the risk of their children being autistic.<\/p>\n

The remarks caused an outcry in the US and abroad, with medical experts saying there was no such proven link. <\/p>\n

Adam Harris, chief executive of the autism charity AsIam, told The Irish Times he was \u201ctruly horrified\u201d by the remarks, which he believed \u201cseek to bring our community back several decades in terms of an awareness and understanding\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re very clearly remarks that seek to distract and perpetuate tropes about the community. They\u2019re certainly not linked to any credible scientific or clinical evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Harris said the spread of such misinformation \u201ccontributes to significant stigma\u201d for autistic people and \u201cposes broader public health risks\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no health advice linking vaccination [or] linking paracetamol to autism. Indeed, there is a plethora of scientific evidence to definitively conclude otherwise.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Autism: Why are so many children being diagnosed?Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

On Tuesday the World Health Organisation<\/a> said that evidence of a link remained inconsistent and urged caution in drawing conclusions.<\/p>\n

The European Medicines Agency echoed that, stating: \u201cAvailable evidence has found no link between the use of paracetamol during pregnancy and autism.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Harris said people should only take medical advice from doctors or other experts \u201cas opposed to listening to the same politician who, during the Covid-19 pandemic<\/a>, suggested that people should inject their bodies with bleach\u201d.<\/p>\n

During the pandemic, Mr Trump was sharply criticised<\/a> by the medical community after suggesting that Covid-19 might be treated by injecting disinfectant.<\/p>\n

Speaking alongside Mr Trump on Monday, US health secretary Robert F Kennedy jnr<\/a> (71) said he did not know anyone his age with \u201cprofound autism\u201d.<\/p>\n

Mr Harris said the assertion older people were not autistic was \u201ca nonsense\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reasons why secretary Kennedy may not have been aware of [autistic] people his own age growing up would be because, in society, we tended to segregate and institutionalise people with the greatest needs. I don\u2019t think we want to go back to those times,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Mr Harris said some of the misinformation spreading in the US has made its way to Ireland.<\/p>\n

Speaking in the D\u00e1il last Wednesday, Independent TD Danny Healy-Rae suggested an increase in people being diagnosed as autistic might be linked to a \u201clack of some vitamins\u201d.<\/p>\n

Mr Harris said it is \u201cvery regrettable\u201d that Mr Healy-Rae had not yet retracted those remarks.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople now perhaps, at times, feel they have a licence to say things that they wouldn\u2019t have felt comfortable saying out loud 12 or 18 months ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

The National Disability Authority last week published a report on the prevalence of autism in Ireland. The most recent data, from 2022, suggested a prevalence of one in 31 children (3.2 per cent).<\/p>\n

The report said there was \u201cno evidence to suggest that overdiagnosis is a significant concern\u201d in Ireland, adding the increase in the number of people being diagnosed in recent years was down to better awareness and broader diagnostic criteria.<\/p>\n

Mr Kennedy has regularly linked autism to the MMR vaccine, citing a study from 1998 that has since been widely discredited. The findings were later disproved and the report\u2019s author, Andrew Wakefield, was struck off the medical register in the UK.<\/p>\n

A number of US states are currently seeking to remove vaccine mandates for children attending school, prompting concerns about the impact this could have on immunocompromised children who rely on others being vaccinated to prevent them contracting measles or other serious conditions.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0The urgent need to combat vaccine hesitancy in Ireland and abroadOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The head of Ireland\u2019s national charity for autistic people has said he was \u201chorrified\u201d by US president Donald…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38766,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[6128,969,42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-38765","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-autism","9":"tag-donald-trump","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-top-news","13":"tag-top-stories","14":"tag-topnews","15":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38765\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}