{"id":176855,"date":"2025-09-23T17:57:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-23T17:57:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/176855\/"},"modified":"2025-09-23T17:57:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-23T17:57:11","slug":"world-officials-reject-trump-claim-of-link-between-tylenol-and-autism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/176855\/","title":{"rendered":"World officials reject Trump claim of link between Tylenol and autism"},"content":{"rendered":"

LONDON \u2014 Health officials across the globe on Tuesday rejected President Donald Trump’s warning that pregnant women should limit the use of <\/a>acetaminophen over unsubstantiated claims of a link to autism. <\/p>\n

Authorities from Australia to Europe moved swiftly to respond to the U.S. announcement, which Trump made with great fanfare while flanked by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t take Tylenol. Don\u2019t take it. Fight like hell not to take it,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n

But a range of experts worldwide noted there was not conclusive evidence to support the possible association between autism and acetaminophen \u2014 the active ingredient in Tylenol and other widely used medications \u2014 and no new evidence to warrant a change in guidance.<\/p>\n

\u201cAvailable evidence has found no link between the use of paracetamol during pregnancy and autism,\u201d said the European Medicines Agency (EMA). Paracetamol is a widely used name for Tylenol beyond the U.S.<\/p>\n

The EMA said it would not be making changes to the region\u2019s current recommendations, maintaining that pregnant women should take the lowest effective dose of the drug for the shortest possible time and as infrequently as possible. <\/p>\n

\u201cA large amount of data from pregnant women who used paracetamol during pregnancy indicates no risk of malformations on the developing fetus or on newborns,\u201d the EMA said in a statement to NBC News. <\/p>\n

The World Health Organization said that \u201cthe evidence remains inconsistent\u201d regarding any link between the use of Tylenol during pregnancy and autism.<\/p>\n

WHO spokesperson Tarik Ja\u0161arevi\u0107 cited unspecified studies that pointed to a possible link but said that this was not confirmed by subsequent research. \u201cThis lack of replicability really calls for caution in drawing casual conclusions,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"PresidentTrump had been teasing the announcement for days, as Kennedy pledged to determine the cause of the developmental disorder by September. Andrew Harnik \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n

Trump on Monday also suggested that additives in vaccines may cause autism, which the WHO was similarly quick to dispute. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe know that vaccines do not cause autism. Vaccines, as I said, save countless lives. So, this is something that science has proven, and these things should not be really questioned,\u201d Ja\u0161arevi\u0107 told a Geneva press briefing. <\/p>\n

Australian health officials were among the first to reject the claims, labeling them \u201ca misrepresentation of the science.\u201d<\/p>\n

Australia\u2019s medicines regulator, the Therapeutic Goods Administration, together with the country\u2019s Chief Medical Officer, said Tuesday that it was joining other global medicines regulators in repudiating Trump\u2019s claims.<\/p>\n

\u201cRobust scientific evidence shows no causal link between the use of paracetamol in pregnancy and autism or ADHD, with several large and reliable studies directly contradicting these claims,\u201d they said in a statement. <\/p>\n

A number of other countries restated their existing guidance, which differs from the new warning issued by the Trump administration.<\/p>\n

New Zealand\u2019s Ministry of Health reiterated that its guidance had not changed, describing paracetamol as \u201cthe safest medicine to take in pregnancy” for treatment of pain or fever.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for the German Health Ministry told NBC News that there was no link between taking paracetamol during pregnancy and developmental abnormalities. “In certain situations, taking medication is necessary to avoid endangering the mother and unborn child, for example in the case of high fever,” they said in an emailed statement.<\/p>\n

The U.K.\u2019s health regulator, MHRA, issued a similar statement, stressing that \u201cparacetamol remains the recommended pain relief option for pregnant women when used as directed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cUntreated pain and fever can pose risks to the unborn baby, so it is important to manage these symptoms with the recommended treatment,\u201d Dr Alison Cave, chief safety officer at the MHRA, said in a statement on the agency\u2019s website. <\/p>\n

Health Secretary Wes Streeting told ITV early Tuesday: \u201cI would just say to people watching, don\u2019t pay any attention whatsoever to what Donald Trump says about medicine.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spain\u2019s health minister, M\u00f3nica Garc\u00eda G\u00f3mez, also called out Trump by name, accusing him of \u201cignoring all medical studies.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cDenialism not only destroys trust in science: it puts lives at risk,\u201d she wrote on X on Monday. <\/p>\n

Scott White, chair of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists Women\u2019s Health Committee, said he was “worried” about the messaging from the U.S.<\/p>\n

\u201cParacetamol is safe and actually important to use because pain and fever are associated with adverse neurodevelopmental outcomes themselves,\u201d White told NBC News in a phone interview.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m really worried about the messaging that says pregnant women should just tough it out, that pregnant women should be denied access to pain relief, which is a fundamental human right. It\u2019s every woman\u2019s right,\u201d White said. <\/p>\n

\u201cTo suggest that women can\u2019t access a medication that we feel has been shown to be safe simply because they\u2019re pregnant women, is misogynistic.\u201d<\/p>\n

White cited a study published last year in the Journal of the American Medical Association that studied 2.5 million children in Sweden. It compared siblings and found no association between acetaminophen use during pregnancy and the risk of autism, ADHD or intellectual disability. <\/p>\n

While other studies have suggested some kind of link, including research published last month<\/a> that Trump administration officials are citing, White argues many struggled to exclude factors like genetics or environment.<\/p>\n

Outside autism researchers have said that literature review, by researchers from Harvard and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, wasn\u2019t rigorously conducted and that it cherry-picked studies that supported its conclusion. <\/p>\n

White also said the reason a woman is taking paracetamol, such as to treat a fever or infection, could be what affects the mental development of the child. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe know that women who\u2019ve got complicated pregnancies in some way are more likely to go on to have babies that are neurodevelopmentally impacted,\u201d he added, citing fever as a prime example. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON \u2014 Health officials across the globe on Tuesday rejected President Donald Trump’s warning that pregnant women should…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":176856,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[97,243],"class_list":{"0":"post-176855","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-medication","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-medication"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176855\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/176856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}