WASHINGTON – U.S. President Donald Trump said from the White House on Monday that pregnant women should not use acetaminophen, the key ingredient in the painkiller Tylenol. This has caused a lot of anger in the medical world. He said that the drug might be connected to an increase in autism rates in the country.
Trump, who was standing next to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a well-known opponent of vaccines, said that his administration is associating the active ingredient in Tylenol to autism and is now telling pregnant women not to use it for the whole time they are pregnant. He also agreed with Kennedy’s long-held worries regarding immunizations for kids.
Trump also claimed that his administration has started the process of approving leucovorin calcium tablets as a possible treatment for a disorder linked to autism.
Medical Experts Say Claims Are “Unproven” and “Irresponsible”
Leading medical groups and specialists quickly and strongly pushed back against what the president said.
The president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), Dr. Steven Fleischman, strongly warned that the assertions could scare pregnant women and parents of children with autism for no reason. “I don’t want you to look back and think, ‘I shouldn’t have done this, I shouldn’t have done that.'” You didn’t do anything wrong. He answered, “It really isn’t,” and he added that a fever that isn’t treated could be worse for a fetus’s health than the medicine itself. ACOG and other major medical associations have always said that acetaminophen is a safe way to relieve pain and lower temperature during pregnancy.
Dr. Susan Kressly, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, backed up what scientists have said about another concern that Trump brought up. She said, “Studies have repeatedly found no credible link between life-saving childhood vaccines and autism.” Any attempt to falsify good, robust science is bad for kids’ health.
Dr. Emily Carter, a child development researcher at Johns Hopkins University, said, “The evidence simply does not support a link between Tylenol use in pregnancy and autism.” She went on to say that autism is a complicated condition that is caused by a combination of genetic and environmental factors, with no one clear cause.
Leucovorin Treatment: Not Proven Yet, But Being Looked Into
David Mandell, associate director of the Center for Autism Research at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said that there isn’t much evidence that leucovorin works as an autism treatment right now. However, the Coalition of Autism Scientists supports a large-scale study to find out more about its possible benefits.
The FDA is working to make the medicine available to people with cerebral folate deficiency (CFD), a neurological disorder that can cause developmental delays and other symptoms that are similar to autism. The American Psychiatric Association, on the other hand, says that further research is needed over the next few years to find out if leucovorin is a good treatment for people with autism.