US President Donald Trump has made another loud statement, this time indicating that he will call on doctors to avoid prescribing Tylenol to pregnant women because it causes autism, writes the BBC.
Trump announced on the 22nd of September that the use of Tylenol (a drug with the same active ingredient elsewhere is known as paracetamol) is not good, and pregnant women should avoid it at all costs, and use the medicine only in case of an extremely high body temperature. Medical experts have strongly rejected this statement, and some call it dangerous. British doctors have indicated that paracetamol is still the safest painkiller that can be used by pregnant women.
British Health Minister Wes Streeting said that he trusts doctors more than Trump on this issue. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has rejected Trump’s explanation about the connection between Tylenol and autism spectrum disorders. The board’s president, Steven Fleischman, said Trump’s comments about Tylenol were “not supported by scientific evidence” and “dangerously oversimplified the many and complex factors that can cause neurological problems in children.”
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been less harsh in its guidance to doctors than Trump. The FDA has said doctors should reduce Tylenol use, while recognizing that it is the safest over-the-counter medication for pregnant women to take to relieve fever and pain, which are also factors that affect the health of the mother and fetus. “To be clear, while an association between acetaminophen and autism has been described in many studies,
a causal relationship has not been established and there are contrary studies in the scientific literature,”
the FDA said.
Speaking alongside Trump, US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr said the FDA would begin changes to the drug’s labeling system and launch an information campaign to educate the public.
Tylenol is a popular painkiller in the US, Canada and some other countries around the world. Its active ingredient is acetaminophen, known as paracetamol outside North America, and is widely used and recommended. In a statement to the BBC, Tylenol’s manufacturer Kenvue said the science clearly shows that acetaminophen does not cause autism spectrum disorders, adding that it disagrees with this assumption and is deeply concerned about the impact such statements have on expectant mothers.
Meanwhile, Kennedy also announced that the FDA would approve leucovorin, which has been used for decades to reduce the toxicity of chemotherapy in cancer patients, for the treatment of children with autism spectrum disorders. FDA spokesman Marty Makary said the decision was based on research suggesting that the drug could help children with folate deficiency improve their verbal communication skills. Scientists have said the research is in its early stages and more work is needed to reach a conclusion.
In April, Kennedy pledged to conduct a large-scale study to find the cause of autism within five months. Experts have said that finding the cause of autism will not be easy. It has been studied for decades, but much is still unknown. The more widely held view is that there is no single cause, but rather a combination of genetic and environmental factors that can increase a child’s risk of developing autism spectrum disorder.
On the 22nd of September, Trump called the rise in autism spectrum disorder a “terrible crisis.”
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