During a press briefing on Monday (Sep 21), Trump insisted that pregnant women should avoid Tylenol and "tough it out", linking it to autism. He also urged major changes to the standard vaccines administered to babies.
The World Health Organization on Tuesday (Sep 22) slammed US President Donald Trump's recent claims on Tylenol as "inconsistent", saying that neither the painkiller nor vaccines have been shown to cause autism. This comes after Trump claimed that Tylenol can be linked with autism and advised pregnant women to avoid the common painkiller.
WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic told reporters that while some observational studies had suggested that autism may be possibly linked with acetaminophen or paracetamol, the primary ingredient in Tylenol, others had "found no such relationship." He further stated that "the evidence remains inconsistent".
"If the link between acetaminophen and autism were strong, it would likely have been consistently observed across multiple studies," he said, warning against "drawing casual conclusions about the role of acetaminophen in autism."
Jasarevic also said that there was no doubt that "vaccines do not cause autism."
"The childhood immunisation schedule, carefully guided by WHO, has been adopted by all countries and has saved at least 154 million lives over the past 50 years," he said. "These schedules have continually evolved with science and now safeguard children, adolescents and adults against 30 infectious diseases."
He further warned that "when immunisation schedules are delayed or disrupted, or altered without evidence review, there is a sharp increase in the risk of infection not only for the child but also for the wider community." He added, "Each missed dose increases the chances of contracting a life-threatening infectious disease."
During a press briefing on Monday (Sep 21), Trump insisted that pregnant women should avoid Tylenol and "tough it out", linking it to autism. He also urged major changes to the standard vaccines administered to babies.
The US President said that women should only use acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, when necessary for high fevers, in the smallest dose and shortest time possible. His claims are not backed by medical consensus.
Meanwhile, health professionals in the US have cautioned that avoiding Tylenol entirely without any alternatives may put the mothers and unborn children at risk, calling Trump's claims "dangerous" and "full of misinformation". Moreover, acetaminophen, or paracetamol, has often been regarded among the safest painkillers to take during pregnancy among medical groups.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said, "a causal relationship (between acetaminophen and autism) has not been established," and debate in the scientific community is ongoing.