Trump rails against Tylenol but autism claims not supported by science | Trump administration

Donald Trump, allegedly, found “the answer to autism”: Tylenol.

Trump on Monday announced that pregnant women should considerably limit their use of acetaminophen, known under the Tylenol brand or abroad as a paracetamol, because, he said, this increases the risk of autism.

This affirmation is not supported by science. Research on the links between the use of acetaminophen during pregnancy and autism has not been a causal relationship, while medical experts are largely suitable that growing autism diagnoses cannot be traced to a singular cause.

Acetaminophen can be used to alleviate fever and pain during pregnancy. Leaving these untreated conditions may include “significant risks for maternal and infantile health”, according to a statement from the company for maternal-fetal medicine. Untreated fevers, for example, can cause miscarriage, congenital malformations and premature births.

Trump’s announcement was a triumph for the health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, who has referred to unproven affirmations on autism and autistic people. However, it was also the last decision of another emerging campaign in the Trump administration: the one who seeks to value “natural” pregnancy and maternity – that is to say pregnancy and maternity without proven medical interventions – to the point where she can corrod the health and safety of women.

In recent months, the Trump administration has taken steps to undermine the access of pregnant women to vaccines and antidepressants. These steps were in defiance of a generalized agreement between medical experts that the advantages of these therapies tend to prevail over risks. In May, Kennedy, who has long questioned vaccine safety, said that he “could not be happy to announce” that the CDC would no longer recommend that healthy pregnant women are vaccinated against Covid.

Then, during the summer, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) organized a panel on the use of antidepressants during pregnancy. Mainly endowed with people who have history of antidepressant skepticism or who have been consultants in dispute on antidepressants, the panel strongly stressed the risks of taking antidepressants during pregnancy. One of the panelists, a psychologist by the name of Roger McFillin, said that depression “turned into a umbrella term” and “no longer even makes sense”.

“Do women naturally experience their emotions more intensely?” He asked. “They are gifts. These are not symptoms of a disease. ”

They can very well be symptoms of a disease. Mental health problems contribute to almost a third of all deaths related to pregnancy in the United States, according to a 2025 report for Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Deaths involving mental health difficulties, about a third were suicides.

Covid also endangers the lives of women – and those of their babies. A study in 2021 in 2,100 pregnant women from around the world revealed that women who contracted are cocovated during pregnancy were 20 times more likely to die compared to those who have not caught the virus. More than 11% of women who contracted Covid also did a positive baby test for COVID.

While the Trump administration casts doubt that women should use vital remedies to protect themselves from cocoat and depression, republicans have moved in recent months to adopt at least a kind of intervention: “restorative reproductive medicine” (RRM), a constellation of therapies that serves to “restore” individuals “.

RRM defenders say they work to present women with more options, but pre -eminent medical groups such as the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Society for Reproductive Medicine say that there are little evidence that RRM techniques work – and that it is actually “a pseudonym for an assessment of fundamental infertility” Reproductory said this summer goalkeeper.

These movements – attacks against the access of pregnant women to Tylenol, Covid vaccines, antidepressants; The insistence that women should get pregnant without IVF – all adhere to a basic error known as “the call to nature”, or the idea that something that comes from the earth is better than anything that is made by humans.

This idea feeds a large part of the movement “Make America Healthy Again”, of which Kennedy is indeed the Tsar. It is also obviously false.

There are reasons why you are not supposed to drink non -pasteurized or “raw” milk. (They are called Campylobacter, Cryptosporidium, E Coli, Listeria, Brucella and Salmonella.) And there are reasons why a small cup or a tallowed toe is no longer a death sentence. (They are called antibiotics.)

When combined with pregnancy, the illogical of the appeal to nature is even more stretched, withdrew to itself like Laffy Taffy. Not only pregnancy – and women who do it – should be treated as “naturally” as possible, but pregnancy and maternity are themselves the natural states of women.

Authoritarian governments through history have sought to convince their people that this is true, in order to subjugate women and to ensure that women are reliable sources of reproduction. This is why the Trump administration’s desire to reduce the access of pregnant women to Tylenol cannot divorce, for example, its pronatalist interest in encouraging women to have more babies through $ 5,000 of “babies” bonus.

In the end, all of this can lead to less options and more pain for women – including those who find fulfilling parenting, those who are not interested and those who are everywhere between the two. In fact, without tylenol, this pain can become quite literal.

“All this pressure to become a mother and be a mother emerges politically, but you are not supposed to need help or support,” said journalist Amy Larocca, author of the book How to Be Well: navigation of our personal care epidemic, a dubious healing at the same time, in an interview earlier this year. “You are supposed to be able to manage everything by yourself and [have] No maternity leave, no medical care, no support. »»

She added: “There is a lot of shame of women who need help and support.”