President Donald Trump advised women to "avoid taking acetaminophen, or Tylenol, during pregnancy because, he said, the painkiller and fever reducer raises the risk of autism." CIDRAP has the news.
In addition, Trump suggested that the MMR vaccine "should be given as three separate shots to children and also linked vaccines to autism."
The announcements "were not based on any new evidence or research on the relationship between Tylenol use and autism or between vaccines and autism and was immediately discredited by scientists, researchers, and professional organizations around the globe." No new data was presented at the time of Trump's declaration. He may have been referencing "the anti-vaccine argument that the current childhood vaccine schedule overwhelms a child's immune system and that preservatives found in vaccines could cause autism."
Trump "held fast to the idea that children receive too many vaccines" when pressed on his reasoning, which is another notion discredited by scientists and doctors.
Epidemiologist Katelyn Jetelina said that the comments on Tylenol "seemed to be based on a Harvard-Mount Sinai analysis of 46 studies that identified a slight increased risk of autism associated with prenatal Tylenol use but did not demonstrate causation." Organizations like the American Academy of Obstetricians and Gynecologists pushed back on the claims made by Trump.
