President Trump and top health officials Monday said pregnant women should not take acetaminophen for pain relief due to a potential link to autism.
Acetaminophen is the active ingredient in Tylenol, one of the most widely used medications in the world.
“Taking Tylenol is not good,” Trump said during a White House announcement.
Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will begin updating the label on acetaminophen and will begin notifying physicians that Tylenol “can be associated with a very increased risk of autism.”
“All pregnant women should talk to their doctors for more information about limiting the use of this medication while pregnant. So ideally, you don’t take it at all, but if you have to, you can’t tough it out … probably, you’re going to end up doing it,” Trump said.
Trump spoke in the Oval Office alongside Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary, National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz.
Tylenol has been one of the only over-the-counter pain medications for pregnant women that is considered safe. Other options like ibuprofen or aspirin can increase risks of birth defects.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists said in a statement before the announcement that “acetaminophen remains a safe, trusted option for pain relief during pregnancy.”
“Despite recent unfounded claims, there’s no clear evidence linking prudent use to issues with fetal development,” it added.
Major medical societies, including the Society of Maternal Fetal Medicine (SMFM), advise recommend that pregnant women consult with health providers before taking acetaminophen.
“At this time, the weight of scientific evidence that acetaminophen use during pregnancy causes an increased risk for autism or ADHD is simply inconclusive,” SMFM President Sindhu Srinivas said.
Experts say there are multiple causes of autism, and the increase in diagnoses is more likely due to improved detection.
Kennedy on Monday dismissed that notion, saying, “there’s been study after study on it that completely debunks that” theory. He reiterated his oft-repeated argument that he hasn’t seen people of his generation and older with profound autism.
Administration officials cited a recently published National Institutes of Health-funded review by Mount Sinai and Harvard researchers. The authors said their analyses of previous studies “support evidence consistent with an association between acetaminophen exposure during pregnancy and increased incidence” of neurodevelopmental disorders.
Diddier Prada, a researcher at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, which led the study, has stressed that the findings do not prove a causal link.
“We show that acetaminophen is associated with a higher risk, but not causing it. Those are very different things,” he said in an interview with The Washington Post.
Trump also called for pregnant women to space out their vaccinations, referencing the recent vote by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices to no longer recommend the combined MMRV vaccine, which helps prevent measles, mumps, rubella and varicella, better known as chickenpox.
“I think when you go through the shot, you do it over a five-time period. Take it over five times or four times, but you take it in smaller doses, and you spread it out over a period of years,” said Trump.
“The chickenpox is already separate, because when that got mixed in, I guess they made it for a while, it really was bad,” Trump said. “So, they make chickenpox individually. They’re okay when you mix them, something maybe happens.”
Updated 6:02 p.m.