UK experts have condemned “fearmongering” in the US after it was reported Donald Trump’s administration will say there is a link between paracetamol use in pregnancy and autism.
Scientists have hit back, with one saying the claim “risks stigmatising families who have autistic children as having brought it on themselves”.
The Wall Street Journal reported that US health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr is expected to say Tylenol – which is paracetamol in the UK – is a potential cause of autism.
Personal anecdote, but I discovered that a feeling I had associated with being sick when I was younger was actually from the Tylenol my parents handed out like it was candy when any of us did get sick (exaggerating a bit, it was basically one of the go to “solutions” when sickness came up). I realized this when I took a percocet for fun, since people do that for some reason, and then just felt sick after. Like a head sickness, a brain fog.
No idea if there’s any link between that and autism (could just be a personal sensitivity, which is what I’ve treated it as ever since), but the argument from the article that it might cause stigma because it could be considered “their own fault” is a very weak one, weak enough that it makes me wonder if there really is a link. It’s not “Tylenol and autism aren’t linked”, it’s “claims that Tylenol and autism are linked might make people feel bad about taking Tylenol!”
Though tbf, the response could be coming from the same source as the initial claims, intending to increase credibility via the exact thing I said in the last paragraph.