World health officials reject Trump’s claims that Tylenol is linked to autism

Health officials around the globe are rejecting President Trump’s assertion that pregnant women should avoid taking acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, during pregnancy because of unfounded links to autism.

“Available evidence has found no link between the use of paracetamol during pregnancy and autism,” the European Medicines Agency, Europe’s top drug regulator, said in a statement. Paracetamol is a widely used name for acetaminophen outside the U.S.

The European drug regulator re-iterated its guidance on Tuesday that drugs with paracetamol should be used as necessary to treat pain and fever, adding that “Paracetamol remains an important option to treat pain or fever in pregnant women.”

In a White House press conference Monday, President Trump repeatedly pointed to research suggesting exposure to the common painkiller in utero was linked with later diagnoses of autism.

World Health Organization spokesperson Tarik Jašarević pushed back against that claim during a press briefing in Geneva.

“There were some observational studies that have suggested a possible association between prenatal exposure to acetaminophen, but the evidence remains inconsistent,” he said. “Several studies done after that have found no such relationship. So this lack of replicability calls for caution in drawing causal conclusions about the role of acetaminophen in autism.”

President Trump also suggested on Monday that vaccines and their frequency were responsible for an increase in autism rates.

“They pump so much stuff into those beautiful little babies, it’s a disgrace,” he said.

Jašarević rejected that claim, too.

“We know that vaccines do not cause autism,” he said. “Vaccines save countless lives. This is something that science has proven, and these things should not be really questioned.”

Health officials from several other countries followed suit with their own statements.

“Don’t pay any attention whatsoever to what Donald Trump says about medicine,” Wes Streeting, the U.K. health secretary, said in an interview with ITV’s Lorraine program. “I’ve just got to be really clear about this: there is no evidence to link the use of paracetamol by pregnant women to autism in their children. None.”

Acetaminophen is one of the few options available to pregnant patients seeking treatment for fever and pain.

“Untreated pain and fever can pose risks to the unborn baby,” Alison Cave, chief safety officer at the MHRA, the U.K.’s top drug regulator, said in a statement. “It is important to manage these symptoms with the recommended treatment.”

In Australia, that country’s chief medical officer and its drug regulator, TGA, wrote in a statement that they “join with other global medicines regulators, leading clinicians and scientists worldwide in rejecting claims regarding the use of paracetamol in pregnancy, and the subsequent risk of development of autism in children.”

Mónica García Gómez, Spain’s health minister, accused President Trump of ignoring medical science. In a post on X, she said “Denialism not only destroys trust in science: it puts lives at risk.”