Trump claim linking paracetamol during pregnancy to autism rubbished by major new study

President Donald Trump’s claim that taking paracetamol during pregnancy is linked to autism is not based on robust evidence, a study has found.

The claims were made by Trump and health and human services secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr in September, 2025. They urged women to not take Tylenol, known as paracetamol in the UK, and repeated numerous conspiracy theories about autism.

Kennedy, who has previously been accused of spreading vaccine misinformation and pushed a discredited theory that routine childhood vaccines were linked to autism, said the department would encourage clinicians to prescribe the lowest effective dose of the pain relief drug.

UK scientists hit back at the “fearmongering” claims and health secretary Wes Streeting stressed to not “pay any attention whatsoever to what Donald Trump says about medicine.”

Now a review of the medical evidence published in The Lancet Obstetrics, Gynaecology, & Women’s Health journal, has found there is no strong evidence that paracetamol use during pregnancy increases the risk of autism, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), or any intellectual disability among children.

“Autism diagnoses have surged by 787 per cent in the UK since 1998, which naturally raises questions around what’s behind this trend. It’s simply bad science to automatically assume that this is due to autism becoming much more prevalent. It’s even worse to attribute it to a simple cause like taking paracetamol during pregnancy without foundation,” Dr Lisa Williams, founder and clinical director, The Autism Service, who was not involved in the study, told the Independent.

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Source: The Independent, 16 January 2026