President Donald Trump arrives with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to speak in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Monday, Sept. 22, 2025, in Washington.A Labour minister has rejected Donald Trump’s claim that there is a link between paracetamol use in pregnancy with autism.
The US president made the comments in the White House on Monday, despite being unable to provide any evidence to back them up.
Trump said there had been a “meteoric rise” in cases of autism and suggested that paracetamol – which is called Tylenol in the US – is a potential cause.
“There are certain groups of people that don’t take vaccines and don’t take any pills, that have no autism,” the president claimed.
He said the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) would be notifying all US doctors with new guidance advising mothers-to-be not to use paracetamol during their pregnancy.
But appearing on Sky News on Tuesday, housing minister Matthew Pennycook said: “I choose my words carefully here. I think in any policy decision, I do this in my own department, you’ve got to be led by the evidence.
“The fact is that any such link at the moment is unproven, and it’s really important more generally, talking about children with autism, that we get the right support in place.
“But on the president’s suggestion, let’s be led by the science.”
Medical experts on both sides of the Atlantic have slammed Trump’s comments.
Dr Monique Botha, associate professor in social and developmental psychology at Durham University, accused the president of “fearmongering”.
She said a Swedish study of 2.4 million births last year “found no relationship” between paracetamol use and autism.
Dr Botha said: “There is no robust evidence or convincing studies to suggest there is any causal relationship and any conclusions being drawn to the contrary are often motivated, under-evidenced, and unsupported by the most robust methods to answering this question.”
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