President Donald Trump on Monday repeatedly called Pregnant women should not take acetaminophen, saying it is associated with a “very increased risk of autism.” His remarks that immediately attracted attention warnings and failures from experts—contradicts leading medical advice that acetaminophen is safe during pregnancy when used correctly.
The President, who has no medical training, has provided no new evidence to support his claim, and many respected medical organizations, including American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists And Society of Maternal-Fetal Medicine— rejected this claim, emphasizing that years of research have found no cause-and-effect link between acetaminophen use during pregnancy and autism. Experts also noted that acetaminophen helps manage pain and fever, which can be very dangerous for pregnant women and the fetus if left untreated. It is the only over-the-counter medicine approved for the treatment of fever during pregnancy.
Trump, who has appointed Several vaccine and climate change skeptics who hold key positions in his administration have made a number of other false and dubious claims about health and science over the years. Here are some of the most notable ones.
Read more: Trump links Tylenol to autism. What does science show?
COVID-19
During his first term, Trump made numerous false statements related to the COVID-19 pandemic, including in many cases downplaying the threat of the virus. For example, in July 2020 claimed that “99%” of cases are “completely harmless”—which most public health experts and data, including from his administration, had shown by then to be untrue.
Trump also made erroneous comparisons between the virus and the flu, writing in post on social networks in October 2020: “Flu season is coming! Many people every year, sometimes over 100,000, despite the vaccine, die from the flu. Are we going to shut down our country? No, we have learned to live with it, just like we are learning to live with Covid, much less deadly in most populations!!!” Extensive data and studies conducted by health and scientific experts have shown that COVID-19 more deadly and contagious than influenza viruses.
The President also promoted unproven treatments for the virus, including suggesting that injecting disinfectant into the body could be a possible cure, and suggesting that researchers study whether exposing the body to “ultraviolet light or just very powerful light” could help fight the virus. Doctors and public health experts widely warned the population should not inject or swallow disinfectants, warning that this is dangerous.
In March 2020, Trump advanced chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, two anti-malarial drugs, as possible treatments for the virus: “I think this could be something really incredible,” he said at the time. While he acknowledged that more research needs to be done, he also said the drugs have shown “very, very encouraging results.” Dr. Anthony Fauci, then the nation's top infectious disease expert, and other federal health officials. pushed back to Trump's remarks, emphasizing that there was no proven drug to treat the virus at the time and that two antimalarial drugs have potentially dangerous side effects.
Climate change
Trump has repeatedly denied the existence of climate change. In April 2022 he called this is a “hoax”; next year he called it “one of the greatest scams ever.” The vast majority of scientists, based on decades of researchis that the planet is warming and that this change is caused anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.
Trump also has proposed that because cold weather events are still occurring, climate change cannot occur. But many climate scientists discredited this argument that states that frosts can occur even in the face of climate change, but over time these cold spells will occur less common and won't last as long.
On Tuesday, Trump repeated his previous comments on climate change: I'm calling this is the “greatest scam ever perpetrated” and a “scam” in solving the problem UN General Assembly.
The President has also made a number of false or misleading statements regarding renewable energy while pushing for the expansion of fossil fuels, the use of which has been defined as main source human greenhouse gas emissions. An ardent opponent of wind energy, Trump, for example, stated without any evidence that the noise of windmills causes cancer. Research I didn't find such a link.
Read more: Here are all of Trump's major moves to roll back climate action.
Vaccine
Soon after his election to a second term, Trump indicated that he would be willing to change children's vaccination schedules, and suggested that there may be a link between vaccines and autism – a widespread phenomenon. refuted statement.
“The autism rate is at a level that no one ever believed in,” Trump told the magazine. TIME Person of the Year 2024. “If you look at what's happening, something is causing it.”
In that interview, Trump didn't directly say that vaccines cause autism, but he did say his administration would do “very serious testing.”
Earlier this month Trump published a video on social media promoting a debunked connection. And during the same event on Monday, as he contradicted medical experts on his claims about acetaminophen, the president again appeared to suggest a link between vaccines and autism, saying without providing evidence that “there are certain groups of people who don't take vaccines and don't take any pills who don't have autism.”
Autism is are now diagnosed more often than it was in the past, which researchers widely attribute to changes in how autism is defined and diagnosed. The debunked claim that vaccines are linked to autism is based on a 1998 study by British gastroenterologist Andrew Wakefield. Lancet, which has since been refuted by numerous studies. In 2010 Lancet retracted the study; The journal's editor called the study's claims “completely false.” Wakefield lost my medical license in the UK that same year, after officials said he had acted “dishonestly and irresponsibly” in conducting the research that led to its publication.
Trump has not opposed vaccines or spread misinformation on the topic to the same extent as some members of his party, and has at times praised their effectiveness – even as his Department of Health and Human Services is led by a prominent vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr.has did a number of recent changes in a country's immunization policy which alarmed experts. During a pandemic, in his first term, Trump supervised rapid development of a vaccine against COVID-19, an achievement he has advertised repeatedly. Earlier this month he said that some vaccines are “so amazing” and “just work” seems to express reservations about the Florida plan remove all vaccination requirements in the state.
Abortion
Trump has made several misleading statements about abortion since launching his first presidential campaign in 2015.
Among them he stated some cases that fetuses are killed just before birth or that babies are killed after they are born.
Abortion in late pregnancy rare; Less than 1% of abortions in 2021 occurred after 21 weeks of pregnancy, according to the study. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Meanwhile, killing a child after birth would not be an abortion, but infanticide, which is prohibited everywhere in the United States.
Read more: What Trump Has Done on Reproductive Health in His First 100 Days
Gender-affirming care
Days after Trump was sworn in for the second time, he signed A decree entitled “Protection of Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation.” The order calls gender-affirming care “chemical and surgical mutilation” and claims that such care is based on “junk science.”
Major, respected medical organizations, including the American Medical Association, have endorsed gender-affirming care for transgender patients and others seeking it, and opposed efforts to limit access. speaking Gender-affirming care is evidence-based and may be medically necessary.
