The head of Ireland’s national charity for autistic people has said he was “horrified” by US president Donald Trump’s remarks linking autism to the use of paracetamol.
Mr Trump on Monday claimed he had found “the answer to autism”. He said pregnant women should limit their use of acetaminophen – more commonly known as paracetamol, or by the brand name Tylenol in the US – because, he claimed, it raised the risk of their children being autistic.
The remarks caused an outcry in the US and abroad, with medical experts saying there was no such proven link.
Adam Harris, chief executive of the autism charity AsIAm, said he was “truly horrified” by the remarks, which he believed “seek to bring our community back several decades in terms of an awareness and understanding”.
READ MORE
“They’re very clearly remarks that seek to distract and perpetuate tropes about the community. They’re certainly not linked to any credible scientific or clinical evidence.”
[ Fact check: Do painkillers increase the risk of autism?Opens in new window ]
Mr Harris said the spread of such misinformation “contributes to significant stigma” for autistic people and “poses broader public health risks”.
“There is no health advice linking vaccination [or] linking paracetamol to autism. Indeed, there is a plethora of scientific evidence to definitively conclude otherwise.”
On Tuesday the World Health Organisation said that evidence of a link remained inconsistent and urged caution in drawing conclusions.
The European Medicines Agency echoed that, stating: “Available evidence has found no link between the use of paracetamol during pregnancy and autism.”
In Ireland, the Health Products Regulatory Authority (HPRA) and the HSE both advise that paracetamol is safe to take during pregnancy.
In a statement on Tuesday, the HPRA said paracetamol is “an important treatment option for the management of fever and pain in pregnancy, and available evidence does not link its use to causing autism in children”.
“As with any medicine, it should be used at the lowest effective dose for the shortest possible time.”
Neurodiversity Ireland said it was “clear that there is no credible link” between the use of paracetamol and being autistic.
“Further, we denounce the attempt to attach blame to mothers and pregnant women where no blame is necessary or appropriate,” it said.
Nessa Hill, the group’s chief executive, added: “There is no autism epidemic that needs to be reversed or prevented. We autistic people do not suffer from autism. There is no horrible, horrible crisis.”
Mr Harris said people should only take medical advice from doctors or other experts “as opposed to listening to the same politician who, during the Covid-19 pandemic, suggested that people should inject their bodies with bleach”.
During the pandemic, Mr Trump was sharply criticised by the medical community after suggesting that Covid-19 might be treated by injecting disinfectant.
Speaking alongside Mr Trump on Monday, US health secretary Robert F Kennedy jnr (71) said he did not know anyone his age with “profound autism”.
Mr Harris said the assertion older people were not autistic was “a nonsense”.
“The reasons why secretary Kennedy may not have been aware of [autistic] people his own age growing up would be because, in society, we tended to segregate and institutionalise people with the greatest needs. I don’t think we want to go back to those times,” he said.
Mr Harris said some of the misinformation spreading in the US has made its way to Ireland.
Speaking in the Dáil last Wednesday, Independent TD Danny Healy-Rae suggested an increase in people being diagnosed as autistic might be linked to a “lack of some vitamins”.
Mr Harris said it is “very regrettable” that Mr Healy-Rae had not yet retracted those remarks.
“People now perhaps, at times, feel they have a licence to say things that they wouldn’t have felt comfortable saying out loud 12 or 18 months ago.”
The National Disability Authority last week published a report on the prevalence of autism in Ireland. The most recent data, from 2022, suggested a prevalence of one in 31 children (3.2 per cent).
The report said there was “no evidence to suggest that overdiagnosis is a significant concern” in Ireland, adding the increase in the number of people being diagnosed in recent years was down to better awareness and broader diagnostic criteria.
Mr Kennedy has regularly linked autism to the MMR vaccine, citing a study from 1998 that has since been widely discredited. The findings were later disproved and the report’s author, Andrew Wakefield, was struck off the UK medical register.
A number of US states are currently seeking to remove vaccine mandates for children attending school, prompting concerns about the impact this could have on immunocompromised children who rely on others being vaccinated to prevent them contracting measles or other serious conditions.
[ The urgent need to combat vaccine hesitancy in Ireland and abroadOpens in new window ]
