Wes Streeting rejects Trump claim linking paracetamol and autism | Wes Streeting

Wes Streeting has rejected Donald Trump’s unproven claims of a link between taking paracetamol in pregnancy and autism, urging mothers-to-be to ignore the US president’s remarks.

The health secretary challenged Trump’s statements, which medical experts have stressed are not based on evidence, as part of a drive to reassure mothers-to-be in the UK.

“I trust doctors over President Trump, frankly, on this,” Streeting said on ITV’s Lorraine programme.

“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.

“In fact a major study was done back in 2024 in Sweden, involving 2.4 million children, and it did not uphold those claims. So I would just say to people watching: don’t pay any attention whatsoever to what Donald Trump says about medicine. In fact, don’t even take my word for it as a politician. Listen to British doctors, British scientists, the NHS.

“It’s really important that at a time when you know there is scepticism – and I don’t think scepticism itself, asking questions, is in itself a bad thing, by all means ask questions – but we’ve got to follow medical science.”

Trump claimed there had been a “meteoric rise” in the number of cases of autism, pinpointing paracetamol as a cause and advising women not to take the drug during their pregnancy. The US authorities intend that packets of the drug – known there as Tylenol – will in future carry labels linking it to an alleged higher risk of autism.

UK health agencies and experts are staging a concerted effort to counter what one called Trump’s “political misinformation”.

Streeting’s Department of Health and Social Care helped doctors and mothers with big social media followings for accounts about parenting issues to put out evidence-based information about paracetamol in media interviews and on their online platforms.

The DHSC coordinated a drive to ensure that non-government people of influence played a key part in reassuring the public that taking paracetamol in pregnancy is safe, alongside spokespeople from Whitehall and NHS agencies.

Prof Sir Andrew Pollard, the outgoing chair of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, which advises ministers, said he was “really worried that this rise of misinformation from many different places, including the government in the United States, does undermine confidence globally”.

Dr Alison Cave, the chief safety officer at the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), the UK drug regulator, said pregnant women should keep taking paracetamol as pain relief, in line with existing guidance.

“Untreated pain and fever can pose risks to the unborn baby, so it is important to manage these symptoms with the recommended treatment,” Cave added.

Prof Claire Anderson, the president of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, stressed that “paracetamol has been used safely by millions of people for decades, including during pregnancy, when taken as directed”.

The National Autistic Society voiced its alarm at Trump and his health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, blaming paracetamol for autism in children in the US.

“The incessant misinformation about autism from President Trump and Robert F Kennedy Jr risks undermining decades of research by respected experts in the field,” said Mel Merritt, the charity’s head of policy and campaigns.

“Understandably, autistic people will be dismayed and frightened by this announcement, and we would urge our government and the NHS to stand by autistic people and to condemn this misinformation. To do otherwise risks creating further fear, stigmatisation and harm.”

Medical and scientific experts in the UK condemned Trump’s remarks.

“There is a long history of a cottage industry of false causes and ‘treatments’ offered for autism that prey on desperate people’s hopes and fears,” said Dr Steven Kapp, a senior lecturer in psychology at the University of Portsmouth and member of the Coalition of Autism Scientists.

“It is sad that unqualified demagogues continue to disregard science.”

Prof Laurie Tomlinson, a National Institute of Health Research professor at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said: “Alongside my research experience, I am also the mother of two autistic children and I know that this announcement will cause distress and guilt to many parents, who often ask themselves whether they are to blame.

“I urge those parents to focus on the countless number of reputable sources of evidence published to date that do not show a link between paracetamol and autism, and to seek medical advice from their own GP or health practitioner.

“I urge you to not get caught up in a political misinformation agenda that is trying to hunt for an ‘easy’ answer as to how autism develops, and does not serve to help our children.”