He has done it again. Our president is again making statements for which there is no evidence and insisting they are true. Once again, he has has set himself up as an expert in matters about which he knows nothing.
During his first term at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic he endorsed many unproven disease management strategies. He advised us that we could treat COVID-19 by taking a medication used to treat parasites in horses, despite the fact that it had not been adequately tested to treat COVID-19 in humans. If that didn’t work, he mused that perhaps we could drink bleach. He was flanked during this proclamation by actual medical experts, and the distressed looks on the faces of those authorities beside him were hard to miss.
This past Monday, he announced from the White House that pregnant women should be “very afraid” of taking Tylenol — yes Tylenol, also called acetaminophen. He claimed that studies have proven that Tylenol could cause autism in their unborn children. His take-home message, I suppose, that if pregnant women need something for fever or pain during their pregnancy they should just grin and bear it. He neglected to mention, however, that fever itself could pose a greater risk to an unborn child than the Tylenol used to manage it.
His evidence? One paper that suggests there might be a link, but does not prove that Tylenol is an actual cause of autism. In fact, the preponderance of studies on Tylenol during pregnancy fail to show a link, much less a causation. At the very minimum, before he says a word, the president should carefully suggest that more studies might help, and then defer to those who carefully conduct these studies.
Who was the expert who kindly provided him with the information for his proclamation? Of course it was Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the same charlatan who is creating an enormous and dangerous crisis surrounding vaccine safety and efficacy, and is on a crusade to sow distrust in medical science and undermine public health in this country. The president is no stranger to trampling on ground he has no business even walking on. It is an extension of his notion that “I alone can fix it.” He somehow believes that his view is the only view that counts, his words are the only words worth listening to, and this second trip to the White House gives him license to impose his will on us all, regardless of how dangerous that is.
I am struck that the “genius” of this man is his ability to distract from the real issues that plague us in the U.S., to strike fear among us and to pit us against one another. Out of the blue he comes out with this latest claim about the safety of one of the precious few medications we have with a low risk of harm when taken as directed. Like the great distractor that he is, he turns it into yet another way to send us scurrying down a rabbit hole we probably didn’t need to go down.
Is Tylenol safety an issue of importance? Definitely when it is overused, whether one is pregnant or not, and possibly in certain other instances, but this is when advice from a licensed medical provider, not from the unlicensed President of the United States, is most needed.
In my opinion, the president would be far more effective if he directed his energy and our attention to the many, many issues that actually need fixing. In his new role, he could start by appointing experienced and honest leaders to guide us out of the public health crisis his current health secretary has created. Going a little further, he could be the one to insist that all persons, regardless of their country of origin, are treated with the respect and dignity they deserve. He could be the consoler-in-chief and not the divider-in-chief or the hater-in-chief. He could be the leader who addresses, rather than aggravates, our climate crisis. What a wonderful world that would be.
Millie LaFontaine is a retired neurologist who lives in Concord.