Last weekend, at the memorial of Charlie Kirk, Donald Trump teased the crowd with an announcement. “I think we found an answer to autism,” he said, adding that it would be “one of the most important things that we will do”. The crowd went wild.

In the White House yesterday Trump’s “big announcement” delivered no greater scientific rigour than the off-the-cuff remarks over the weekend. But the baseless claim that taking Tylenol (sold as paracetamol in the UK) during pregnancy is linked to autism in newborns has just grown legs.

Let’s be clear: research across the world is far from conclusive on any link between paracetamol during pregnancy and autism. A 2024 study in Sweden of nearly 2.5m children found that use of acetaminophen, the generic name for the compound used in Tylenol and p

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