Every political story needs a villain and a vehicle. In the latest ‘Make America Healthy Again’ edition, the vehicle is maternal behaviour: what pregnant mothers take, what they eat, what they fail to suspect. In a previous era, they were blamed for overlooking vaccines; now they are being blamed for taking acetaminophen, aka paracetamol, during their pregnancy. But between the vaccine and paracetamol narratives, the strategy has been to reframe autism as a preventable harm caused by bad choices, and to marginalise social determinants and advances in genetics and leave mothers to carry the blame.

Acetaminophen has, of course, been made the villain. For a century now, this drug has been kept near bassinets and on bedside tables, and has been trusted to deal with fever and ordinary pain whe

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