“We’re doing the research to make the proof,” the well being secretary stated.
Well being Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. admitted on Thursday that the research he’s cited to justify his baseless and harmful claims about Tylenol use and autism are “not proof” to again the Trump administration’s steerage — however added that officers are working to retroactively “make the proof.”
Throughout a assembly of President Donald Trump’s cupboard, RFK Jr. listed a number of research that he argued present that autism is linked to Tylenol use throughout being pregnant, however stated they aren’t proof of his claims.
“This isn’t dispositive, this isn’t proof. We’re doing the research to make the proof,” he stated.
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This comment is additional proof that, as specialists have warned, the Trump administration is in search of to successfully dismantle the scientific technique in each analysis and resolution making and change it with conspiracy theories and political gesturing.
“Within the meantime, the precautionary precept ought to apply. Any mom who’s taking the stuff throughout being pregnant simply to get again at Donald Trump is doing one thing that’s pathological,” the secretary went on, referring to a TikTok video he talked about earlier in his remarks.
This remark ignores that, in truth, these following the precautionary precept would truly not take vital well being recommendation from a person who says he has no proof.
The secretary later went on to say that “youngsters who’re circumcised early have double the speed of autism, almost definitely as a result of they’re given Tylenol” — shifting the declare to additionally embody Tylenol ingestion by infants.
Trump himself has acknowledged that warnings in opposition to utilizing acetaminophen, generally referred to as Tylenol, throughout being pregnant didn’t originate from “docs” or specialists. But, the Meals and Drug Administration has nonetheless introduced that it’s enterprise a label change for the medicine to replicate the conspiracy principle.
Medical and public well being specialists have stated that there isn’t any definitive proof linking Tylenol, or different widespread medical remedies like vaccines, to autism. Slightly, specialists have stated that it’s harmful to discourage pregnant individuals from taking acetaminophen, one in every of the one medicine to deal with fever throughout being pregnant, as a result of there is proof that extended fever has a dangerous impact on fetal growth.
Specialists have warned that the Trump administration and RFK Jr.’s sample of creating “proof” for their well being claims is totally backwards, and that their prescriptive method — with what RFK Jr. refers to as “actual science” — advantages nobody however themselves and their right-wing backers.
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