Dr. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity TV doctor-turned-federal-administrator, publicly broke with his boss, Donald Trump, on Tuesday after the president made wild claims about Tylenol being a cause of autism if taken by pregnant women.
Oz, who leads the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, appeared on TMZ Live as the health world continued to react to the Trump administration’s pronouncement that use of acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, during pregnancy was linked to diagnoses of autism. Evidence on the matter is inconclusive, and many studies suggest that the accusations are unfounded.
The former TV doc told TMZ’s hosts what many independent medical experts urged in the wake of the administration’s pronouncement on Monday: that pregnant women fighting illnesses that cause fevers may still be prescribed the drug by their doctors, and should follow those recommendations from their primary-care providers.
“If you have a high fever….the doctor’s almost certainly going to prescribe you something,” said Oz, who’d stood beside Trump as the president urged mothers not to take the drug a day earlier. “Tylenol might be one of the things they give [you].
“Take it when it’s appropriate,” Oz then said, before adding that Tylenol was “probably your best option” for fighting lower-grade fevers that don’t require hospitalization.
Trump’s administration has been under pressure from supporters of his health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., since the president took office in January to commit federal resources to discovering the factors which may contribute to children being diagnosed with conditions on the autism spectrum.
Kennedy, a longtime supporter of “alternative” medicine and a skeptic of established medical discipline and practice, has in the past suggested links between the condition and various unproven “causes” such as early childhood vaccinations.
In reality, most experts agree that the reason for the spike in autism diagnoses is the contemporary understanding of a condition that was barely understood by the public even a few decades ago.
One U.S. government-funded study, the largest to date on the subject of autism diagnoses, found that taking Tylenol during pregnancy carried no increased risk of a later autism diagnosis for infants.
Dimitrios Siassakos, professor in obstetrics and gynecology at University College London and honorary consultant in obstetrics at University College London Hospital (UCLH), has said: “Autism results from several factors, often combined, particularly genetic predisposition, and sometimes low oxygen at the time of birth as a result of complications.”
“Research has shown that any apparent marginal increase as a result of paracetamol/acetaminophen use in pregnancy tends to disappear when the analyses take into account the factors that matter most,” he continued.
On Monday, Trump hosted a press conference with Kennedy at the White House where the president went beyond even the unproven claims being pushed by Kennedy to make his own pronouncement on the drug that was full of his typical bluster and imprecision: “With Tylenol, don’t take it. Don’t take it.”
Many doctors have reacted to the president’s remarks this week with worry that his unproven claims will cause feelings of judgement and shame among mothers of children diagnosed as autistic out of fear they were to blame for their child’s diagnosis.
The makers of Tylenol, meanwhile, are bracing for an onslaught of legal claims in the wake of Trump’s press conference.
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