Vice President JD Vance said Wednesday that pregnant women should follow their physicians’ advice in deciding whether or not to take Tylenol, striking a different tone after President Donald Trump strongly discouraged its use.
“What I took from the president’s announcement and also the CDC’s recommendations here is we just have to be careful," Vance said in a NewsNation interview. "We know that some of these medications have side effects. We know that even despite those side effects, sometimes they’re necessary. So my guidance to pregnant women would be very simple, which is: Follow your doctor."
“Ultimately, whether you should take something is very context-specific, and that’s why I think you should lean on your doctor," he added.
Trump on Monday advised pregnant women against using Tylenol, which contains the active ingredient acetaminophen, citing unproven claims about the painkiller’s being linked to autism in children. He made the remarks at a White House media event alongside Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Trump urged pregnant women to "fight like hell" not to take the painkiller, which is one of a few available to pregnant women to alleviate pain or fever, "unless medically necessary."
"If you can't tough it out, if you can't do it, that's what you'd have to do. You'll take a Tylenol, but it'll be very sparingly. Can be something that's very dangerous to the woman's health, in other words, a fever that's very, very dangerous, and ideally, a doctor's decision, because I think you shouldn't take it and you shouldn't take it during the entire pregnancy," Trump said.
He also said: “Don’t take it. There’s there’s no downside in not taking it.”
Dr. Steven J. Fleischman, the president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, criticized Trump's announcement in a statement this week, saying his contention was "not backed by the full body of scientific evidence and dangerously simplifies the many and complex causes of neurologic challenges in children."
Research has not concluded that using acetaminophen during pregnancy causes neurodevelopmental disorders in children, Fleischman added. He noted that two recent studies, one of them published last year by the Journal of the American Medical Association, "found no significant associations between use of acetaminophen during pregnancy and children’s risk of autism, ADHD, or intellectual disability."
Former President Barack Obama also weighed in Wednesday on Trump's Tylenol remarks.
“That undermines public health,” Obama told historian David Olusoga in an interview in London. “The degree to which that can do harm to women who are pregnant. The degree to which that creates anxiety for parents who do have children who are autistic, which, by the way, itself, is subject to a spectrum.”
“All of that is violence against the truth. And that’s why, by the way, the way, it is important for those who believe in the truth and believe in science to also examine truth when it is inconvenient for us,” he said.
