Donald Trump’s apparent suggestion that people could protect themselves against Covid by injecting themselves with bleach marked a low point in his first administration. It provided his critics with evidence that he was an erratic president trying to ride roughshod over scientific evidence as well as common sense. It is easy, therefore, to dismiss the American president’s announcement that government health warnings will henceforth be printed on packets of Tylenol – a brand name for paracetamol – telling pregnant women to avoid the painkiller for fear it will cause autism in their unborn children as yet another anti-scientific diatribe.

The involvement of health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr – a long-term vaccine sceptic – adds to the impression that the association between autism and pa

See Full Page