Within hours of Donald Trump's press conference at which he implored pregnant women to never use the pain reliever Tylenol, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) rushed out guidance for doctors and consumers that undercut his claims.
During an appearance on “Morning Joe,” MSNBC and NBC medical analyst Dr. Vin Gupta directed viewers to search for the FDA report that was released approximately 3 hours after the president went off script with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. looking over his shoulder.
Kennedy, on Monday, finally presented his tenuous case that the popular pain reliever can be linked to autism despite a wealth of evidence that shows it does not.
In a clip shown on Tuesday morning, Trump stated, “They are strongly recommending that women limit Tylenol use during pregnancy unless medically necessary” before urging pregnant women to “tough it out” if they can.
He later grew agitated and exclaimed, “I want to say it like it is: Don’t take Tylenol. Don’t take it! Fight like hell not to take it!”
That led Gupta to tell the MSNBC hosts, “Well, it was hard to hear. “
“Trump's own FDA put out a few hours after that press conference, really, where they contradicted themselves within the press release. Reviewers, you know, it's easy to find on the internet, but they basically said in their own press release, while they were trying to justify the president's comments, that at the very end there was not enough data to really justify these limitations on Tylenol because they didn't have the data. And so when you look at data, when you look at the actual research that the FDA is citing, none of it is proving a causative effect of Tylenol causing these issues.”
According to the FDA report he cited, “It is important to note that while an association between acetaminophen and neurological conditions has been described in many studies, a causal relationship has not been established and there are contrary studies in the scientific literature.”
- YouTube youtu.be