Researchers have shut pregnant women out of gold-standard clinical trials in order to protect them and their babies. But the practice has had the opposite effect.

Instead, women have to wade through a chaotic data landscape, and many may choose to suffer through untreated illnesses.

Besides sowing confusion, the lack of data makes it easier for people to obfuscate and misconstrue existing data. That dynamic was on full display last week as President Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. urged pregnant women to avoid Tylenol as they claimed, without clear evidence, that the active ingredient acetaminophen causes autism.

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