Australia’s peak body for obstetricians and gynaecologists fears pregnant women will not take paracetamol when they need it and suffer harm from unmanaged fever after the Trump administration made unfounded claims linking it to autism.
They encouraged women to talk to their doctor rather than rely on the White House announcement on Tuesday, which they described as “not a no-harm scenario”.
The comments came as Australia’s medicines regulator, the Therapeutic Goods Administration, reconfirmed that the drug is safe for use in pregnancy and rejected the link to neurodevelopmental conditions.
On Tuesday morning the US president, Donald Trump, claimed that pregnant women should limit their use of paracetamol, usually branded as Tylenol in the US, which he said heightens the chance of autism in a child when used by pregnant women – even though it is widely considered a safe option to treat pain and fever during pregnancy.
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Dr Elisha Broom, a counsellor and spokesperson for the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (Ranzcog), said the evidence to date supports the safety of paracetamol when it is used as indicated in pregnancy, for release of pain and fever.
Broom, a maternal fetal medicine sub-specialist in Queensland, said many obstetricians were expecting questions from their patients after the Trump statement – and would welcome them.
Broom was concerned that patients who were made fearful of taking paracetamol based on this announcement might not reach out to their doctors for reassurance, and instead decide to not take the medication.
“We know that actually there is a link between fever and impacts on babies – not neurodivergence – but complications in pregnancies that result from unmanaged fever,” Broom said.
“It’s not a no-harm scenario when women are fearful to take what we know are safe over-the-counter medications to relieve pain and fever in pregnancy.”
Broom said pregnant patients invariably only want the best for their pregnancy and for their baby, and so would rightly tread very cautiously.
However, Broom emphasised that all of the international obstetrics and gynaecology organisations to her awareness, including Ranzcog, were supportive of the use of paracetamol for relief of pain and fever as a safe medication.
Broom said the announcement might raise pregnant women’s fear of paracetamol but leaves them with little choices.
“What’s so difficult is that we have so few medications that are safe in pregnancy,” she said. “This isn’t a scenario where there is another appropriate choice. Nurofen [ibuprofen] we don’t recommend, because it doesn’t have the same safety profile.”
The TGA issued a statement on Tuesday reading that it, together with the chief medical officer, Prof Michael Kidd, “join with other global medicines regulators, leading clinicians and scientists worldwide in rejecting claims regarding the use of paracetamol in pregnancy, and the subsequent risk of development of ADHD or autism in children”.
The statement continued that “paracetamol remains pregnancy category A in Australia, meaning that it is considered safe for use in pregnancy.”
Australia’s former chief medical officer, Prof Paul Kelly, said he believed the announcement was a use of “mal-information” – twisting information to reach a certain end.
“I don’t think it’s about protecting children from autism. I do worry that it’s part of a smoke screen for larger announcements which may well involve vaccines, which has been a long-held view of the current secretary for health in the Trump administration, Robert F Kennedy Jr.”
Kelly said the announcement went against the best available evidence, and it would be “cruel” to tell pregnant women who were in real pain or experiencing a fever not to take medication that was safe and effective.
He was also concerned it would place blame on parents of children with autism. “That feeling of blame and of guilt is really common and incredibly dangerous and not helpful.”
Australia’s peak medical body, the Australian Medical Association (AMA), said no studies supported the Trump administration’s claims linking paracetamol to autism in children.
The AMA president, Dr Danielle McMullen, told ABC radio that some studies had shown an “association”.
“But there’s also been really large studies showing that there’s no association,” she said.
“And it’s important to remember that association doesn’t mean cause. It could be that there’s a whole range of things that happened during pregnancies, and one of those was that the pregnant mother took paracetamol, but it also could be that she had a fever or there were genetic factors.
“In fact, in autism, it’s most likely that autism is linked with genetic factors as its primary driver but we really don’t know the full cause of autism.”
The TGA statement said published articles suggesting an association between paracetamol use and autism “had methodological limitations”.
The TGA statement said more recent and robust studies have “refuted these claims, supporting the weight of other scientific evidence” that paracetamol does not cause autism or ADHD.
A 2025 review of 46 earlier studies by researchers from Harvard University and Mount Sinai hospital, which appears to be what the White House is relying on for its announcement, did suggest an association between prenatal paracetamol exposure and increased chance of neurodevelopmental disorders, but the researchers said the study does not prove the drug caused the outcomes.
Broom said the most recent and robust study, which did the best job controlling for potential confounding factors, was a study published in JAMA in 2024 that looked at 2.5 million Swedish children.
“[The study] did not demonstrate any association with paracetamol use in pregnancy and increased risk of neurodivergence in offspring, and we find that to be very reassuring evidence,” Broom said.
