The World Health Organization (WHO) has dismissed claims made by U.S. President Donald Trump suggesting that paracetamol use during pregnancy could cause autism.
Speaking in Geneva on Tuesday, WHO spokesperson Tarik Jasarevic said while some observational studies have explored the issue, many others have found no evidence of a link. Overall, he stressed, the findings remain inconsistent.
“If there were a strong connection, it would have been observed consistently across multiple studies,” Jasarevic said. He added that medicines in pregnancy should always be used with caution and under medical supervision, particularly in the first trimester.
The WHO spokesperson also rejected suggestions that routine childhood vaccines cause autism, reiterating that global immunisation schedules are built on decades of scientific evidence and have saved more than 150 million lives in the last 50 years.
Kate O’Brien, Director of WHO’s Department of Immunisation, Vaccines and Biologicals, underscored the critical role of vaccines in global health.
“Vaccines are one of the most powerful and cost-effective public health interventions available. They save more than five lives every minute, protect against severe disease and disability, reduce pressure on health systems, and prevent families from falling into poverty,” she said.
O’Brien pointed to the success of vaccination programmes: over 18 million people who would have been paralysed by polio can walk today, more than 90 million children have been saved from measles-related deaths, and over a million deaths from cervical cancer have already been averted.
However, she warned that progress is being undermined by the rapid spread of misinformation.
“Both misinformation and disinformation spread faster than truth and threaten to reverse decades of hard-won progress in vaccine coverage,” O’Brien said. “The consequences are real and tragic—recent outbreaks of measles have led to preventable deaths, even in wealthy countries.”
She noted that in some regions, vaccination coverage has fallen well below the 95 percent threshold needed for herd immunity, fuelling a resurgence of measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases.