Positions in our federal government are the highest possible place one can reach in our nation. These are the people that citizens look up to and put their faith in to protect and serve our country. So why are both the President and the secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) irresponsibly spreading dangerous medical misinformation?

President Donald Trump recently stated that there was a connection between the drug Tylenol (acetaminophen), which he mispronounced, and autism in the babies of pregnant women who take it.

He went on record and stated that pregnant women with a fever should “fight like hell not to take it.”

My mother is a trained pharmacist who has had to go through many years of training to be licensed. She was genuinely concerned when President Trump first made this statement, she was worried that people would listen and make dangerous misinformed decisions.

A maternal fetal medicine specialist with UCHealth, Dr. Jennifer Braverman, was also concerned that instead of taking acetaminophen to stop a fever that women will instead let it burn.

Braverman stated that the risks of letting a fever burn are much higher and can increase the risk of many birth defects, miscarriages, stillbirths, and preterm births. In an article on uchealth.org, regarding acetaminophen, Braverman said, “I think it’s the safest option we have.”

The evidence the government is using to back up this massively bold claim is very limited and is not enough to claim something is factual. The official FDA website is citing two main studies with very small inconclusive results that point towards the correlation.

Braverman also stated that “Many of the early studies that suggested a potential link between acetaminophen use and autism did not account for the reason the pregnant person was taking Tylenol in the first place.”

If a pregnant woman needs to take Tylenol then it means there is already a problem to begin with, which in itself could be what causes the mental disorder. It is likely that in many of these studies, the original cause making someone take Tylenol, is taking part in creating the discrepancies.

It is also important to consider the fact that nobody really knows what the cause of autism is, and it is just scientifically wrong to make a statement about what the official cause is without enough proper research being done first.

Using this evidence alone, it is massively irresponsible to go in front of your whole nation and state something is entirely factual, especially when it comes to medical information. It would be a gross understatement to say that encouraging pregnant women to take their chances with their fever is simply a bad call, it is misleading and ridiculously dangerous.

Moving on from this more recent example, President Trump has historically made dubious medical administration decisions.

President Trump was elected into office on November 5th 2024. Nine days later on the 14th, he would publicly announce his nomination for Robert Francis Kennedy Jr. (RFK Jr.) for secretary of the HHS, very quickly showing how irresponsible his decision making could be.

Kennedy has been a known vaccine skeptic for decades. He has made many misinformed statements such as the fact that vaccines cause autism and fail to protect people from disease, even with so much research pointing otherwise.

The original study about the correlation between the MMR (Measles, Mumps, and rubella) vaccine and autism that sparked the whole debate was published by Andrew Wakefield in 1998, a GI doctor at the Royal Free Hospital in London, and was quickly dismissed after it was proven he had committed scientific fraud.

Even without proper evidence Kennedy continues to state that there is a factual connection between vaccines and autism and continues to spread his dangerous message.

In 2019, four months after Kennedy visited the small island country Samoa, spreading misinformation about the measles vaccine, there was a measles outbreak that killed 83 people. Hawaii governor and doctor Josh Green, after visiting the island to vaccinate and care for the residents, stated that Kennedy did not cause the circumstances that allowed the outbreak to occur, but definitely played a role in creating fear around the measles vaccine.

While this is all still barely scratching the surface of Kennedy’s beliefs and actions, it is still unbelievable that President Trump would find it a good idea to nominate him for one of the highest and most influential positions when it comes to health policy.

Both President Trump and HHS Secretary Kennedy are dangers to the medical safety and understanding of our country, their irresponsibility knows no bounds and is only going to cause further problems.

Trained medical professionals are the people we should be listening too, not our President who has no training at all. I would advise anyone with limited medical knowledge to do further research and listen to medical professionals before listening to anything more that Trump and Kennedy have to say.

Simply put, if you cannot pronounce the name of the medicine you are condemning, then you should not be speaking about it.

The goal of Blue Ace Media is to provide the high school student’s perspective on relevant issues concerning the school, the community and the world. The publication reflects the policy and judgment of the student editors. Opinions expressed in Blue Ace Media are not necessarily that of the entire staff, the student body, the school or the district.