British Health Secretary Wes Streeting was in a government car, returning to central London from a flag-raising ceremony to mark Britain's recognition of Palestine, when he saw the news. "He was stunned," said one of his aides. Streeting had read on his phone that Donald Trump had just warned women not to take "Tylenol" - known outside the US as paracetamol - during pregnancy.
The US president has claimed, without any evidence, that the common painkiller causes autism in children. "Don't take Tylenol," Trump said of the drug, also known as acetaminophen.
The British government has previously been criticised for its cautious and cautious approach to Trump on various issues. However, this appears not to have been the case. Streeting decided to put together a plan to limit the fallout in the UK and reassure expectant mothers that taking paracetamol was safe. He decided to publicly and forcefully challenge what Trump had said.
He already had a morning show scheduled the next day and knew he would be asked about Trump. “He knew he had to be clear,” the aide said. “Regardless of the diplomatic issues we face, our responsibility is first and foremost the health of the people.”
"Listen to the doctors, the scientists"
When asked, Streeting was blunt. “Honestly, I trust the doctors more than President Trump on this issue,” he said. “I have to be absolutely clear: there is no evidence linking paracetamol use by pregnant women to autism in their children. None.
"So I would just say to the viewers: don't pay any attention to what Donald Trump says about medicine. In fact, don't even take my word for it as a politician - listen to the British doctors, the British scientists, the National Health Service (NHS)."
His statement, which immediately made headlines, was complemented by the “media flood” strategy that he and his Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) had begun implementing the day before.
Prominent figures from institutions such as the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, which oversees the use of medicines, NHS England, the Royal College of General Practitioners, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and the UK's Health Safety Agency have sent the same messages as Streeting in media interviews.
The National Autism Society criticized “the relentless spread of misinformation about autism by President Trump and (US Secretary of Health) Robert F. Kennedy Jr.”, saying it would undermine decades of research and make autistic people “worried and scared.”
Their responses were aligned with the views expressed by the World Health Organization (WHO) and leading medical authorities in the US.
In addition, DHSC officials have provided doctors and influencers with large social media followings with fact sheets and briefings on paracetamol and pregnancy, to ensure that accurate and evidence-based information reaches audiences on platforms such as Xa, TikTok and Instagram.
In recent months, several highly publicized medical misinformation has been reported, and such misinformation is causing increasing concern in the global health community.
In June, oncologists expressed horror that some patients were rejecting proven cancer treatments and instead opting for untested quack methods like coffee enemas and raw juice diets.
A few days later, the BBC reported that Paloma Shemirani, the daughter of nurse-turned-antivaxxer Kate Shemirani, had died after refusing chemotherapy for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. The 23-year-old opted instead to undergo the Gerson Therapy, an unproven cancer treatment.
This month, on the main stage of the Reform UK conference, a cardiologist claimed that the cancer diagnoses of King Charles and the Princess of Wales were linked to their receiving the Covid vaccine.
However, experts who study health misinformation rate Trump's statements as a worrying new level of decline.
Helen Bedford, professor of child health at University College London (UCL), said: “I was appalled because it was not based on evidence and he is the most powerful man in the world. It was a horrifying statement, damaging and dangerous.”
Dr Susanna Colla-Polmer, a psychologist at the University of Huddersfield, said: “People are prone to authority bias – they believe and accept what someone in a position of authority says simply because they are an authority, not necessarily because they are right. Trump, as US president, is a powerful public figure and so many people will accept what he says without question.”
"When health misinformation is spread so publicly by someone with so much power, it is deeply concerning and dangerous because it threatens to erode public trust in science and endanger public health."
Health experts fear that Trump's link to acetaminophen with autism could discourage pregnant women - who already have very limited choices of medication if they get sick - from using it, which in turn could lead to conditions such as pain or fever going untreated and harming them or their unborn child.
Pharmacists in the UK are reporting that Trump's comments may already be influencing the decisions people make about their health. In a survey of 500 pharmacies, 24% said they had had patients question the safety of paracetamol this week.
"These are alarming findings which show that comments made in the US are having a direct impact on patients in the UK and are potentially deterring some from taking proven and safe medical treatments," said Olivier Picard, president of the National Association of Pharmacists.
“Narrative on the edge”
In a July article for the medical journal The Lancet, Heidi Larson, professor of anthropology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, identified the US as the source of much of the “pandemic of disinformation” and “narratives from the margins” that have caused controversy during the Covid pandemic, and which now appear to have an even greater impact.
For example, from 2019 to 2021, the US acted as “the leading exporter of COVID-19 vaccine disinformation, with US accounts disproportionately represented as focal points in global disinformation networks,” she said. This influenced behavior in countries as far away as Nigeria, Ghana, and Bulgaria, contributing to reduced vaccination rates for COVID and childhood diseases.
As a result, organizations like the WHO and the Gavi vaccine alliance, in their daily work to promote vaccination, are “increasingly encountering vaccine hesitancy based on exported misinformation, much of which can be directly linked to American political discourse and the media,” Larson pointed out.
Complex and organized campaigns to undermine vaccination are growing, despite the WHO's estimate that vaccines have saved 154 million lives since 1974 - 101 million of them children - in an era of rapid medical advances, when new vaccines offer hope for diseases that until recently did not even exist.
So how can the growing threat that misinformation poses to health around the world be countered?
There is no obvious way to stop the authoritarian Trumps and Kennedys from promoting wild health theories without any evidence. But experts say new approaches are needed, especially in collaboration with big tech companies whose social media platforms spread much of the scaremongering. There is a consensus that relying solely on delivering accurate information through leaflets and websites is not enough.
“While the messages from Wes Street and professional organizations are very helpful, the evidence shows that what matters most to the public is what they hear in person from health care professionals,” Bedford said, citing the many questions parents may have before their child embarks on a vaccination schedule. “Most people trust health care professionals and want to talk to them when they have concerns and questions. That can be very powerful and very influential.”
However, she noted that there is a shortage of many profiles of healthcare workers in the UK - the number of community nurses has fallen sharply since 2015 - so it is not clear how such informative and potentially reassuring conversations could take place. She said a change in mindset among clinicians and a larger healthcare workforce were needed to enable a shift to proactive, pre-treatment consultations.
Chris van Tulken, an NHS infectious diseases doctor and global health expert at UCL, warned that clinicians having such conversations should not automatically dismiss the views of patients who may have a suspicious, even conspiratorial view of the pharmaceutical industry, given that some of its products have caused serious harm.
“We have to reach people where they are. If you just tweet with the hashtag 'vaccines work,' as some do, the problem is that there are vaccines that have serious side effects. I run a clinic where we are cautious about certain vaccines,” he said.
Last year, the WHO entered into a partnership with TikTok that includes fact-checking and greater involvement of the social network in removing content that may endanger health.
The Fides Network, led by the WHO, brings together more than 1.000 health professionals active on social media “to amplify trusted content and counter harmful disinformation,” said Dr. Alex Ruani.
“Essentially, it’s a network of ‘trusted voices.’” For example, Dr. Mikhail “Mike” Varshavsky, one of those voices, has more than 29 million followers on social media.
Ruani stressed that social networks need to do much more. “Big tech companies already know how to reduce visibility, degrade, weaken or quarantine content. These processes can and should be applied to high-risk (health) content,” she said.
“We need better risk labels and warnings at the point of exposure, similar to how you get pop-ups for cookies or how spam filters work in email. Such ‘soft nudges’ could be built into browsers or apps to give people a signal about suspicious content before they consume or share it.”
Prepared by: NB
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