Minister for Health Mark Butler at the National Press Club in Canberra, Australia on Aug. 20, 2025. AAP Image/Mick Tsikas
Health Minister Mark Butler says he was worried by comments from U.S. President Donald Trump that linked paracetamol use in pregnancy to autism in children.
Butler said he moved quickly to seek urgent advice from Australia’s medicines regulator to prevent confusion among pregnant women and parents.
“I was really worried when those comments first started being reported,” Butler told Channel Nine.
“There would be more than 200,000 women in Australia who are pregnant right now who’d be unsure or even afraid about what to do if they got sick, particularly what to do if they got a fever.”
TGA Reaffirms Safety of Paracetamol
Butler immediately asked the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) to review the U.S. position.
The regulator confirmed paracetamol remains classified as a Category A medicine, meaning it is widely used and considered safe during pregnancy.
Officials also said there are no active investigations into links with autism or other neurodevelopmental disorders.
“The TGA reaffirmed the advice that’s been longstanding, that Panadol is a safe drug to take for pregnant women, particularly in the case of fever,” Butler said.
“Not to overuse, but to use particularly in the case of fever, because we know untreated fever can be particularly dangerous for a pregnant woman and for her foetus as well.”
Butler said the UK’s regulator had reached the same conclusion, and Australian scientists and medical bodies had “come out very strongly” to back the advice.
“I don’t want pregnant women right now to feel unsure about what to do,” he said. “I don’t want women who were pregnant in the past to feel unsure or even guilty about the fact that they took a treatment that was advised to them as being safe.”
Butler also noted that large-scale studies in Scandinavia and Japan involving millions of children had shown no causal link when paracetamol was used as directed.
“This is a very heavily researched medicine,” Butler said. “Our scientists and our regulators say pretty clearly there’s no causal link between paracetamol if it’s used in accordance with instructions by pregnant women.”
