Dr Rachel Glasson GP in Sydney, NSW.

Not content with just appointing

his cronies the task of ripping

up one of the most significant public

health advances of the past 200

years— namely, childhood vaccination

— Donald Trump has now

offered his opinion about paracetamol

as being“ associated with a

very increased risk of autism”.

Let’ s all just take a deep breath and try to stay calm while we consider this new information.

AAP IMAGE

This advice is coming from the

same person who thought ingestion of bleach might work to treat COVID-19 in the body, since it was effective at killing the virus in vitro.

After airing his views on this matter, pointing to his head, Mr Trump went on:“ I’ m not a doctor. But I’ m, like, a person that has a good you-know-what.”

Attempts to control women and their bodies are nothing new, especially in Trump’ s America. Pouncing on scientific evidence that is not necessarily accurate or validated, in order to make pregnant women feel guilty about taking medication for pain or fever because they can’ t“ tough it out”, is another form of medical misogyny that needs to be called out. The state of being pregnant is an amazing thing, but it comes with some weird and not-so-wonderful effects. When pregnant, your body is most definitely no longer your own— not only because of the growing fetus

me when I got pregnant was that 20 years of being vegetarian went straight out the window: suddenly, all I wanted to eat was ham and eggs, followed by a stop at McDonald’ s for a cheeseburger. It felt like my body had been taken over by a tiny but determined carnivore.

Along with sudden cravings came a whole list of rules about what I was or wasn’ t allowed to consume

. I remember my stepmother scoffing at me as I perused the lunch menu at a fancy restaurant for something that I could safely eat. Seafood? Too much mercury. Soft cheese or pre-made salads? Listeria.“ Rubbish,” she said.“ We ate all

epistaxis from both nostrils— likely due to a pregnancy-related nasal polyp— and twice landed in the local hospital’ s ED, where various methods were used to stem the gushing flow of blood.

I noticed too late that the bottle of local anaesthetic spray they used( without success) to numb my nose before stuffing it full of packing had written on the side:“ Do not

Growing a baby inside yourself is hard enough without adding all the external pressures to do everything right.

use in pregnancy.”

Nasal packing is excruciatingly

painful, but I freaked out and refused to let them use the spray again, which turned out to be a rather bad move. I had to endure repacking several times as my nose continued to bleed despite

use in pregnancy” in the product information or emblazoned on their packaging when, in reality, they are perfectly safe. We just haven’ t formally tested them on pregnant people because, well, ethics.

The spectres of diethylstilboestrol and thalidomide still hang over us despite their use in pregnancy being banned 50 and 60 years ago, respectively.

Of course, nobody wants their children to have health problems or challenges that might have been avoidable.

Growing a baby inside yourself is hard enough without adding all the external pressures to do everything right. There are so many dos and don’ ts, with the added implication that, if something goes wrong with the pregnancy or baby, it must be the mother’ s fault in some way.

These pressures on modern parents are probably behind the rise of

any sort of problems. But this approach certainly hasn’ t reduced the rates of autism or mental health problems in the generations that have followed. If anything, it would seem to have had the opposite effect.

Pregnant women the world over already have enough to deal with— from unsolicited dietary advice to unwanted pats on the belly, from scare tactics about medication to speculation about vaccinations causing children harm.

Now they have to“ tough it out” with pain or fever during pregnancy for fear that their baby will end up with autism, just because Mr Trump said so?

Doctors can get into quite a lot of trouble for expressing their political opinions. If only the same were true for politicians expressing their medical opinions, especially when it turns out to be fake news.

inside but also because of the attitudes

those things in my day and nothing

every attempt to make it stop.

“ helicopter parenting”, where over-

and beliefs of the society around you. The first thing that happened to

bad ever happened.” At 16 weeks, I had torrential

It turns out that many medications have“ Not recommended for

anxious parents micromanage their offspring in the hope of avoiding

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