In a meeting at the White House, Monday 22 September, He triggered a affirmation of the President of the United States Donald Trump who, accompanied by Robert Kennedy Jr, Secretary of Health (the equivalent of our Minister), insinuated a potential connection between the intake of paracetamol in pregnancy and autism in children.
We asked Professor Silvio Garattini, founder of the Mario Negri Institute of Milan, to help us understand, while the waiting women worry and the scientific community rebels in this way to communicate reckless.
Professor should we worry about this way of talking about health?
“Yes, because information that are not supported by scientific data have spread, so this has created panic among all the women who had for some reason assumed paracetamol. It was certainly a bad service made to many women from the United States, but also of Europe and also of other countries ».
Can we explain why they don’t have to be frightened?
«Because the most reliable data we have available are those of the Sweden database. Sweden is the most efficient country in the world in having a database that records everything that Swedish people have in terms of health and therefore all the drugs they take. In a job that was published in June 2024 by the Journal of American Medical Association, data relating to 2 million and 500 thousand Swedish women who have had a pregnancy are collected: it is a very very important number. Among these there were 185 thousand women with children with autism. They went to look at the children of the mothers who had taken the paracetamol and those who had not taken it. And they did a very accurate study, because they also considered the sons of the same mother of the same mother, this fact provides us with very reliable data also from the point of view of their structuring: the result was that they did not see any difference in an incidence of autism between those who had taken paracetamol and those who had not taken it. These are very reliable data and instead the President of the United States has not been able to bring any equally reliable data ».
Scientific magazines are full of anonymous appeals of US researchers, who denounce obstacles in their work and fear of being fired, because they are not welcome to the government. How to explain this fact. Why does politics ingest in science in a way we wouldn’t have expected in a western country? Is it only a question of consent? Is there any other?
“It should be understood what the President of the United States wants, because he is not only doing that: he is also cutting the funds for research, he is contesting the vaccines. In short, he is doing things we have never seen. It is difficult to give interpretations. But we must spread the fact that at present there is no problem that have announced for paracetamol, because the important thing is now to reassure all the people that these statements have frightened “.
You have just written a book entitled the right to health for San Paolo. The courageous choices I ask for politics. Pandemia has taught us that even in terms of health the world is increasingly interdependent. We saw the United States leave the WHO and simultaneously cut the funds to US AID, the initiative that brought help to poor countries from the health point of view. Is this dangerous for us too?
“No, for us not. But what we should have done, or who should have done Europe and unfortunately did not do, would have been replaced by the renunciation of the United States: all in all they were not even many money, but they allowed the low income countries to have drugs that will not have with serious damage to public health. Leaving the WHO involves the fact of not feeling part of the world community regarding health, because withdrawing is removed from the support that the WHO gives to the countries that do not have enough income to pay for all the drugs that are necessary “.
Why do the non -slip theories in certain politics thus taken? Do they bring consent?
«I hope they do not make so taken, because in reality it is not that in other countries you follow the example of the United States’s antivaccini campaign. We still get vaccinated. Certainly it can be improved and certainly what happened in the United States for vaccines has also had a repercussion in Italy, so what we call the no-vax have also increased here. But I think that in the end common sense will have the upper hand. I hope so, because vaccinating is a matter of common sense ».
Is there also a problem of communication in the face of the visibility that these non -slip voices have?
“Yes, it is also necessary that the Italian health authorities say something and they are not saying anything. Instead they should be more active, they should communicate more, they should explain more, which they don’t do and this silence helps the non -slip positions ».
Speaking of Italian health system, and consent, in his book he asked politics courageous choices in terms of smoke and alcohol. Will they listen to it in an era when politics often have a short breath?
“It is not a matter of short breath, it is that the wine market is worth 50 billion euros per year, therefore to say that the wine is carcinogen touches enormous interests, among other things they also count on the defense by the Ministry of Agriculture, which should instead have the good of the Italians as interest. There was no significant word, an explanation from the Ministry of Health. How come? Because economic interest is more important than interest in health. “
Will any policy want to face these challenges?
«It is not said why, the important thing is that anyway turn the information. If you turn the information there will be people who will follow it and then if we do not tire of saying things, in the long run what it seems impossible it becomes possible ».
In fact, nobody would bet on the fact that the Italians would respected the Sirchia law on the ban on smoke in public places.
“Precisely. But the path is not completed, because it must also be understood is that freedom, even of getting hurt, that one has a limit when it touches the freedom of others. Smoking means burning 50 billion cigarettes every year, it therefore means polluting the atmosphere and if the atmosphere is polluted, no damage is done only to the smokers, but to the whole population. This is very important. Using 8 thousand hectares of soil to cultivate tobacco means subtracting important land land and then we complain because the climate is not what we would like. And then the smokers have a pile of diseases, smoking is a risk factor for 27 diseases and this affects damage on all those who do not smoke because smokers then clog the national health service that can no longer do what it should do because it is taken from diseases that could have been avoided “.
