On September 24, 2025, LA AAP President Joseph Bocchini, MD, FAAP was interviewed by Joe Collins from WBRZ in Baton Rouge as part of a story about the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services announcement on September 22 which included unsupported claims about the safety of acetaminophen use during pregnancy.
Dr. Bocchini joined with other organizations to reassert the importance of scientific evidence in the development of health-related recommendations:
Watch the Story“Various organizations that are responsible for the care of pregnant women and of children believe that this presentation and the recommendations are inappropriate based on the available information that we have,” Louisiana Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics President Joseph Bocchini said.
Bocchini discussed how, for years, it has been important for obstetricians that any medication given to pregnant women is administered only when necessary, for the duration required, and in the smallest dose possible.
“A question that people should raise is what’s the rationale for making this decision right now. Where is the new data? Where is the evidence that we have gone from a compound that has been used safely for so many years to suddenly indicate that it is responsible for the development of autism?”, Bocchini asked.
An April 2024 population-based study in Sweden found
Read the StudyModels without sibling controls identified marginally increased risks of autism and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) associated with acetaminophen use during pregnancy. However, analyses of matched full sibling pairs found no evidence of increased risk of autism (hazard ratio, 0.98), ADHD (hazard ratio, 0.98), or intellectual disability (hazard ratio, 1.01) associated with acetaminophen use.