On Sept. 22, President Donald Trump stated that using Tylenol as a means of pain management during pregnancy was dangerous. With other health officials, including Robert Kennedy Jr., by his side, the president managed to stumble through his pronunciation of acetaminophen, connect the usage of Tylenol during pregnancy to autism, and support these assertions by claiming that this advice was “based on what [he] feels.” Frankly, the entire announcement felt uninformed, unsupported, and unbelievable, a highly disorganized affair coming from the president of the United States.
Several reputable, scientifically-grounded sources refuted the current administration’s claim; the Food and Drug Administration advises that Tylenol can be given during pregnancy in cases of high fever, when the fever may pose a health risk to the fetus, and doing so is exponentially safer than the risks associated with enduring and not medicating the pain. However, the fear-mongering around the long-used medicine has already entered the public consciousness. Aside from the paranoia they could cause, Trump’s comments are also indicative of a long-standing tradition of misinformation from political entities—specifically from the mouths of powerful men—in relation to women’s healthcare.
Throughout all of modern history, women’s health and the study of the female body have been left in the dust; medical technologies and information accelerated ahead, but proceeded to leave half the population behind. The recency of this revelation is astounding: in 1977, the FDA instituted a guideline stating that women of reproductive capacity were banned from being included in clinical trials. Despite some pushback on this mandate over the following decades, this rule was not revised by the administration until 1993. Less than ten years ago, in 2016, the National Institute of Health finally mandated the use of female animals in trials to ensure gender differences were accounted for and explored.
The exclusion of women in clinical trials is just the tip of the iceberg. Social stereotypes of women—specifically those painting women as more emotional and sensitive than their male counterparts—have fostered an epidemic of pain mismanagement in a range of procedures. Recently, the pain of intrauterine devices, or IUDs, as a form of birth control has been highlighted as a procedure where the intensity of pain is regularly ignored by medical professionals. The list of such instances goes on. Just take a look at the speculum tool used for regular pap smears: it was invented back in 1845 by James Marion Sims, an American doctor who tested the tool on the slaves he owned on his plantation. Dr. Sim’s design—a cold metal instrument—has not been updated since. Evidently, outdated procedures, tools, and protocols litter the women’s healthcare sector.
Beyond antiquity and ignorance, most of these issues stem from a knowledge gap resulting from underfunded and unfocused research. According to the Population Reference Bureau, less than 9% of the NIH’s spending focused on researching women’s health, a number that has decreased in the past decade. Progress is stunted when there is little clinical focus on developing treatments and fixing the misguided ideals of the past, including the idea that women’s bodies were just underdeveloped versions of men, and yet there is rarely any acknowledgment of this blatant institutionalized sexism.
However, coverage of this healthcare gap is often excluded in the mainstream discussions of gender inequity. While much of the conversation revolves around economic disparities, many fail to realize the extent to which historic mismanagement of healthcare transcends individual impact and instead reverberates into collective harm.
Thinking strictly logically about this, how can women advance, make money, go into higher education, and thrive as accomplished individuals if their pain and health concerns are so consistently ignored and mismanaged? Women are dying during childbirth—the U.S. has one of the highest maternal mortality rates of all developed nations—and many similar issues are exacerbated by race and socioeconomic status. Needless to say, this article could go on forever listing the various causes and repercussions of centuries spent ignoring women’s bodies, science, and treatments.
Maybe, in a roundabout way, Trump’s misinformed message actually does reveal something useful: the political world, and even broader, the scientific world, do not know enough about women, their bodies, and their health. Advocating for women across the country should be a focus for both the government and major organizations, and the conversation surrounding women’s health should be both vocalized and actionized. Pushing back against ignorance could be an effective starting point.
The fate of half the population is in the hands of doctors and medical researchers, but what the public hears and sees is often the politicians touting the reports. Without advocacy to ensure these announcements maintain a high level of accuracy and accountability, the country will only witness more misinformed meetings like President Trump’s, and women’s health outcomes in this country will only continue to worsen.
Castalia Litos
Neuroscience major addicted to coffee, mystery novels, and hockey.
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