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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
National
Natasha May Health reporter

‘Anti-expert crusade’: what Trump’s hollowing out of US health institutions means for Australia

Donald Trump and Robert F Kennedy Jr
Since Donald Trump’s pick of anti-vaccine activist Robert F Kennedy Jr as secretary of health, key US health institutions have been hollowed out with budget cuts and mass firings. Photograph: ABACA/Shutterstock

It was a short statement from the US president on Tuesday. But Prof Paul Kelly says Donald Trump’s advice that pregnant women shouldn’t take paracetamol based on unfounded links to rising rates of autism was “thrown out there like a bomb” that health professionals were left to defuse.

Kelly, who retired last year as Australia’s chief medical officer, says: “How many experts have had to spend time thinking about that and coming up with counter arguments?”

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