Former president says successor’s claims about drug branded Tylenol in US ‘undermines public health that can do harm to women’

Barack Obama has said Donald Trump’s claims linking paracetamol to autism in infants is “violence against the truth” that could harm pregnant women if they were too scared to take pain relief.

Obama, who was being interviewed by David Olusoga at the O2 Arena, told the audience that Trump’s claims about paracetamol – branded as Tylenol in the US – had been “continuously disproved” and posed a danger to public health.

“We have the spectacle of my successor in the Oval Office making broad claims around certain drugs and autism that have been continuously disproved,” he said. “It undermines public health … that can do harm to women.”