> Nobody should be making policy on this yet
Maybe we should. We're talking about pregnant women and autism, along with taking a different painkiller. And if the theory is wrong, it'll only take a few years to find out, presumably.
For people who don't have children: most medical advice regarding pregnant women and infants is overwhelmingly cautious and errs on the side of, "if we don't have enough studies confirming it's 100% safe, it's better to stick to the less questionably safe way." I'm not sure why this would be any different.
> I'm not sure why this would be any different.
The issue here is you need to make a trade. It's not like cutting out alcohol. Now you have to decide, what alternative painkiller will replace it.
There was an initial reason why Tylenol became the standard one, because others were assessed to be riskier in other ways.
I agree with you, people should weight all the known risks from all legitimate studies and data, and base policies around that, and this is no exception.
People are worried though that this won't be the case, and that bias is present from the start in this case, and we might end up making the wrong policy call.