Donald Trump’s administration is on Monday expected to tie pregnant women’s use of the popular medicine Tylenol – known as paracetamol elsewhere in the world – to a risk of autism, contrary to medical guidelines, the Washington Post has reported.
Trump officials are also expected to announce an effort to explore how the drug leucovorin could purportedly and potentially treat autism, according to the Post report published Sunday, which cited four sources with knowledge of the plans who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the announcement had not been made.
Not sure which of those two I disbelieve the more.
Either are possible, obviously, at the paracetemol and autism one I’ve never evern heard of. But RFK and vaccines has me suspicious of both…
Paracetamol use is ubiquitous as is an autism diagnosis these days. Yes, OK, ‘correlation not being causation’ and all that.
One of those situations where I can safely say
“I can believe it, but I don’t.”
Hmmm.. let’s see. Paracetamol – a drug so freely available that there’s no profit in it. Must be bad. Leucovorin costs $75 for 500mg. Obviously that means it must cure all ills.
Now, I wonder what could possibly be incentivising that cretin to deliberately ignore the science on this one? They’ve given in even attempting to hide the corruption.
Someone is going to have to explain in words of one syllable how
gets to
Is “the science” in the room with us right now?
Does it ever tell you to harm yourself or others?
This conspiracy theory works better if one drug replaces the other (such as 40p a box ranitidine being replaced by £10 a box PPIs), so you should be looking for expensive pain medication replacing cheap.
RFKj did not pull concerns of paracetamol use during pregnancy out of his ass. “The science” has been giving it a hard stare for a while.
Yarp. Robert Kennedy isn’t sitting with crayons, drawing this up himself, he’s just the political head for relevant US government medical and scientific staff.
But the lying press always tries to personalise (Alinsky’s rules) everything the US federal government does as the insane, illegitimate and nefarious work of “Trump” or Bobby K. Pick a target, freeze it, ridicule it, etc.
Same with “Putin”. As if national and international level politics is a RTS game with a single player controlling all their friendly units directly.
Kennedy has fallen for just about every health scare known to man… he’s now got the budget to pay these loons to “discover” more conspiracies pretty much to order. When you have a mad king, it’s funny how there’s always someone to bend the knee and indulge them.
Are you sure that’s true? Where are these crazy mad scientists who are also pro- the Trump administration?
There’s always someone like Andrew Wakefield producing a study on the dangers of XYZ that would be happy to be funded and validated. Plenty of scientists wanting to push their personal nutritional theory or mad cancer cure – the idea that a third rate Doctor might save the world does tend to produce some oddball theories.
Given the options, it’s either true, or this announcement was done with no credible evidence whatsoever. Take your pick.
But there isn’t this case, unless you’re now saying not to trust Deans of the Medical Faculty at Harvard?
Why does it have to be a substitute? I observed that no-one really cares about paracetamol, but pumping out a $75 dollar a shot drug into 25% of the population sounds rather profitable, doesn’t it?
RFK has blamed the ‘conspiracy of the day’ for just about every health condition under the sun. Is it vaccines? Is it vegetables? Is it raw milk? I can’t keep up…
“The science” has done no such thing… there is one study being sited, with the rest all being completely ambivalent at best.
I’m all for re-examining links and health concerns, but this is fairly deep in tin-foil hat territory, as demonstrated by some of the other replies in this topic.
The argument surrounding Tylenol is that it contains Thimerasol* – an organomercury compound.
From wiki: “Despite the scientific consensus that fears about its safety are unsubstantiated”.
Where have we heard shit like ‘Scientific consensus’ before? Oh yeah, man made climate change, covid**.
“Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus”. M. Crichton, pbuh.
*Not found in para’s
**Don’t forget blood letting, stomach ulcers etc. etc.
I fear you might have misheard. Thimerasol was used in certain vaccines as a preservative. And it was phased out in Europe before the US, but with no differing in autism rates between the two.
In Tylenol, not so much….
How do you explain Germany then?
No differing in autism rates between the two?
The Biden era CDC published stats suggesting one child in 31 in the US has autism of one type or another. The figure in Europe is supposedly 1 in 169.
Of course, there are many questions here – not least, how are these matters diagnosed, and what incentives are there for those diagnoses? – but it’s difficult to make the bald claim you make.
It seems pretty clear there has been a general, world-wide rise in ‘autism’ beyond just ‘mum gets a payment for the diagnosis’, though.
I have no idea whether vaccines are responsible for all or part or none of the rise, or whether it’s assortative mating, or too much telly, or microplastics, or weedkiller, or the collapse of the family, but it doesn’t seem particularly improbable that vaccines might be playing a part.
American kids now get something like 80 shots before they even start school, not one of which has ever been tested against a saline placebo.
Anyone who has just lived through the last five years and isn’t at least mildly sceptical about the impact of the multi-billion dollar pharma industry which is protected by law from being sued for any harms done by its vaccines is, putting it bluntly, naïve.
Here’s the lawyer Aaron Siri on the difficulty first of getting the US authorities to carry out a study of the health impacts (not limited to autism) on vaccinated children vs unvaccinated, and then the difficulty of getting the study published when it shows… inconvenient things.
I would love the pro vaxxers (and I used to be one) to explain to me: why would products which really are safe and effective require preservation from suit for harm, and why would studies as to their efficacy and safety not be carried out under the aegis of the US government as an absolutely routine and basic standard of care?
“why would products which really are safe and effective require preservation from suit for harm”
Because they’re not safe. We know they kill people. Tens at least, probably hundreds a year. They also save hundreds of thousands a year. So, that terrible calculus. Greatest good etc.
But if the vaccine makers were subject to every ambulance chasing lawyer then there would be no vaccines. Tens, hundreds saved and hundreds of thousands lost.
We also have vaccince compo schemes. Because we know they’re needed. But we don’t want to lose the manufacturers.
Vaccine makers are protected from being sued because we *know vaccines are not safe*. But also we know they’re worth it.
Covid? Dunno. But smallpox/polio/measles/rubella etc etc yes.
There’s a lot of assertion there, Tim. Like you, I am not an expert in vaccine technology; but I am something of an expert in people, and incentives, and psychopathy, and I know that vast sums of money pollute everything, and I think that is probably what has happened here.
Well, governments around the world say they are safe, and newspapers (with very interesting funding sources) won’t print much to the contrary, people are thrown off social media for demurring.
But irrespective of that, this is not a sufficient explanation: it is not about whether vaccines are really safe, it’s about whether the manufacturers (for instance) know they’re safe or are hiding information which says they are not, and should in the latter case properly be protected as they are.
All medical interventions, from paracetamol through chemotherapy to open heart surgery, can kill you; that’s why we have medical consent forms, and informed consent (generally – this was waived during Covid, appallingly, but this isn’t about Covid).
But vaccines are, for some reason, treated completely differently.
If it turns out that the company manufacturing an experimental new drug – say Vioxx – lied in the process of getting it into people, and tens of thousands died, suits can be filed and damaged of billions paid out.
(Interestingly, no-one from pharma ever goes to jail for these vast lies which kill thousands; in this respect the protection afforded to vaccine manufacturers is just a platinum plating on the already golden Get Out Of Jail Free card that Big Pharma appears to hold, along with guaranteed funding and access to the output of public universities.)
If it turns out that the company manufacturing your experimental new vaccine – say a new shot given to every newborn in the entire country – lied in the process of getting it into those babies, they cannot be sued.
So say their manufacturers, and the media they fund and the politicians they fund and the revolving door regulators they staff and the medical journals they own. Others disagree.
But if the makers of every drug were subject to every ambulance chasing lawyer then there would be no drugs. Is that your argument?
Personally, in the case of public health, when it has become completely apparent that the regulatory authorities are not regulating, I would welcome a few ambulance chasing lawyers prepared to go through tonnes of paperwork and find out what really goes on in those labs.
This sounds like a press release for the compo schemes. Again, it could apply to every drug treatment, but doesn’t. The ‘compo schemes’, by the way, are an utter disgrace. In the case of the Covid jabs, thousands have died and many tens of thousands have been seriously injured. The ‘compo schemes’ have barely rippled.
As I say, Aaron Siri is worth at least considering.
No. Vaccines are different. Because you really, really, want 90% of the population to take them. Which then protects that 10% who cannot (too young, immune compromised etc).
This is an assertion (and it is only arguable anyway in respect of those vaccines which are claimed to prevent transmission, which not all are).
But have you looked at the data?
National Archives 20th Century Mortality Files, 1901-2000
Measles killed (particularly young children) in England and Wales in the low thousands in the first decade of the 20th century.
In 1901, it killed 2,006 babies <1yr, 6,374 children aged 1-4, and a further 574 people aged 5-64 for a total of 9,014 out of a population of c32.5 million.
By 1950, it killed 70 babies <1yr, 115 children aged 1-4, and a further 36 people aged 5-64 for a total of 221 out of a population of c44 million.
In 1967 it killed 18 babies <1yr, 55 children aged 1-4, and a further 26 people aged 5-64 for a total of 99 out of a population of c49 million.
The measles vaccine was introduced to England and Wales in 1968, so something was causing this dramatic collapse in deaths from measles, and it was not vaccines.
In 1967, when no-one was vaccinated, the number of deaths involving measles – because the thing that killed children was not measles but measles + poor nutrition and poor living conditions + often underlying health conditions – was a rounding error.
Individually tragic, of course, but not deserving of the response when we don’t know the other side of the ledger.
Is it possible that more children have been harmed and even killed by the measles jabs that might have been harmed or killed in the modern world by measles? What studies have been done to establish the harms done to children by inoculation against measles? Would it be good to see if we could do some?
It is simply not possible to look at the man (RFK Jr) who is standing athwart the tide of pharmacological interventions, and the enormous sums of money pushing that tide – and suggest that he is some sort of lunatic for asking questions like these.
Interested
Deaths from measles may have been relatively low pre-1968; but measles also caused deafness, blindness and disability in thousands of other children…
…the thing that killed children was not measles but measles + poor nutrition and poor living conditions + often underlying health conditions….
No. Measles was a sufficient cause of death in some cases. In many others, measles was a necessary condition of death, with the sufficient condition being measles + the environmental factors you list. In all cases of death from measles, infection with measles was the primary causative factor.So your claim is inaccurate: measles killed.
Fair point. Measles killed a few and injured a few more. I was loose in my language – though it is entirely obvious that it is mostly measles-plus, unless you have another explanation for the collapse in measles deaths prior to vaccination.
The point is this: if measles kills 100 kids a year, then we should do whatever we realistically can to save those lives.
But we ought to consider whether the treatment or prophylaxis is doing more harm than the measles, and this work has never been done.
Well said. Tim’s argument is essentially circular: everyone knows that vaccines are a good thing so we should force them on people because they are a good thing. And, what the hell if they kill Peter’s daughter they might save Paul’s son. Or several Paul’s sons because, don’cha know, vaccines are a good thing.
As long as the shots risk/reward profile really does mean “We know they kill people.Tens at least, probably hundreds a year. They also save hundreds of thousands a year. “. Perhaps this is true of most shots, but all of them?
Especially given as Interested pointed out “…80 shots before they even start school, not one of which has ever been tested against a saline placebo.”. Or any inert placebo in a randomised test.
Also what about the Replication Crisis where far, far too many papers cannot be reproduced?
Not anti vaccinations, but just a tad sceptical about all the claims made by the pharma industry and medical establishment.
Vaccines are safe, in the ordinary usage of ‘safe’. They are not absolutely 100% safe, of course, but nothing is. The risk depends on the type of vaccine. Any medical intervention, preventative or curative, carries a risk, as does driving a car or flying or an equine clitoral massage…
This is just an assertion.
Where is your evidence that they are safe?
Where is your evidence that they do more good than harm?
You won’t be able to adduce such evidence because the work has never been done.
It is a religious faith, inculcated by a trusted priestly class repeating mantras, no more, no less.
Beyond that, though, and not only because as even you acknowledge they are not 100% safe, the main point is that they should never – ever – be required by the state.
It should be a matter for parents in consultation with doctors whom they trust.
“But if the vaccine makers were subject to every ambulance chasing lawyer then there would be no vaccines. Tens, hundreds saved and hundreds of thousands lost.
We also have vaccince compo schemes. Because we know they’re needed. But we don’t want to lose the manufacturers.”
I would have more sympathy for this argument, if the State didn’t spend all its time fobbing people off who are trying to claim for injuries caused by the vaccines, and paying the very few claims they allow a pittance.
IF (big if) there is this great societal benefit to be gained from universal vaccination, at the expense of the very small minority who are injured or even killed by vaccines, then society should be particularly generous to those harmed. Make it easy to claim, and give generous compensation if you can show harm. Rather than penny pinching and fighting claimants at every turn.
The fact the State doesn’t do the above suggests to me that they aren’t really that confident of the benefits of vaccines, or are that convinced that only a very small number of people are harmed.
“American kids now get something like 80 shots before they even start school, not one of which has ever been tested against a saline placebo.”
RFK has said this repeatedly and nobody has gainsaid him. That’s because it’s demonstrably true. If the population understood the point would there be lynchings?
My own view is that knee-jerk pro-vax people are just as irrational as knee-jerk anti-vax people. Or maybe I should say “at least as irrational”. You should treat each vax on its merits. Alas that is bloody difficult when “not one of which has ever been tested against a saline placebo.”
Children in the UK receive approximately 30 injections from infancy to age 14…
I agree, though I think the science is now trending onto the side of the knee jerk anti-vax people – especially when you factor in the money, sdtate power and coercion they are fighting.
I replied to Tim above re measles – it’s clearly utter bollocks to credit measles vaccines with the decline in deaths ‘from measles’, and yet the odds of getting people to read and understand are low.
I’m particularly surprised when the people concerned are otherwise sceptical of government, authoritarianism, inflated claims etc etc
It seems I was misadvised regarding thimerasol being in Tylenol. Apologies and note to self to check everything before opening my gob.
Well said but, as it happens, you touched on a good point. Supposed particular medicine itself does little harm. Does the same hold true if the stuff sold is polluted with something else? Who knows? Who checks and reports to the public? Did the original trials of the medicine contain the same pollutants? Who knows?
After all, it has turned out that some batches of the mRNA Covid jabs were polluted with DNA. And yet THEY swore it was impossible. Bastards!
It also turns out the covid vaccines that were tested by the medical authorities were manufactured by a completely different process to those stuck in the public’s arms.
But hey, I’m sure that a vaccine hand made by the gram by experts in a lab will be exactly the same as one produced by the tonne in a brand new industrial facility…….absolutely no quality control problems at all, no siree Bob!
There’s a whole massive industry that goes into making sure medical products are what they say they are and the recipes don’t drift and they don’t have undocumented extras and there wasn’t any fuckups in the production and if you leave them on a shelf they don’t turn into poison. In the UK at least, QC of drugs is probably a greater cost than the actual manufacturing.
This is one of the main ways Evil-Big-Pharma “forces” you to use the new drugs they invent (and manufacture and test): they patent the new drugs, stop making the old drugs, and while anyone else could step in and set up a production and testing line and manufacture the old drugs, mostly nobody does because manufacturing it is difficult and expensive and testing it and satisfying the regulators is difficult and expensive and without a patent-monopoly, pricing is a race to the bottom.
So good-on companies like Galpharm who do do this, and let us save 80-90% on painkillers, allergy pills, heartburn pills and so on.
“There’s a whole massive industry that goes into making sure medical products are what they say they are and the recipes don’t drift and they don’t have undocumented extras and there wasn’t any fuckups in the production and if you leave them on a shelf they don’t turn into poison.”
I know: I was offered a senior job in that line years ago when Zeneca was being spun out of ICI. I learnt a lot in our discussions. I didn’t take it in the end and I can’t even remember why. Hey ho.
And yet, those precautions either weren’t used, or weren’t successful, with the mRNA Covid jabs.
“contrary to medical guidelines, the Washington Post has reported.”
You don’t hate journalists enough, but I do.
Anything any doctor or medical ‘expert’ says nowadays is worthless. It might be true, it might be utter garbage. Covid and the medical profession’s total absorption by the pharmaceutical industry complex has totally destroyed the medical profession’s integrity. We (the laymen) are flying utterly blind. Its impossible to know if someone is telling the truth, utterly bonkers or doing PR work for the pharmaceutical industry.
Just not true, Jim. My wife sees two consultants about her auto-immune pancreatitis and both are inclined to believe her condition was caused by her covid mRNA jabs and have also advised her not to have any more.
I hope she feels better soon mate.
Thanks, Steve. Drug therapy working.
Theo, hope all goes well with the missus. My brother has an auto immune illness and has been having three transfusions every week for the last seven or eight months.His consultant recommended a drug but it was on the ‘too expensive list’ That may change this month.
I wonder if those consultants who see a link to the jabs have had the courage to speak out about it…..
Seconded
How about we take a fresh look at why autism rates have exploded?
NOOOOOOO – THESCIENCEISSETTLED!!!
How about we take a look at why obesity & chronic disease rates have exploded?
NOOOOOOO – THESCIENCEISSETTLED!!!
The science is so little settled that I don’t even know whether the phenomenon is real or just a product of profitable diagnostic drift.
FWIW – I agree wholeheartedly with Jim re: WTF do you trust when it comes to any topic that could be influenced for political or financial purposes?
I have a good relationship with my primary care physician (who I’ve only been with since well after the Fauci virus), but I have to wonder what advice I would have gotten about the magic jab and how much she was being paid to get the numbers up back at the time.
A friend who leans pretty far left was making quite a fuss the day the supposed US death toll from Fauci’s experiment hit 1 million. My partner started laughing at him. The gov’t paid a bonus to hospitals & families if they wrote “Covid-19” on the death certificate. We personally know of a couple of people working in healthcare who were essentially told to put that on the death certificate if there was any excuse to do so. Cue Charlie Munger.
RFK Jr is a dick. He is clueless about epidemiology.
Trump screwed up, putting a dumbass activist in charge.
Many epidemiologists are clueless about epidemiology. It’s a backward science, littered with moronic “modellers”. Reading a few, often elderly, gents who seem to have a realistic grip of the limitations of their trade can be refreshing. But then they are no longer pursuing research grants.
MAHA is an electoral asset to Trump. There’s millions of Americans who share his concerns about what they put in food.
Trump is going for the ignorant liberal white women vote.
The concerns are fabricated. But the Democrat playbook from 50 years ago still works.
That’s an unkind way to describe Moms.
I don’t know enough about this stuff to have strong opinions either way except that I thought the vaccines were sketchy as hell and I’m wary of the atmosphere of lies and subsequent apparent spike in young sporty people suddenly developing heart problems.
But from a political pov, I do understand. People have anxieties about the stuff they put in food, and those people vote. Taking this issue away from the Left was a stroke of brilliance. I feel the same way about Tulsi Gabbard – she represents a legitimate strand of opinion and it was better to bring those people into the MAGA tent than to leave them to grudgingly vote for whatever creature the Democrats put up.
For a “fascist”, Donald Trump sure is good at classic American retail politics and triangulation.
The US food business is the most highly regulated industry on the planet. Has been for decades. The notion that there is bad stuff in people’s food is patently ridiculous.
“It’s not the nature of the evidence; it’s the seriousness of the charges.”
Gamecock – because government regulators have never been wrong or captured by producer interests before, right?
“most highly regulated industry”
But is it well regulated? Or is your statement just the common American bullshit that everything the US does is automatically the best?
Famously, the Interstate Commerce Commission the Yanks set up to regulate the railway tycoons was the bitch of said robber barons, and acted in their interests and not the public’s.
But I’m sure Pfizer only wants what’s best for us.
Something is making Americans sick despite spending twice as much as any other country on their ‘healthcare’.
I suspect it’s extremely multi-factorial – wealthy countries get fatter, complacent, self-obsessed countries go madder, gun deaths, opioids, general unfitness etc and no doubt etc – but the idea that the US food business being ‘the most highly regulated industry on the planet’ should give anyone any comfort is fucking hilarious.
For a start, there are various things that are banned in food in Europe which are allowed in the US; maybe the US is right, and maybe Europe is right, but one set of regulators is obviously wrong, and I tend to look at where the money and the lobbying is at its most intense, and (while I absolutely loathe Brussels) it isn’t over this side of the pond.
Something is making Americans sick
So we must ban something!
“Round up the usual suspects.”
That’s not what I said.
It’s also not what RFK Jr said.
What he’s saying is that it appears that certain food colourings (for instance) – food colourings which, as I say, have been banned elsewhere – may be deleterious to health and thus should be prohibited or at least investigated.
It’s hard to imagine why anyone would be so angrily against that.
Listen to yourself. MAY BE is a totalitarian standard.
Gross over regulation has turned the US into a fascist state. Trump has fought to reduce it. This is adding it back. That’s why all should fight it.
‘Banned elsewhere’ meets no scientific standard.
You cannot treat autism any more than you can treat being over six feet tall.
What you can do make sure the doorway is high enough.
Charles I was cured of being 5’4″
Too soon, dear boy.
Too soon.
“You cannot treat autism”: if you don’t know what causes it how can you be sure?
The human brain is still malleable even when it’s damaged or underdeveloped. I have a relative with Down’s syndrome (Remember Down’s syndrome? We used to let them live) and he learned to drive. Passed his test first time.
It took me 3 attempts.
Anyway, autism – depending on the severity of their condition we can teach people to communicate good, and do other stuff good too. What if a lot of people “on the spectrum” are just undersocialised?
This was long before the theory test came in tbf.
@ Steve It is certainly the case that many people “on the spectrum” are under-socialised due to the difficulties that most of those not “on the spectrum” have in communicating with those “on the spectrum”.
Yes, we can teach *some* people “on the spectrum” to communicate with the neurotypical but on the other side of the coin there is a shortage of neurotypical people who have made the effort to learn how to communicate *effectively* with those deep in the spectrum. Also there are some autistic individuals who do not speak at all and in those cases – no, you cannot teach them to communicate well.
Communication is not just verbal
DNA
contrary to medical guidelines
But medical guidelines are often just a midden of misunderstandings, based on lying, ignorance, stupidity, rotten research, absence of research, and corruption.
Remember when it was settled consensus 99% of Dr’s/ science that stomach ulcers were caused by stress?
Remember when Dr’s Warren & Marshall were pooh poohed as anti science grifters barking up the wrong tree with their weird theory that it was bacteria causing stomach ulcers.
(Until all of a sudden it wasn’t & we saw a quick side ways shuffle mutter mumble of course medicine has always known there are variables blah)
The bleedin Dr’s had to infect themselves multiple times to prove it abroad after being chucked out of the hallowed halls in the UK.
Or is it crickets down the memory hole about that one as well?
Yes, I do. And that is how science advances. Scientists are human and fallible. The history, psychology and sociology of science show that scientists tend to form a consensus around a given paradigm, which is later challenged by disrupters and perhaps then overthrown. Most scientific conclusions are tentative and provisional, at best probable and rarely settled.
Scientists are human and fallible. The history, psychology and sociology of science show that scientists tend to form a consensus around a given paradigm, which is later challenged by disrupters and perhaps then overthrown. Most scientific conclusions are tentative and provisional, at best probable and rarely settled.
This is why I’d be in favour of getting rid of the universities altogether. They’re hierarchical with the devotees of the current paradigms at the top of the hierarchy. They stifle competing ideas. Imagine doing that in commerce. It’d be nothing but monopolies. Ideas should compete. Their proponents, no matter how well they’re “accepted”, should have to constantly defend them against all comers. But you’re not going to get that in a system based on the medieval guilds.
“But you’re not going to get that in a system based on the medieval guilds.” Just as well that Newton, Darwin, and Maxwell didn’t believe this.
I know something about Newton’s career & he seems to have succeeded despite Cambridge rather than because of it. But it’s not what worked in the C17th or C19th but what should happen in the C21st. You’re argument is the usual; it’s always been so, so should always be so. Care to justify it?.
That’s not my argument at all. For about a quarter century I have advocated “Dissolution of the Universities”.
It is possible to be both well informed about and sceptical of the modern university without resorting to childish jeering.
I don’t think Newton is much of a poster boy for scientific openness and free debate, given he spent most of his life trying to destroy the reputations of Robert Hooke and Gottfried Leibnitz.
“Most scientific conclusions are tentative and provisional”
But oh so rarely sold that way.
Indeed, but usually it’s not the scientists doing the selling but PR girlies. IPCC Assessment Reports are measured and restrained; the press releases semi-hysterical doomsterism.
Let us not forget Semmelweis, who ironically died of a preventable infection through negligent care.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis
Alf Wegener and continental drift is another.
This is one of the people AndyT says is a “loon” “bending the knee to a mad king”:
So the story now is, a medical doctor who is also dean of the faculty at Harvard is a moon-howling MAGA mentalist.
Hmmm.
I suspect that Andy, and the other people criticising RFK Jr, would currently be expressing the polar opposite opinion if this had come out of a Kamalalalala administration.
But *which* “neurodevelopmental disorders”?
There is overwhelming evidence that autism is an X-chromosomal-linked condition
More info (lots more) here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/09/fact-evidence-suggests-link-between-acetaminophen-autism/
@ Steve
Please compare what it says in the text with the headline – the so-called “evidence” is a correlation in one or two studies between acetominophen and the *sum* of the number of diagnoses of ADHD *and* of autism.
Strange that they didn’t cite an increase, let alone a statistically significant one, in the number of cases of ASD (autistic spectrum disorder) if they wanted to demonstrate a link between acetaminophen and autism, isn’t it?
I strongly suspect that the rise in *reported* incidence of autism in the USA includes, in addition to a significant increase in survival rates for autistic toddlers to an age where they can be diagnosed and an increase (probably significant albeit smaller) in the diagnosis rate, a significant increase in “false positives” where mothers of badly-behaved children obtain a diagnosis of “autism” as a “Get out of Jail Free” card to exculpate themselves from blame for poor parenting. There may well be a correlation between mothers who take too many painkillers and mothers who do too little to discipline their small children.
Yes, nobody is claiming painkillers cause autism. They’re saying “studies show” an “association” and as usual “more research is required”
I don’t think telling pregnant women to take ibuprofen instead of paracetamol just to be on the safe side is as big of a deal as the 80+ comments on this one suggests it is.
But obvs, people have strong opinions about This Kind Of Thing
Excuse me! That is exactly what is being alleged! Ever since thalidomide – and before – people have been blaming women for taking *anything* in pregnancy. “Brave New World” (are you old enough to have read it?) said women drinking alcohol while pregnant had babies who had low IQ.
As I am, in some people’s opinion, on the Autistic Spectrum, I *do* have opinions, resulting from my amateur research. My second cousin [the only male relative in my generation that I have met in the flesh is (?also) on the spectrum as is my younger son (who has a degree in Psychology!!). My personal observations are compatible with widespreads claims that 90+% of cases of autism are genetic (and I suspect that most of the remainder are “look-a-likes” rather than actual autism).
When I was at Oxford there was a brief fashion for interest in Asperger’s Syndrome and a claim that half the Oxbridge Dons had Asperger’s [which was ridiculous – a few, probably 10+%, matbe 20%].
I don’t take painkillers since they do not provide me with any noticeable benefit so I don’t know what difference they might make except that ibuprofen is an anti-inflammatory. So, if it makes them feel better I am not aware of any reason not to switch to ibuprofen – but I see no other reason why they should.