The hysteria about acetaminophen is just more evidence that American trust in medicine is collapsing. I get the fury at the system - believe me, I do - but this isn't helpful.
Sorry but tylenol really isn't good for anyone and there are warnings that go back over two decades about risks to unborn babies. You might want to lookup how many ER visits per year, drugs like tylenol and ibuprofen are responsible for. It might shock most normie readers here.
Here are some unreported truths this article misses badly. Super lazy to.say the effect the study found is 5% at worst.
The study found a dose dependent 33%, 52%, and 87% effect for the bottom third, middle third, and top third of exposures. Then they controlled for FOURTEEN or more other variables to erase a lot of the power and end up with 5% overall and the top two thirds are higher at 10-11% and retain solid p values despite the excessive controlling. Anyone who has ever read Woolridge (Econometrics text) or done this themselves knows how much can go wrong by controlling for too many factors. You get colliders and confounders. Confounders never disprove an association.... they simply mean it could be one or the other.
Sibling controls are their own problem, especially in this study. Number one, of the 2.5 million subjects only 100,000 were sibling pairs. Also, mothers are going to tend to say ok to painkillers or tend to not, so between siblings who have a mom with general tendencies there are few of those 100,000 who actually get a high dose versus a low dose. You're losing tons of signal between those things, so yes weaker result.
The recent Harvard study discussed further weaknesses with the sibling controls and pointed out that causality likelihood is increased by three things:
One, those dose responsive results. Sure, still can be something else (like maternal age, and older women have more pain and thus use more painkiller) BUT most of those 14 controls can't possibly explain away that dose response (controlling for "region of Sweden you reside in" is just freaking diluting the stats power for no benefit, who the fuck cares if this effect doesn't hold in Helsingborg versus Stockholm). Two the fact that studies of blood levels of acetominophen and cord blood levels (not just patient chart or subjective surveys, but real numbers from objectively measured biomarkers) also support; and three that animal studies show the neurodegeneration needed to explain the mechanism.
Thank you for analyzing this so I don’t have to. Much appreciated. Although I know personal experience doesn’t hold water in the scientific arena, my sister, a kindergarten teacher for 35 years would disagree with Alex’s assessment as to why we’re seeing more cases of autism. While genetics, advanced maternal and paternal ages, as well as expanded diagnostic criteria may account for a some of the increases, I believe there are other factors at play here, environmental/toxic exposure factors from a range of insults( Tylenol use may be one in a long list of potential exposures) to the developing fetus and infant or toddler, that all combine in a perfect storm to create neurodevelopmental issues for a child. The kindergarten teacher is often the first one to identify the autistic and ADHD spectrum child and order the appropriate testing. She reports a marked increase in the number of children in the past 10 or so years especially, that barring genetic factors ( because she obviously doesn’t know that), this is not due to expanding criteria or advanced parental ages.
I have been teaching for 22 years and your sister is correct. There is something VERY wrong going on and protecting the stock market and to be the most important goal. Many of my young parents report that there is also an increase in meds/shots in pregnant women and many tests for abnormalities so the p a rents can make early decisions about their pregnancy. The food is horrible. It's probably many of these things out together. I wish people could see it but for the current parenting generation, it's considered normal. I'm worried.
My daughter is a 6th grade science teacher. Every year she has taught there has been at least one kid with autism. She actually enjoys teaching them as they have generally been smarter than most kids and hard workers. What she generally sees are social issues with other kids, but she usually takes them under her wing and provides help and guidance in various situations, and overall they generally do well. It has been pretty much 100% boys, too, she can't recall ever having an autistic girl student.
She says she doesn't remember ever being in a class as a kid in the 1970s and 80s with anyone you would call autistic. Nor do I, looking back to my school years in the 1950s and 60s.
The vaccines I got as a kid were extremely limited. Most of us actually got sick with measles, mumps, chicken pox. It wasn't greatly different in the 1970s. As for fever, I think aspirin might have been given to kids, and when we had a high fever, I distinctly remember my parents giving me a cool bath to help lower the fever.
You can't give aspirin to kids with a fever nowadays. Which reminds me of another thing we've been hearing that would strike the speakers a little bit more if they really stopped to ponder the implication of the fact they state.
They say "It's dangerous to implicate Tylenol as potentially problem-causing, because *it's the only safe painkiller left for pregnant women*, everything else is known to cause problems!"
Which of course if you were being self-aware might make you think that it's against the odds that every other painkiller is proven beyond a doubt to cause infrequent serious issues for some in utero, but this one is the magic one that's simply perfectly clean. Free lunch!
Teachers were among the first to notice the surge in autism. When we brought my then 2 1/2 year old son to the local school district's special ed department in 1995 for evaluation, the intake teacher observed his behavior briefly and then said: "He looks like he has autism. We're getting all kinds of these kids now and we don't know where it's coming from." The medical people at the time were clueless. Two docs insisted my sons weren't autistic and they would get better if we had them watch a lot of videos with singing and talking (I'm not joking). Of course, the teacher was right and the docs wrong, alas.
That was a good service they provided, evaluating a 21/2 year old. Some districts don’t provide any evaluation until pre-k or K age is reached. So unfortunate the MDs were uneducated on the signs. Sorry you had to experience that. It creates confusion for the parents as well. Yes, a good teacher can spot the signs immediately. I’ve witnessed my sister do this on a couple of occasions.
The practice then was not to formally diagnose autism until age 4. Before then, the child would get a diagnosis of PDD NOS (Pervasive Developmental Delay, Not Otherwise Specified). Occasionally, such children would improve enough to escape the autism diagnosis. For instance, my oldest son regressed at age two but then made a partial recovery and was diagnosed with ADHD. He improved over time and is now married, employed, and a father. His two younger brothers will need lifelong care.
Personal experience is data and should always be valued. Many observations by individual are data that scientists just fail to read correctly. You can't prove things with one personal observation, but you can learn a lot about what kind of experiment to do to see if you can prove something.
Even Edward Jenner was making simple personal observations when it struck him that milkmaids rarely got smallpox, leading to his development of dosing small amounts of cowpox to protect people.
You might be right about that but if the cause is low grade non-specific toxin overload, you never going to parse out a causal link in the data for any specific cause, including Tylenol use..
I agree. There was a study that I read a while ago with twin girls who had been diagnosed with autism, one fairly severe, and one less so, I believe in the U.K. Their parents worked with a functional medicine physician who employed a program of detoxification, clean, organic diet , probiotics, occupational, and speech therapy. I think this all started before one year of age and continued to two years of age, but this is entirely from memory. The girls showed dramatic improvement in a relatively short period of time. My point in writing this is to say that there are treatments and hope out there. One key is early detection, of course, as is the case for so many conditions.
I agree there is hope. Some hope comes from the fact that, while I still think Autism is rising for sure, there are plenty of false diagnoses as well. Epilepsy, Laudau-Kleffner, and other things can be misdiagnosed as autism. They are much more treatable so make sure to work hard at proper diagnosis. Sometimes a lazy diagnosis of ASD is possible, but go to a specialty clinic if you have suspicion.
Thank you. First I cried for this poor family, too, though, what they've been through, and now I am so happy for so much success for their girls. In this field, data is people.
I would much rather have autism than the relentless sociopathy that especially is evident in Washington this week. Frankly, I do wish there was an Angel of Death that could selectively wipe out antisocial cretins, that might be a significant amount of our population in this country alone, but for me it's a start.
I forgot to say: the Sweden study, and most of these studies, also study ADHD alongside autism and the findings are regularly stronger for ADHD. They were very much so in the Sweden study.
However, there are also some indications that other types of painkiller have similar effects on both autism and ADHD. So not clear what's going on. Infection incidence leading to painkiller use but also these diseases is a possibility, but so is use of these painkillers - if anyone has data on what % of women get infections that have fever while pregnant I want that info.
That's right... I know Alex hates it but the far too late-coming ivermectin studies took the cake. The NIH sponsored a study thru Vanderbilt and Duke, they saw a huge effect on severe disease with a great p value and blew it off as a smaller number of patients (which is totally already taken into account by said p value) and then they saw a modest but statistically significant effect in the overall results, which they then explained away by saying "not clinically significant" when it only helped patients get better 0.5 days faster. Meanwhile, that's exactly what Tamiflu does and I never found an MD who told me they wouldn't prescribe something that saved that much time ill.
They just knew their careers were over if they wrote it any other way.
I’m writing this here just so it’s at the top of the thread, what was that Predator movie where the predator was going after the son of the military guy because the son was autistic and to the predators, that was seen as the next evolutionary improvement of Homo sapiens?
I don’t care if people disagree or find it stupid, I have to wonder if getting rid of emotional lability to some degree with more functioning autistic folk is a step up from all the F’ing personality disorder garbage now rampant in this country.
There's interesting work on the key emotional framework of decision making. An easy read is Descartes' Error by Antonio DAmasio. Interesting case of a pillar in the community who had an injury that severed his emotional into from decision making. His life went to pieces. Autists aren't very functional outside certain specialized settings, more common in techno industrialized society.
Autism may be a pure spectrum issue, but there are various presentations, there are very primitive forms, as well as high functioning forms. But at the end of the day, people who are autistic invariably are flat and detached, and frankly, that could be a blessing for some depending on what they do socioeconomically. Just my opinion.
they are not detached, they have trouble forming attachments
it's the difference between not caring about soccer like me...
- and wishing you could play but you don't know how, and you would probably do it wrong anyway, and probably nobody would pass the ball to you, and every time you try to kick the ball it doesn't go the right way & probably everyone noticed that
autistic people don't avoid looking you in the eye because they don't care about you, it's actually overwhelming for them
i suppose, that would the functional expression of it.
it's like if you showed up to a black tie affair wearing a sombrero and pancho. you would immediately regret jumping to the conclusion that every party in october is a costume party.
you might try to grab a plate & fit in the best of your ability, but your brain would be firing the entire time, and just about any true introvert would be self-conscious to the point that they would have trouble forming words & answering basic questions.
but you would like nothing better than to network with everyone and to be in on all the fancy-people banter like how lazy their gardeners are or how they are quite sure their mechanic is overcharging them.
One of the numerous sequels that came out about six years ago, all I remember was the main protagonist was a former military guy who had an autistic son and the son figured out how to operate the predator’s mask and the predators figured that out and wanted to take the kid.
I think he makes the point that Tylenol isn't good for anyone because of the significant risks like the one's you point out (as does Alex). But, as he says, the issue is autism; and the statistical proof for a link between autism and Tylenol is weak (not non-existent, just weak).
But if you are worried about your liver, proceed with great caution before taking Tylenol. It has its uses, but minor aches and pains aren't among them.
I’m shocked I’m not seeing any comments about vaccine causing autism. The congressional data from 3 weeks shows that, “Vaccinated children were significantly more likely to be diagnosed with autism, ADHD, and allergies.
We’re not talking about barely higher odds—these were statistically significant findings, with some conditions showing vaccinated children were up to 400% more likely (or 5 times more likely) to have certain diagnoses.”
One of the questions is whether the vaccination itself caused autism, or whether it was the acetaminophen that was taken prophylactically along with the vaccination, or both.
Receiving Tylenol with immunization is a relatively late development. It wasn't routine in the 1990s and early 2000s when I was still working in hospital-based ambulatory pediatrics. I'm a bit late to the vaccines-cause-autism debate, but upon starting to work in the public school system I immediately noticed the high incidence of food allergies and asthma & later Type 1 diabetes. So I am on board with vaccines causing autoimmune conditions.
Yes, but the argument isn't that Tylenol is THE cause of autism. Clearly vaccines aren't the cause of autism because there are indeed autistic children that have never been vaccinated (I have one who is a patient of mine). Having said that, vaccines absolutely can trigger autism or the cascade that leads to autism as, it seems, can Tylenol. There are likely many things that can trigger autism and while there are certain things that seem characteristic of many autism cases (e.g., excitotoxicity), I'm not aware that we've found the smoking gun that is present in all autism cases. So in the meantime, we just try to identify triggers through statistical associations and, if one is wise, minimize exposure to those.
As Ted stated, acetaminophen negatively impacts glutathione (as well as inhibiting mitochondrial respiration) which have obvious implications for losing protective effects on neurons from excitotoxins. So Tylenol or any other substance that interferes with neuroprotective mechanisms could be (at least one of the things) to blame.
There are autistic children who are unvaccinated, but their mothers were very likely vaccinated, and the aluminum adjuvants from the mother passed to the child in utero, causing the autism in the child. Injections of aluminum stay in your body forever, because your white blood cells are unable to filter it through the kidneys, unless there is a chelation therapy to remove it. The question is, are there unvaccinated autistic children whose mothers and grandmothers were also unvaccinated?
Another factor to consider is the timing of when Aspirin was linked to Reye’s Syndrome in the 80’s. Also around the time the vaccine schedule was changed for childhood immunizations. After understanding the mechanism of action in Tylenol, it’s very interesting to posit about its links to a wide variety of issues in children. The increase is simply too much for it to be solely genetic or just from better testing/diagnosing, IMO. It seems likely that it’s a combination of immunizations and Tylenol, perhaps influenced by a genetic component and/or the lack of nutritional quality of our food. Maybe even environmental toxins ALL working together and exploiting vulnerable, hyperactive immune systems. I feel very strongly that vaccines are the lynchpin in the entire cascade of events, though.
I teach elementary school and what was shocking to me, is the amount of shots and tests given to pregnant woman as reported by some of my student's mom's. I had my children in the 90's and I hadn't realized this was now the norm. Autism is now off the chain as well as many other problems. Food, drugs, technology- it's all ruining a generation but these parents see this as normal as it is all they know. Our generation should be ashamed that we will protect our retirement funds (food, pharma, tech) at all costs. Most reading this substack are retired so they have NO CLUE how bad this really is.
This post was solely to address acetaminophen. My opinion: much hyped “answer in September;” no or inconclusive results from the data sent worldwide to independent researchers; late in the month = less than satisfactory press conference. This is supported by a comment on Malone that “President Trump indicated, not once, but a couple of times, “they want to wait 2 more months, but I said, No, tell them now!..’”
There is a ton of (Manipulated? Fraudulent?) data “proving” S&E. Contradictory evidence tying vaccines and autism needs to be on solid ground. You will note that according to tptb, Wakefield’s observations were wrong. They were not.
The government has known for at least 25 years that vaccines can cause autism. Public acknowledgement of that fact would end the vaccine program and promoting that program has always been the primary goal of the government health bureaucracies.
I agree. When comparing the current vaccination schedule to previous decades, chronic illness amongst children and even the comparison of vaccinated vs non-vaccinated health statistics, it is clear that the shots have limited, if any benefit, considering the significant and sometimes permanent side effects. Our poor children..what are we allowing the pharmaceutical industry do to them? 😢
Sorry Alex...you've got some overly simplistic thinking going on when you assume that "many" (?) of the people today diagnosed with autism would have been diagnosed as "mentally retarded" (or "intellectually disabled") in the past. We ALL know that there is a huuuuge diff between the symptoms of autism and the symptoms of mental retardation. Further, there was evidence that the latter was diagnosed in around 1% of children. Needless to say, autism is so much more common today. It seems that you, Alex, have begun to believe the Big Pharma propaganda. You are too smart to be conned on this subject.
I question the overall diagnosis of autism, especially since there is now a "spectrum" of autism. Maybe that's accurate, maybe not. My brother was born in 1945. From perhaps the age of 6 his behavior was noticeably odd, but how he expressed it was also odd. No one ever gave an autism diagnosis back then. He was always an extremely intelligent kid, and as he got older he was brilliant in math and science. Social behavior was another matter. He had a "sort of" friend here and there, but couldn't even relate to the rest of his family except for with his mother. He always acted angry towards me, his 4 year younger sister, and went through a ten year period in which. he wouldn't look at me, speak to. me, sit next to me. My mother had long discussions with him about his treatment of me, and his answer was always that he just didn't know why. My parents were in despair of what to do, but got no help dealing with whatever his problem was. Just a few years ago with all the information out there regarding autism, like a lightning bolt it hit me that being on an autism spectrum explained his behavior
What could have caused it? I have absolutely no idea, but I doubt it was anything like Tylenol because my mother (who grew up on a farm) was very much into health food and natural eating even back then, and most of her life she took nothing she absolutely didn't have to. And growing up in the 1950s my brother had most of the childhood diseases as there weren't vaccines then. His noticeable odd social behaviors predated the polio vaccine on a sugar cube that came later.
My brother is now about to turn 80, same as he has always been. Communication with others is not his forte, now as before. But he did get through college, he worked until retirement, he got married, he's still married (never any kids). He has lived a quiet but stable life.
When I was 16, out of the blue as he was leaving for college, he apologized to me. After that, we have spoken to each other, he still sends me birthday cards, but we have never ever had a deep involved conversation as that is beyond his capability. He doesn't converse with people, but he will answer a question and that's it. No follow up to further a conversation. I do wonder about his conversational ability with his wife, I would assume it's better just as he could have somewhat of a conversation with my mother.
Autism began in the 1930s when aluminum hydroxide was added to the diphtheria vaccine. Was your brother vaccinated against diphtheria? Was he vaccinated against pertussis or tetanus? All of these vaccines have included aluminum adjuvants since the 1930s and 1940s.
I can't really know for sure, but I don't think so. But the aluminum hydroxide angle is interesting and worth looking at for sure. Being affected by autism still must have been rare until a certain tipping point.
What a nasty reply. You're a doctor? No, my mother never would have taken it because throughout her life the only thing she took was occasional aspirin.
I appreciate you and your take so much! But here’s a piece I wrote this week debunking that Swedish study you and others have been relying on. Did you know it didn’t even ask moms if they were taking Tylenol?? It’s a scam study.
Please look into the vaccine/Tylenol connection. When mothers followed the vaccine schedule we were told to give Tylenol to ease reactions to the vaccines to our children. Might the combination have been too toxic for the child’s liver & immune system to handle safely?
The evidence that mRNA injections (high risk, hugely unnecessary genetic therapies), cause death is certainly NOT "none"!!! Check the VAERS database with HUGE underreporting factors of at least 10:1 and probably 40:1 (largely voluntary) and compare 2019 to 2021. The vaccine injuries causing death on VAERS are in the 10s of thousands mostly for the US alone and that is just the INCREASE over the regular background vaccine deaths of 100s. I believe that the last time I checked it was about 30,000 deaths. If you use a underreporting factor of 40:1 (harvard study I believe), that works out to 1.2 million deaths from the jabs (short term) - WHICH DOESN"T INCLUDE the "Turbo cancers". World wide deaths from vaccine injury must be much greater than this because the mRNAs were injected over a billion times in the world vs. about 100, million times in the USA. 17 million MAY be an exaggeration but I would bet that it is not. Cancer is already among the leading causes of death and Alex has mentioned the already well established link between the mRNA jabs and the increase in IGG4 antibodies (far less effective). Reducing the effectiveness of the immune system is very likely to contribute to cancer deaths since everyone generates cancerous cells in their bodies daily from long before birth. the reason that we all don't die of cancer every ay is because our immune systems KILL the cancer cells. Furthermore, how could the mRNAs with TRILLIONS of spike proteins being generated in the body for versions of Covid that you can't get in the "wild", NOT affect the immune system in a highly deleterious manner. I agree with Alex that the data is insufficient on this question, but that is not an advantage!! It is a deliberate attempt to suppress the truth that these mRNA jabs are HIGHLY dangerous and should be outlawed immediately for everyone. Alex knows this but even HE has to be careful to avoid statements that can't be proven. I understand and sympthasize but we have to be much more careful about medical interventions (including masks!) with little or no real advantages and LOTS of drawbacks!!
I agree. That press conference was strange and somewhat inelegant. And of course the focus became tylenol instead of autism. Why? Perhaps it was a bit of daylight about vaccines: childhood vaccine schedule, mrna vaccine, lack of published data, but keeping focus on tylenol so people don’t completely freakout.
It may very well be that what I have heard is that Tylenol is not the main cause of autism, but rather the active aluminum salts in childhood vaccines that cause it. Tylenol may be statistically associated with vaccines during pregnancy because they would cause both autism in the fetus and pain in the mother (treated with Tylenol). Either way, IF tylenol is a significant cause of autism it is not as important as the mountain of vaccines with neurotoxic aluminum (and mercury for 60 years) that are now being mandated for children. It is child torture (and parent torture) to make massive, massive mandated and risk free profits for drug companies and their global banking owners. We live in a truly truly sad world where this is not just allowed but massively supported by governments. Our only hope is to continue to learn and educate. Even my own children (3 of them with kids) have ignored this and continue to vaccinate their own kids because the propaganda is so powerful. I am just not persuasive enough to oppose the avalanche of propaganda, but I pray about it a lot. Ian in Vancouver BC
I think you should spend some time looking into regression in autism. It seems that many parents (I have read different numbers but probably at least 30% of the cases) have the experience that their child reached certain developmental milestones and then suddenly regressed. In this case it makes no sense to blame increased diagnosis or genetic factors as a cause. If you are able to develop normally, you don’t suddenly regress because of genetic factors. It seems clear there must be some environmental factor causing the sudden regression. I am no expert, I’m just listening to various voices and reading and remaining open to whatever explanation makes sense. But I just don’t see that the hugely increasing numbers of cases over the last 30 years can be explained by increased awareness and diagnosis.
I believe what RFK, Jr said was there is a correlation between Tylenol and autism diagnosis, but that doesn’t mean it causes it. More research needs to be done. I don’t think anyone (including Trump) was supposed to jump to the conclusion that Tylenol is solely responsible for an increase in autism diagnoses. But rather, let’s play it safe and avoid Tylenol unless absolutely necessary. I’d like to see some conversations about what constitutes “absolutely necessary”. I believe that there are absolutely people, including pregnant women, who rush to medicate fevers when it isn’t necessary. Fevers are our bodies defense system, if you have a fever, most times that means your body is working hard to combat whatever illness is attacking you. Let your body do its job. That said, there are times when fevers should be medicated, and that threshold is lower for pregnant women (though I’m not sure what it is exactly). Instead of people jumping from one extreme conclusion to another, it would be oh-so-refreshing to see helpful dialogue around actual proper usage of Tylenol during pregnancy, since neither complete avoidance nor intentional overdosing qualify as “proper use”.
I don’t have any idea what causes autism. I don’t have a pet theory or an axe to grind. But..
I’m 69. I grew up in a family of 5 siblings. I knew a lot of families with multiple kids in the smallish, middle America town in which I grew up in the 1960’s. An All American Midwestern town.
I saw nobody who had a sibling that seemed either autistic or retarded. It’s now claimed to be 1 in 36? That would mean several families who had kids in school would have had a child like this. There were none.
Just based on 69 years of living among families and kids, I have a very hard time believing this is just a matter of more diagnoses.
I had a great uncle who was likely autistic but of course the family thought he was "retarded." After the movie Rain Man came out, my mom said she realized he was just like Raymond. He could read well and say his ABCs backwards lickety-split! I am sure he would have been much better off growing up and made more progress now as opposed to 100 years ago.
I have a friend who is in her mid-70s who is clearly autistic, but when she was a kid, that would not have been a potential diagnosis. She was put in some sort of home or institution for years, probably mainstreamed in the 70s when those places were shut down. When I hear people claim that "you never see autistic people in their 70s" I just know they have never met someone like my friend, not that they don't exist. It's the "black swan" logical fallacy.
Not so much a case of not living that long, but they're saying there were very few people with autism who were born back then. What you and I are saying is, they weren't diagnosed with autism. They were labeled as retarded. But still probably not 3 out of every 100 kids!
I don't know...maybe we NEED some hysteria so people start doing their own research instead of blindly trusting what Dr's and government says is good? Tylenol is not good for you, nor are most things on the market.
Alex; Thank you for an excellent analysis. My personal response to fever is to ride it out as long as it doesn't go above 102. The medical opinion is that pregnant women should not take anything if their fever is less than 100.4. I contracted chicken pox at age 50 and maintained a fever of 102 for three weeks. I had no problems and survived without any permanent problems.
Fevers are our bodies doing their jobs! I let my kids ride them out so their bodies can heal themselves - not sure how we got convinced that fevers=bad.
My son had a febrile seizure also. After a DPT shot in the 80s. He regressed. I witnessed it firsthand. It was not 'genetics' nor was it 'better diagnosis.' I am sick to death of people not stating the truth on vaccines. Do they harm every child? No. Do they harm enough children that there should be no mandates? Yes.
Trump should have stayed silent on this. And while a 5% correlation is not much, the danger could be in one critical period of gestation and if they looked at just that period the safety signal might be much higher [see thalidomide]. Until further notice pregnant women would be wise to avoid Tylenol. Now as far as if there is more autism/retardation ot whatever you call it I'd argue DUH. There's something going wrong in 1/30 of kids? More or not, this should be addressed.
If you dig deeper into the evidence that people are discussing, there are certain genetic characteristics that make a person - born or unborn - more vulnerable to greater harm from the metabolites of acetaminophen. And there are timing factors that compound the harm, including right after getting a vaccination.
So, my point is, Trump was blunt in suggesting people avoid Tylenol because they have no way to know whether they're among the especially vulnerable.
—— “As a medical professional, I have had too many patients who were perfectly normally developing children until a certain vaccine combination was given (commonly 18 months) and the child was never the same. I wonder if it not only the timing, but the magnitude of antigen load at key neurological development points that could be an epigenetic trigger to switch on inherited genes. (Autism has 102 identified genes which come from both the mother and the father). Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is not anti-vaccine - he is simply questioning the significant increase in the number of vaccines in the schedule (8 vaccines when I was young (born 1973) to 68 today) and the spurious need for certain vaccines (eg: RSV or COVID which are typically significantly mild in children. Acetaminophen could be loosely associated but I think it is being scapegoated.
Certainly the case in my family. The neurological issues (autism, epilepsy, OCD, misophonia; loss of all speech for 3 years following vaccination) in my family in this youngest generation (ages 4-18) are many, serious, and probably lifelong. Nothing like them is seen in older generations of my very large extended family. I hope these kids can eventually be self-supporting; that likelihood is not obvuous. I am horrified my blue state wants to do away with exemptions from its already heavily enforced school child vaccine mandates that demand a very high burden of proof read to get the existing exemption. I do think safety, effects of multiple vaccines, and genetic issues add to the complexity of this issue. In the near term, we can play study finding wars until the cows come home, but the fact is most existing studies have glaring shortcomings, biases and are short term. VAERs data base needs far more attention. So in the foreseeable future, conservative caution and monitoring is more than warranted I hope RFK can weather all these personal attacks and will be given the opportunity to establish the careful study program and policies he is proposing.
Instead, the Trump administration should be focusing on substances that we KNOW can cause the type of DNA damage responsible for autism. Like the cannabis they want to reschedule to a LESS dangerous category. On the order of a 300% increase in risk for mothers who use this "natural" remedy.
From what I can tell, Tylenol by itself doesn't necessarily contribute directly to autism, but when taken in conjunction with vaccines I'm not so sure. As the liver is trying to detoxify the body after a vaccine it can't do it's job properly when acetaminophen complicates the matter by directly damaging the liver at the same time. I'd like to hear what other readers think about this.
Sorry but tylenol really isn't good for anyone and there are warnings that go back over two decades about risks to unborn babies. You might want to lookup how many ER visits per year, drugs like tylenol and ibuprofen are responsible for. It might shock most normie readers here.
Here are some unreported truths this article misses badly. Super lazy to.say the effect the study found is 5% at worst.
The study found a dose dependent 33%, 52%, and 87% effect for the bottom third, middle third, and top third of exposures. Then they controlled for FOURTEEN or more other variables to erase a lot of the power and end up with 5% overall and the top two thirds are higher at 10-11% and retain solid p values despite the excessive controlling. Anyone who has ever read Woolridge (Econometrics text) or done this themselves knows how much can go wrong by controlling for too many factors. You get colliders and confounders. Confounders never disprove an association.... they simply mean it could be one or the other.
Sibling controls are their own problem, especially in this study. Number one, of the 2.5 million subjects only 100,000 were sibling pairs. Also, mothers are going to tend to say ok to painkillers or tend to not, so between siblings who have a mom with general tendencies there are few of those 100,000 who actually get a high dose versus a low dose. You're losing tons of signal between those things, so yes weaker result.
The recent Harvard study discussed further weaknesses with the sibling controls and pointed out that causality likelihood is increased by three things:
One, those dose responsive results. Sure, still can be something else (like maternal age, and older women have more pain and thus use more painkiller) BUT most of those 14 controls can't possibly explain away that dose response (controlling for "region of Sweden you reside in" is just freaking diluting the stats power for no benefit, who the fuck cares if this effect doesn't hold in Helsingborg versus Stockholm). Two the fact that studies of blood levels of acetominophen and cord blood levels (not just patient chart or subjective surveys, but real numbers from objectively measured biomarkers) also support; and three that animal studies show the neurodegeneration needed to explain the mechanism.
Here is the Harvard, UMass, UCLA and Mt. Sinai study reviewing everything (published August 20) and the first to comment much on that Sweden study: https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12940-025-01208-0
Thank you for analyzing this so I don’t have to. Much appreciated. Although I know personal experience doesn’t hold water in the scientific arena, my sister, a kindergarten teacher for 35 years would disagree with Alex’s assessment as to why we’re seeing more cases of autism. While genetics, advanced maternal and paternal ages, as well as expanded diagnostic criteria may account for a some of the increases, I believe there are other factors at play here, environmental/toxic exposure factors from a range of insults( Tylenol use may be one in a long list of potential exposures) to the developing fetus and infant or toddler, that all combine in a perfect storm to create neurodevelopmental issues for a child. The kindergarten teacher is often the first one to identify the autistic and ADHD spectrum child and order the appropriate testing. She reports a marked increase in the number of children in the past 10 or so years especially, that barring genetic factors ( because she obviously doesn’t know that), this is not due to expanding criteria or advanced parental ages.
I have been teaching for 22 years and your sister is correct. There is something VERY wrong going on and protecting the stock market and to be the most important goal. Many of my young parents report that there is also an increase in meds/shots in pregnant women and many tests for abnormalities so the p a rents can make early decisions about their pregnancy. The food is horrible. It's probably many of these things out together. I wish people could see it but for the current parenting generation, it's considered normal. I'm worried.
We are worried as well. More education is needed for the parents.
My daughter is a 6th grade science teacher. Every year she has taught there has been at least one kid with autism. She actually enjoys teaching them as they have generally been smarter than most kids and hard workers. What she generally sees are social issues with other kids, but she usually takes them under her wing and provides help and guidance in various situations, and overall they generally do well. It has been pretty much 100% boys, too, she can't recall ever having an autistic girl student.
She says she doesn't remember ever being in a class as a kid in the 1970s and 80s with anyone you would call autistic. Nor do I, looking back to my school years in the 1950s and 60s.
The vaccines I got as a kid were extremely limited. Most of us actually got sick with measles, mumps, chicken pox. It wasn't greatly different in the 1970s. As for fever, I think aspirin might have been given to kids, and when we had a high fever, I distinctly remember my parents giving me a cool bath to help lower the fever.
You can't give aspirin to kids with a fever nowadays. Which reminds me of another thing we've been hearing that would strike the speakers a little bit more if they really stopped to ponder the implication of the fact they state.
They say "It's dangerous to implicate Tylenol as potentially problem-causing, because *it's the only safe painkiller left for pregnant women*, everything else is known to cause problems!"
Which of course if you were being self-aware might make you think that it's against the odds that every other painkiller is proven beyond a doubt to cause infrequent serious issues for some in utero, but this one is the magic one that's simply perfectly clean. Free lunch!
Those students are so fortunate to have such a teacher as your daughter who goes above and beyond to help them!
Yes, I never got tylenol. I got cool rags on my head.
Teachers were among the first to notice the surge in autism. When we brought my then 2 1/2 year old son to the local school district's special ed department in 1995 for evaluation, the intake teacher observed his behavior briefly and then said: "He looks like he has autism. We're getting all kinds of these kids now and we don't know where it's coming from." The medical people at the time were clueless. Two docs insisted my sons weren't autistic and they would get better if we had them watch a lot of videos with singing and talking (I'm not joking). Of course, the teacher was right and the docs wrong, alas.
That was a good service they provided, evaluating a 21/2 year old. Some districts don’t provide any evaluation until pre-k or K age is reached. So unfortunate the MDs were uneducated on the signs. Sorry you had to experience that. It creates confusion for the parents as well. Yes, a good teacher can spot the signs immediately. I’ve witnessed my sister do this on a couple of occasions.
The practice then was not to formally diagnose autism until age 4. Before then, the child would get a diagnosis of PDD NOS (Pervasive Developmental Delay, Not Otherwise Specified). Occasionally, such children would improve enough to escape the autism diagnosis. For instance, my oldest son regressed at age two but then made a partial recovery and was diagnosed with ADHD. He improved over time and is now married, employed, and a father. His two younger brothers will need lifelong care.
Personal experience is data and should always be valued. Many observations by individual are data that scientists just fail to read correctly. You can't prove things with one personal observation, but you can learn a lot about what kind of experiment to do to see if you can prove something.
Even Edward Jenner was making simple personal observations when it struck him that milkmaids rarely got smallpox, leading to his development of dosing small amounts of cowpox to protect people.
Here is the article that absolutely convinced me that the autism numbers are higher, it's not just "more diagnosis": https://www.thefp.com/p/the-autism-surge-lies-conspiracies
Excellent point, Kelly. Thank you for the link as well as your comment.
You might be right about that but if the cause is low grade non-specific toxin overload, you never going to parse out a causal link in the data for any specific cause, including Tylenol use..
I agree. There was a study that I read a while ago with twin girls who had been diagnosed with autism, one fairly severe, and one less so, I believe in the U.K. Their parents worked with a functional medicine physician who employed a program of detoxification, clean, organic diet , probiotics, occupational, and speech therapy. I think this all started before one year of age and continued to two years of age, but this is entirely from memory. The girls showed dramatic improvement in a relatively short period of time. My point in writing this is to say that there are treatments and hope out there. One key is early detection, of course, as is the case for so many conditions.
I agree there is hope. Some hope comes from the fact that, while I still think Autism is rising for sure, there are plenty of false diagnoses as well. Epilepsy, Laudau-Kleffner, and other things can be misdiagnosed as autism. They are much more treatable so make sure to work hard at proper diagnosis. Sometimes a lazy diagnosis of ASD is possible, but go to a specialty clinic if you have suspicion.
https://mdpi-res.com/d_attachment/jpm/jpm-14-00641/article_deploy/jpm-14-00641-v2.pdf?version=1719231635
Here it is. Hopefully it will open
Thank you. First I cried for this poor family, too, though, what they've been through, and now I am so happy for so much success for their girls. In this field, data is people.
I would much rather have autism than the relentless sociopathy that especially is evident in Washington this week. Frankly, I do wish there was an Angel of Death that could selectively wipe out antisocial cretins, that might be a significant amount of our population in this country alone, but for me it's a start.
I forgot to say: the Sweden study, and most of these studies, also study ADHD alongside autism and the findings are regularly stronger for ADHD. They were very much so in the Sweden study.
However, there are also some indications that other types of painkiller have similar effects on both autism and ADHD. So not clear what's going on. Infection incidence leading to painkiller use but also these diseases is a possibility, but so is use of these painkillers - if anyone has data on what % of women get infections that have fever while pregnant I want that info.
Thank you. Now I don't have to wade through the statistics and make sense of them.
What I do know that they will try to hide anything that doesn't fit their confirmation bias.
That's right... I know Alex hates it but the far too late-coming ivermectin studies took the cake. The NIH sponsored a study thru Vanderbilt and Duke, they saw a huge effect on severe disease with a great p value and blew it off as a smaller number of patients (which is totally already taken into account by said p value) and then they saw a modest but statistically significant effect in the overall results, which they then explained away by saying "not clinically significant" when it only helped patients get better 0.5 days faster. Meanwhile, that's exactly what Tamiflu does and I never found an MD who told me they wouldn't prescribe something that saved that much time ill.
They just knew their careers were over if they wrote it any other way.
I'm normie but I'm not shocked. Tylenol overdose at one point was the number one form of suicide in the UK.
It's an ugly way to go!
I’m writing this here just so it’s at the top of the thread, what was that Predator movie where the predator was going after the son of the military guy because the son was autistic and to the predators, that was seen as the next evolutionary improvement of Homo sapiens?
I don’t care if people disagree or find it stupid, I have to wonder if getting rid of emotional lability to some degree with more functioning autistic folk is a step up from all the F’ing personality disorder garbage now rampant in this country.
Talk amongst yourselves.
I find it really stupid.
what, tylenol issues, autism, or alluding to your lack of tolerance of alternative viewpoints that don't suck your butthhole?...
Missing the I-C in the middle of your alias?...
There's interesting work on the key emotional framework of decision making. An easy read is Descartes' Error by Antonio DAmasio. Interesting case of a pillar in the community who had an injury that severed his emotional into from decision making. His life went to pieces. Autists aren't very functional outside certain specialized settings, more common in techno industrialized society.
Autism may be a pure spectrum issue, but there are various presentations, there are very primitive forms, as well as high functioning forms. But at the end of the day, people who are autistic invariably are flat and detached, and frankly, that could be a blessing for some depending on what they do socioeconomically. Just my opinion.
they are not detached, they have trouble forming attachments
it's the difference between not caring about soccer like me...
- and wishing you could play but you don't know how, and you would probably do it wrong anyway, and probably nobody would pass the ball to you, and every time you try to kick the ball it doesn't go the right way & probably everyone noticed that
autistic people don't avoid looking you in the eye because they don't care about you, it's actually overwhelming for them
It’s the most accurate description of asocial behavior, and NOT antisocial, but asocial, they just don’t want to engage with people.
i suppose, that would the functional expression of it.
it's like if you showed up to a black tie affair wearing a sombrero and pancho. you would immediately regret jumping to the conclusion that every party in october is a costume party.
you might try to grab a plate & fit in the best of your ability, but your brain would be firing the entire time, and just about any true introvert would be self-conscious to the point that they would have trouble forming words & answering basic questions.
but you would like nothing better than to network with everyone and to be in on all the fancy-people banter like how lazy their gardeners are or how they are quite sure their mechanic is overcharging them.
One of the numerous sequels that came out about six years ago, all I remember was the main protagonist was a former military guy who had an autistic son and the son figured out how to operate the predator’s mask and the predators figured that out and wanted to take the kid.
I’ve seen fulminant hepatic failure in Tylenol overdose… sometimes only treatment ultimately is liver transplant
I think he makes the point that Tylenol isn't good for anyone because of the significant risks like the one's you point out (as does Alex). But, as he says, the issue is autism; and the statistical proof for a link between autism and Tylenol is weak (not non-existent, just weak).
But if you are worried about your liver, proceed with great caution before taking Tylenol. It has its uses, but minor aches and pains aren't among them.
I’m shocked I’m not seeing any comments about vaccine causing autism. The congressional data from 3 weeks shows that, “Vaccinated children were significantly more likely to be diagnosed with autism, ADHD, and allergies.
We’re not talking about barely higher odds—these were statistically significant findings, with some conditions showing vaccinated children were up to 400% more likely (or 5 times more likely) to have certain diagnoses.”
Curious to why we don’t talk about this more:
https://unorthodoxy.substack.com/p/how-a-congressional-hearing-revealed
One of the questions is whether the vaccination itself caused autism, or whether it was the acetaminophen that was taken prophylactically along with the vaccination, or both.
Brandon! Thanks for this comment! This is what I mean when I say “Tylenol is a distraction.”
Autism and vaccination occurred at the same time in the 40s. Tylenol came on the scene in the 1950s.
Also, I don’t think every case with vaccination received Tylenol.
But please, I may have missed something here.
Receiving Tylenol with immunization is a relatively late development. It wasn't routine in the 1990s and early 2000s when I was still working in hospital-based ambulatory pediatrics. I'm a bit late to the vaccines-cause-autism debate, but upon starting to work in the public school system I immediately noticed the high incidence of food allergies and asthma & later Type 1 diabetes. So I am on board with vaccines causing autoimmune conditions.
Yes, but the argument isn't that Tylenol is THE cause of autism. Clearly vaccines aren't the cause of autism because there are indeed autistic children that have never been vaccinated (I have one who is a patient of mine). Having said that, vaccines absolutely can trigger autism or the cascade that leads to autism as, it seems, can Tylenol. There are likely many things that can trigger autism and while there are certain things that seem characteristic of many autism cases (e.g., excitotoxicity), I'm not aware that we've found the smoking gun that is present in all autism cases. So in the meantime, we just try to identify triggers through statistical associations and, if one is wise, minimize exposure to those.
As Ted stated, acetaminophen negatively impacts glutathione (as well as inhibiting mitochondrial respiration) which have obvious implications for losing protective effects on neurons from excitotoxins. So Tylenol or any other substance that interferes with neuroprotective mechanisms could be (at least one of the things) to blame.
There are autistic children who are unvaccinated, but their mothers were very likely vaccinated, and the aluminum adjuvants from the mother passed to the child in utero, causing the autism in the child. Injections of aluminum stay in your body forever, because your white blood cells are unable to filter it through the kidneys, unless there is a chelation therapy to remove it. The question is, are there unvaccinated autistic children whose mothers and grandmothers were also unvaccinated?
Can you provide a citation showing Al adjuvants passing in utero? That's very interesting if the data exist.
There is likely synergy because acetaminophen impairs the body's detox mechanism (glutathione) and vaccines are loaded with toxins.
Another factor to consider is the timing of when Aspirin was linked to Reye’s Syndrome in the 80’s. Also around the time the vaccine schedule was changed for childhood immunizations. After understanding the mechanism of action in Tylenol, it’s very interesting to posit about its links to a wide variety of issues in children. The increase is simply too much for it to be solely genetic or just from better testing/diagnosing, IMO. It seems likely that it’s a combination of immunizations and Tylenol, perhaps influenced by a genetic component and/or the lack of nutritional quality of our food. Maybe even environmental toxins ALL working together and exploiting vulnerable, hyperactive immune systems. I feel very strongly that vaccines are the lynchpin in the entire cascade of events, though.
I teach elementary school and what was shocking to me, is the amount of shots and tests given to pregnant woman as reported by some of my student's mom's. I had my children in the 90's and I hadn't realized this was now the norm. Autism is now off the chain as well as many other problems. Food, drugs, technology- it's all ruining a generation but these parents see this as normal as it is all they know. Our generation should be ashamed that we will protect our retirement funds (food, pharma, tech) at all costs. Most reading this substack are retired so they have NO CLUE how bad this really is.
I was assuming the Tylenol commet was meant to lead to the vaccine discussion, but still waiting....
This post was solely to address acetaminophen. My opinion: much hyped “answer in September;” no or inconclusive results from the data sent worldwide to independent researchers; late in the month = less than satisfactory press conference. This is supported by a comment on Malone that “President Trump indicated, not once, but a couple of times, “they want to wait 2 more months, but I said, No, tell them now!..’”
There is a ton of (Manipulated? Fraudulent?) data “proving” S&E. Contradictory evidence tying vaccines and autism needs to be on solid ground. You will note that according to tptb, Wakefield’s observations were wrong. They were not.
The government has known for at least 25 years that vaccines can cause autism. Public acknowledgement of that fact would end the vaccine program and promoting that program has always been the primary goal of the government health bureaucracies.
Those data should have upended the entire argument! Thanks for posting the link!
I agree. When comparing the current vaccination schedule to previous decades, chronic illness amongst children and even the comparison of vaccinated vs non-vaccinated health statistics, it is clear that the shots have limited, if any benefit, considering the significant and sometimes permanent side effects. Our poor children..what are we allowing the pharmaceutical industry do to them? 😢
Sorry Alex...you've got some overly simplistic thinking going on when you assume that "many" (?) of the people today diagnosed with autism would have been diagnosed as "mentally retarded" (or "intellectually disabled") in the past. We ALL know that there is a huuuuge diff between the symptoms of autism and the symptoms of mental retardation. Further, there was evidence that the latter was diagnosed in around 1% of children. Needless to say, autism is so much more common today. It seems that you, Alex, have begun to believe the Big Pharma propaganda. You are too smart to be conned on this subject.
I question the overall diagnosis of autism, especially since there is now a "spectrum" of autism. Maybe that's accurate, maybe not. My brother was born in 1945. From perhaps the age of 6 his behavior was noticeably odd, but how he expressed it was also odd. No one ever gave an autism diagnosis back then. He was always an extremely intelligent kid, and as he got older he was brilliant in math and science. Social behavior was another matter. He had a "sort of" friend here and there, but couldn't even relate to the rest of his family except for with his mother. He always acted angry towards me, his 4 year younger sister, and went through a ten year period in which. he wouldn't look at me, speak to. me, sit next to me. My mother had long discussions with him about his treatment of me, and his answer was always that he just didn't know why. My parents were in despair of what to do, but got no help dealing with whatever his problem was. Just a few years ago with all the information out there regarding autism, like a lightning bolt it hit me that being on an autism spectrum explained his behavior
What could have caused it? I have absolutely no idea, but I doubt it was anything like Tylenol because my mother (who grew up on a farm) was very much into health food and natural eating even back then, and most of her life she took nothing she absolutely didn't have to. And growing up in the 1950s my brother had most of the childhood diseases as there weren't vaccines then. His noticeable odd social behaviors predated the polio vaccine on a sugar cube that came later.
My brother is now about to turn 80, same as he has always been. Communication with others is not his forte, now as before. But he did get through college, he worked until retirement, he got married, he's still married (never any kids). He has lived a quiet but stable life.
When I was 16, out of the blue as he was leaving for college, he apologized to me. After that, we have spoken to each other, he still sends me birthday cards, but we have never ever had a deep involved conversation as that is beyond his capability. He doesn't converse with people, but he will answer a question and that's it. No follow up to further a conversation. I do wonder about his conversational ability with his wife, I would assume it's better just as he could have somewhat of a conversation with my mother.
Autism began in the 1930s when aluminum hydroxide was added to the diphtheria vaccine. Was your brother vaccinated against diphtheria? Was he vaccinated against pertussis or tetanus? All of these vaccines have included aluminum adjuvants since the 1930s and 1940s.
I can't really know for sure, but I don't think so. But the aluminum hydroxide angle is interesting and worth looking at for sure. Being affected by autism still must have been rare until a certain tipping point.
And what exactly does this ONE case prove? Absolutely nothing.
Secondly, you were never able to confirm (or not) whether your mother took acetaminophen, did you? No.
Get real.
What a nasty reply. You're a doctor? No, my mother never would have taken it because throughout her life the only thing she took was occasional aspirin.
I'm going to trust Robert Malone on this one.
And Here's Malone's Tylenol piece. https://www.malone.news/p/tylenol-leucovorin-and-child-neurodevelopment?utm_source=publication-search.
Alex, resorting to histrionics and feigned outrage over the actions of others does not bolster your case, but exposes the weakness of it.
Thanks for posting the link. To be fair, I don't think I Alex sounded particularly historical or outraged.
R Malone’s article was outstanding
I appreciate you and your take so much! But here’s a piece I wrote this week debunking that Swedish study you and others have been relying on. Did you know it didn’t even ask moms if they were taking Tylenol?? It’s a scam study.
https://thefederalist.com/2025/09/29/trumps-tylenol-cautions-are-just-common-sense/
That's a very informative piece you wrote, Dr. Gaty--thanks so much for sharing that!
Please look into the vaccine/Tylenol connection. When mothers followed the vaccine schedule we were told to give Tylenol to ease reactions to the vaccines to our children. Might the combination have been too toxic for the child’s liver & immune system to handle safely?
Thanks Maria.. I agree....worthy of further study.
The evidence that mRNA injections (high risk, hugely unnecessary genetic therapies), cause death is certainly NOT "none"!!! Check the VAERS database with HUGE underreporting factors of at least 10:1 and probably 40:1 (largely voluntary) and compare 2019 to 2021. The vaccine injuries causing death on VAERS are in the 10s of thousands mostly for the US alone and that is just the INCREASE over the regular background vaccine deaths of 100s. I believe that the last time I checked it was about 30,000 deaths. If you use a underreporting factor of 40:1 (harvard study I believe), that works out to 1.2 million deaths from the jabs (short term) - WHICH DOESN"T INCLUDE the "Turbo cancers". World wide deaths from vaccine injury must be much greater than this because the mRNAs were injected over a billion times in the world vs. about 100, million times in the USA. 17 million MAY be an exaggeration but I would bet that it is not. Cancer is already among the leading causes of death and Alex has mentioned the already well established link between the mRNA jabs and the increase in IGG4 antibodies (far less effective). Reducing the effectiveness of the immune system is very likely to contribute to cancer deaths since everyone generates cancerous cells in their bodies daily from long before birth. the reason that we all don't die of cancer every ay is because our immune systems KILL the cancer cells. Furthermore, how could the mRNAs with TRILLIONS of spike proteins being generated in the body for versions of Covid that you can't get in the "wild", NOT affect the immune system in a highly deleterious manner. I agree with Alex that the data is insufficient on this question, but that is not an advantage!! It is a deliberate attempt to suppress the truth that these mRNA jabs are HIGHLY dangerous and should be outlawed immediately for everyone. Alex knows this but even HE has to be careful to avoid statements that can't be proven. I understand and sympthasize but we have to be much more careful about medical interventions (including masks!) with little or no real advantages and LOTS of drawbacks!!
Ian in Vancouver BC
I agree. That press conference was strange and somewhat inelegant. And of course the focus became tylenol instead of autism. Why? Perhaps it was a bit of daylight about vaccines: childhood vaccine schedule, mrna vaccine, lack of published data, but keeping focus on tylenol so people don’t completely freakout.
It may very well be that what I have heard is that Tylenol is not the main cause of autism, but rather the active aluminum salts in childhood vaccines that cause it. Tylenol may be statistically associated with vaccines during pregnancy because they would cause both autism in the fetus and pain in the mother (treated with Tylenol). Either way, IF tylenol is a significant cause of autism it is not as important as the mountain of vaccines with neurotoxic aluminum (and mercury for 60 years) that are now being mandated for children. It is child torture (and parent torture) to make massive, massive mandated and risk free profits for drug companies and their global banking owners. We live in a truly truly sad world where this is not just allowed but massively supported by governments. Our only hope is to continue to learn and educate. Even my own children (3 of them with kids) have ignored this and continue to vaccinate their own kids because the propaganda is so powerful. I am just not persuasive enough to oppose the avalanche of propaganda, but I pray about it a lot. Ian in Vancouver BC
I think you should spend some time looking into regression in autism. It seems that many parents (I have read different numbers but probably at least 30% of the cases) have the experience that their child reached certain developmental milestones and then suddenly regressed. In this case it makes no sense to blame increased diagnosis or genetic factors as a cause. If you are able to develop normally, you don’t suddenly regress because of genetic factors. It seems clear there must be some environmental factor causing the sudden regression. I am no expert, I’m just listening to various voices and reading and remaining open to whatever explanation makes sense. But I just don’t see that the hugely increasing numbers of cases over the last 30 years can be explained by increased awareness and diagnosis.
I believe what RFK, Jr said was there is a correlation between Tylenol and autism diagnosis, but that doesn’t mean it causes it. More research needs to be done. I don’t think anyone (including Trump) was supposed to jump to the conclusion that Tylenol is solely responsible for an increase in autism diagnoses. But rather, let’s play it safe and avoid Tylenol unless absolutely necessary. I’d like to see some conversations about what constitutes “absolutely necessary”. I believe that there are absolutely people, including pregnant women, who rush to medicate fevers when it isn’t necessary. Fevers are our bodies defense system, if you have a fever, most times that means your body is working hard to combat whatever illness is attacking you. Let your body do its job. That said, there are times when fevers should be medicated, and that threshold is lower for pregnant women (though I’m not sure what it is exactly). Instead of people jumping from one extreme conclusion to another, it would be oh-so-refreshing to see helpful dialogue around actual proper usage of Tylenol during pregnancy, since neither complete avoidance nor intentional overdosing qualify as “proper use”.
I suspect autism (regardless of its cause) is primarily what we used to call "retarded" before we knew better.
Its literally an inverse relationship over time. Meaning a diagnosis of retarded has declined in proportion to the explosion of autism diagnosis.
We owe a lot to autist, some of the biggest scientific breakthroughs are result of the mind of an autist.
And its likely autism is a side effect caused by the blind, random and messy process of evolution as our brain size exploded.
I don’t have any idea what causes autism. I don’t have a pet theory or an axe to grind. But..
I’m 69. I grew up in a family of 5 siblings. I knew a lot of families with multiple kids in the smallish, middle America town in which I grew up in the 1960’s. An All American Midwestern town.
I saw nobody who had a sibling that seemed either autistic or retarded. It’s now claimed to be 1 in 36? That would mean several families who had kids in school would have had a child like this. There were none.
Just based on 69 years of living among families and kids, I have a very hard time believing this is just a matter of more diagnoses.
I had a great uncle who was likely autistic but of course the family thought he was "retarded." After the movie Rain Man came out, my mom said she realized he was just like Raymond. He could read well and say his ABCs backwards lickety-split! I am sure he would have been much better off growing up and made more progress now as opposed to 100 years ago.
I have a friend who is in her mid-70s who is clearly autistic, but when she was a kid, that would not have been a potential diagnosis. She was put in some sort of home or institution for years, probably mainstreamed in the 70s when those places were shut down. When I hear people claim that "you never see autistic people in their 70s" I just know they have never met someone like my friend, not that they don't exist. It's the "black swan" logical fallacy.
My great uncle lived to be in his early 80s, so clearly autistic people can live longer! I don't know why they wouldn't.
Not so much a case of not living that long, but they're saying there were very few people with autism who were born back then. What you and I are saying is, they weren't diagnosed with autism. They were labeled as retarded. But still probably not 3 out of every 100 kids!
See my comment that might stay at the top of this thread?
I don't know...maybe we NEED some hysteria so people start doing their own research instead of blindly trusting what Dr's and government says is good? Tylenol is not good for you, nor are most things on the market.
Problem is too many use Google, IG, Facebook or Tiktok for their search engine.
Alex; Thank you for an excellent analysis. My personal response to fever is to ride it out as long as it doesn't go above 102. The medical opinion is that pregnant women should not take anything if their fever is less than 100.4. I contracted chicken pox at age 50 and maintained a fever of 102 for three weeks. I had no problems and survived without any permanent problems.
Fevers are our bodies doing their jobs! I let my kids ride them out so their bodies can heal themselves - not sure how we got convinced that fevers=bad.
My daughter’s fevers led to seizures. Some fevers ARE bad.
My son had a febrile seizure also. After a DPT shot in the 80s. He regressed. I witnessed it firsthand. It was not 'genetics' nor was it 'better diagnosis.' I am sick to death of people not stating the truth on vaccines. Do they harm every child? No. Do they harm enough children that there should be no mandates? Yes.
i think even rfk jr was skeptical until he heard so many anecdotal stories like yours from moms.
i truly hope they figure this out
I think it is totally figured out - there is just way too much money involved for much to change. Think about it - injection makers have:
No liability
No regulations
Mandated market
Why in the world would they let anything change just to save a few kids?
Trump should have stayed silent on this. And while a 5% correlation is not much, the danger could be in one critical period of gestation and if they looked at just that period the safety signal might be much higher [see thalidomide]. Until further notice pregnant women would be wise to avoid Tylenol. Now as far as if there is more autism/retardation ot whatever you call it I'd argue DUH. There's something going wrong in 1/30 of kids? More or not, this should be addressed.
If you dig deeper into the evidence that people are discussing, there are certain genetic characteristics that make a person - born or unborn - more vulnerable to greater harm from the metabolites of acetaminophen. And there are timing factors that compound the harm, including right after getting a vaccination.
So, my point is, Trump was blunt in suggesting people avoid Tylenol because they have no way to know whether they're among the especially vulnerable.
—— “As a medical professional, I have had too many patients who were perfectly normally developing children until a certain vaccine combination was given (commonly 18 months) and the child was never the same. I wonder if it not only the timing, but the magnitude of antigen load at key neurological development points that could be an epigenetic trigger to switch on inherited genes. (Autism has 102 identified genes which come from both the mother and the father). Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is not anti-vaccine - he is simply questioning the significant increase in the number of vaccines in the schedule (8 vaccines when I was young (born 1973) to 68 today) and the spurious need for certain vaccines (eg: RSV or COVID which are typically significantly mild in children. Acetaminophen could be loosely associated but I think it is being scapegoated.
Certainly the case in my family. The neurological issues (autism, epilepsy, OCD, misophonia; loss of all speech for 3 years following vaccination) in my family in this youngest generation (ages 4-18) are many, serious, and probably lifelong. Nothing like them is seen in older generations of my very large extended family. I hope these kids can eventually be self-supporting; that likelihood is not obvuous. I am horrified my blue state wants to do away with exemptions from its already heavily enforced school child vaccine mandates that demand a very high burden of proof read to get the existing exemption. I do think safety, effects of multiple vaccines, and genetic issues add to the complexity of this issue. In the near term, we can play study finding wars until the cows come home, but the fact is most existing studies have glaring shortcomings, biases and are short term. VAERs data base needs far more attention. So in the foreseeable future, conservative caution and monitoring is more than warranted I hope RFK can weather all these personal attacks and will be given the opportunity to establish the careful study program and policies he is proposing.
I agree (not the scapegoated part). and thank you.
Instead, the Trump administration should be focusing on substances that we KNOW can cause the type of DNA damage responsible for autism. Like the cannabis they want to reschedule to a LESS dangerous category. On the order of a 300% increase in risk for mothers who use this "natural" remedy.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165178124002567
From what I can tell, Tylenol by itself doesn't necessarily contribute directly to autism, but when taken in conjunction with vaccines I'm not so sure. As the liver is trying to detoxify the body after a vaccine it can't do it's job properly when acetaminophen complicates the matter by directly damaging the liver at the same time. I'd like to hear what other readers think about this.
this reader agrees 100%. the main culprit is the vaccine itself. the tylenol adds insult to injury