It is the safest painkiller currently available. Ibuprofen can cause gut bleeding and renal issues if overdosed on. We all know about opiates.
Some facts - typical adult dose is 1g. Max suggested cap on the drug label is 3g per day (about 6 pills at usual 500mg dose). You need to take 10g (20 pills) to be at real risk of hepatotoxicity.
So 10 times the typical dose is when you have overdose effects. (basically 20 pills per day vs 2 pills per day).
Not your "wildly unsafe at slightly above usage levels" AT ALL (as someone posted on here)
This is not harmless - this might cause someone to take more dangerous painkillers when acetaminophen (tylenol) might have safely helped them. The autism stuff is plainly false and disproved.
It was also a trend way before COVID hit the scene, but its mishandling by both capital-controlled parties at every step to this day, was so egregious as to rule out Hanlon's razor as an excuse long ago.
Notice the most recent approved drama to bicker about is COVID vaccine access, when those don't even reliably prevent transmission. The conversation doesn't include the fact that an N95 respirator is the only effect method of stopping transmission and endless reinfections, the latter of which increase chances for long COVID complications like heart failure and a whole list of other things.
Intentional depopulation is a recurring theme in the US.
I'm not sure "the press manufactured consent for never-ending COVID reinfections" so much as people figured it would become another cold like the other four coronaviruses, regardless of what anyone wants.
1) Manufacture consent with the normal media outlets owned by the same capital interests as our political parties (see first URL)
2) After people were fed up with living in a COVID world with no serious alternatives or rethinking of society provided, they became impatient
3) Gov polls the populace to figure out how to milk political points while upholding the illusion of a functioning democracy (see second URL)
4) Gov says it's just following what the people were demanding (health and long term visions be damned)
5) People get endlessly reinfected and have no idea how much internal damage is racking up on their immune and other vital bodily systems
The scientific research has existed for years now, but it's been ignored by capital interests because it threatens the profits and consumption/GDP numbers of our primitively designed, outdated economic arrangements.
I'm sorry but as a non American I can only think about Rehab Officer Tylenol Jones from the
Idiocracy movie since that's the first time I heard about Tylenol without knowing it's a drug, and in the movie everyone had well known American brands as their names due to overreach of corporate marketing into society, but that part of the satire went over my head as a European kid back then, thinking Tylenol was just a person's name and not a drug.
I wonder if Americans know how much of their society and culture bled incompletely into other countries via movies. Like for example after communism fell the youth here got hooked on American rap and hip-hop so we were using slang from those songs like friends calling each other the N word without knowing the context behind it since that's how black rappers addressed each other and they were rock stars here.
The safety aspects of it are not something that gets raised in the UK much - other than suicide attempts, which are going to happen no matter what medicine you use.
Probably the biggest risk comes from people not realising that other medicines (e.g. for cold and flu) often include it, so they double up on a dose.
Stresses the liver, also if its used frequently for mild inconveniences you should maybe go to the doctor, as frequent headaches or stuff like that can hint to more severe stuff.
It does not stress the liver at recommended doses. Plenty of people get frequent headaches and other aches that have no other severe stuff going on, or really anything that needs to be treated more than symptomatically. Scheduled tylenol is an effective element of a pain regimen for many people.
There really are risks. It's just not worth it during pregnancy. The pain killing effects of tylenol aren't worth the potential risks during pregnancy.
You can't look at just one risk and say it's not worth it.
Like everything else in life, you must weigh all the risks and benefits.
Untreated fever also carries real risks - neural tube defects, congenital heart defects, orofacial clefts, miscarriage.
You need to treat fever, and NSAIDS have greater risks than acetaminophen.
It's irrational to let a minuscule and unproven risk dominate the decision when the other side of the balance has more evidence of larger risks to weigh.
I didn't mean to say it should never be taken. Sometimes medicines should be taken that have risks for the baby. But it shouldn't be taken for minor headaches and aches and pains like it can be when not pregnant.
Yeah my wife is also pregnant and sometimes it is really tough on her but she doesn't use any medication other than baby aspirin for blood pressure. The alternative is exercise, anti-inflammatory foods, and also realizing that it isn't just your body anymore and you can't hurt somebody else's chances for a very small amount of pain relief.
Ibuprofen is NSAID (non steroid anti inflammatory), oaracetamol is not. Related but different.
As long as autism, there can be no causative link. Millions have autism, billions take paracetamol. Autism has, like its cousin schizophrenia, a strong genetic-familial basis. Hardly any environmental factor increases the risk so much to be worrisome.
If it's already in the news, it's already too late to short. News events tend to quickly reverse as well so I'd be looking for a long position at a support level
I remember an old study linking ultrasounds to lefthandedness. It was legit. Families with access to ultrasounds lived in countries/areas where lefthandedness was more culturally accepted, places where it was not drilled out of kids. The study was correct, but anyone touting it as causation was totally incorrect.
Fyi, sharks are way more likely to attack people with australian accents. Never go swimming with an auzzi.
He was legitimately put into a position of power by the american political system. And this is an article by the BBC, probably the most respected news source on the planet. Crazy is now the norm, the leading voice. It must be confronted.
Your first point is correct, but it (like the second one) has no bearing on the issue of the medical soundness of the department's positions and policy.
Baader-Meinhof phenomenon at work; I commented about the ultrasound/handedness the other day.
I wonder whether the political actors in question don't understand correlation != causation, or whether they hope that enough of the populace does not understand it in order to further some goal. But what goal? Buying cheap drug shares? Seems ... silly.
When something like this happens there’s a non-zero chance some slimy hedge fund is behind this pushing conspiracy theories on gullible folks to tank a stock.
Good time to buy. While the cult might take this to heart and stop using Tylenol alltogether, there will be lawsuits to protect the brand and the company, and considering the lack of proof, in the end they will suceed.
They are molesting the money again, but the company can just pivot to drinkable bleech beverages marketed on joe rogan, in the end an evidence-free health care system might be way more profitable in the short term.
Maybe I never take enough but it's also such a weak painkiller that I always prefer to just feel how it feels and sense if I'm getting better or worse. And that is without believing it's super bad for me, just doesn't make sense as a trade-off.
Some times advil works. Some times aspirin works. Some times Tylenol works. Some times none of them work. There’s all kinds of substances that are available freely that can kill you if you take too much. NSAIDS, Imodium, DXM, iron supplements.
It’s the only painkiller allowed for pregnant women, so this leads me to believe this is some other form of conspiracy to control women (since the science does’t exist, it obviously doesn’t cause autism)
Most medications have a buffer, so if you accidentally take an extra dose (instead of just 2 pills every 6 hours, but no more than 6 in a 48 hour period). Acetaminophen does not have that buffer. Even just slightly over the dosing recommendations can be lethal, and for a drug that's in hundreds of products, that's terrifying. Imo you're being exceptionally careless for one of the most dangerous OTC drugs we have available.
How is following the instructions being “exceptionally careless”?
It’s like using bleach to whiten clothes. The bottle says “do not drink”. I don’t drink it, I’m fine. If I misuse it, I’m toast, like with any other myriad household products that can kill you if you use them not as directed.
Why are doctors telling women that it's okay to take Tylenol during pregnancy in the first place? Everything they put in their bodies can have an effect on the baby so medication for pregnant mothers should be severely limited. Why haven't we learned from the Thalidomide scandal?
Tylenol only helps for minor aches and pains that frankly, pregnant mothers should just deal with for the good of their unborn child. The risk is not worth it.
RFK Jr. isn't right on everything, but he's not wrong on everything either and it's refreshing seeing someone head HHS that isn't in big pharma's pocket for a change.
Yeah, it’s refreshing seeing someone not in Big Pharma’s pocket.
Much better that he be in Big Wellness’s pocket which is an order of magnitude bigger, unregulated, and doesn’t need to provide evidence for their claims.
Is he in Big Wellness's pocket? I hadn't heard anything about that. Who's paying him off? He's a Kennedy with a net worth of about $15 million so he doesn't exactly need the money. He strikes me as an authentic true believer in his cause, but he could just be a really convincing con man, so I'd love to learn more about this.
Please link to some credible sources showing that he's being paid off by someone.
He literally just repeats whatever trends the crunchy moms on tiktok are latching onto. He's definitely not getting paid, but he's certainly carrying the banner and basking in the praise...
> Why are doctors telling women that it's okay to take Tylenol during pregnancy in the first place?
Untreated symptoms are also bad for the baby, and other OTC painkillers are worse than acetaminophen. You have to become informed and choose the least bad option for your situation (trimester, medical history, etc) rather than let a demagogue point your outrage at a random imperfect solution.
This is just another far-right ideological attempt at restricting women's bodily autonomy - this time the angle just happens to be nonscientific fearmongering about medicines.
See what you have done democrats? The reason these lunatics are everywhere including HN is solely because liberals didn't pass universal health care. If the choice is between the big pharma corporate puppetshow or the batshit insane fascist freakshow, eventually people go with the crazies.
The entire medical community is doing their impression of Shaggy, i.e. "it wasn't me!" But there are thousands of suffering parents and children and this lack of empathy really does nothing for no one. Another hand-wavy response I have heard is that given the new Autism Spectrum diagnosis, many more kids are now diagnosed with autism. That being said, none has even come up with a reasonably derived estimate saying that of the 5X increase in autism over the last 25 years, we can confidently say that nX of this is due to changing diagnosis standards. And if n is anything less than 5, the medical community has work to do in solving this problem and not passing the blame and accusing suffering parents of being crazy.
True. Infact I'd go so far as to say the medical community causes many of the health problem.
Speaking about empathy most people don't have it, not just the medical community. Even the victims will be victimizers at some point, it's very twisted situation.
I almost can't even blame him he is so off the deep end. I still do of course, he should have the self-awareness to have never accepted and it is his massive ego that keeps him doing crazy, dangerous things. But whenever this mentally ill person does things that make the news, I never hear anybody blame the people who put him in that position, and leave him there despite the clearly harmful things he does every day. So shame and blame on everybody involved.
No, because, as forgotoldacc points out, Trump is going to just keep doing whatever he wants regardless, and he wasn't appointed based on actual expertise or prior success: he was appointed because he validates the biases of Trump's base.
Or is it, perhaps, possible that, if there is indeed a real increase in the rate of autism, it's because of something that has nothing to do with our modern pharmaceuticals?
Could it perhaps be related to the increases in various kinds of air pollution? Water pollution? Pesticides or herbicides in our foods? Or even the dramatic increase in EM signals being broadcast everywhere?
Until there are reputable studies that can actually show something resembling a causal link, getting angry at the medical community, pharmaceutical manufacturers, or vaccine makes for saying they are not responsible is pointless and counterproductive. So far as everyone knows, it really wasn't them.
And while there may be some small subset of people "accusing suffering parents of being crazy", by and large that's also not something that's happening.
There’s a marked increase in mental illnesses diagnosed. My parents were heavily depressed and anxious, but in their day it was taboo to seek help and admit such a diagnosis. We are so much more sophisticated today.
>Until there are reputable studies that can actually show something resembling a causal link,
Wrong approach. You prove that something is safe first (and there are ways to do it, one has to creative though) and then have people use it. One does not introduce something in the population and then trying to prove a causal link through stats. There are too many variable and it becomes easy to pass the buck by massaging numbers.
So now that we're all terrified that one of our various pharmaceuticals might, hypothetically cause an increased chance of autism, we have to take them all off the market and do extensive testing of absolutely everything? All the painkillers, blood pressure medicines, immunosuppressants for transplant patients, antipsychotics and antiseizure meds—everything?
Surely you understand that that makes no sense at all? All of these medicines have already been tested and shown to be safe, based on the science and understanding of the time. That's why they're on the market in the first place.
For better or for worse, the burden of proof is now on those who want to show that they are dangerous.
We are not talking about medicines, we are talking about some that is frequently ingested/exposed to people. Things like plastics, additives, pesticides, EM signal. These are novel chemicals/radiation and are potentially slow toxins and showing a causal link from population studies is near impossible.
We are primarily talking about Tylenol. Paracetamol. Acetaminophen.
Perhaps you need to be reminded of the whole sentence you quoted from my post, rather than just the first subclause?
> Until there are reputable studies that can actually show something resembling a causal link, getting angry at the medical community, pharmaceutical manufacturers, or vaccine makes for saying they are not responsible is pointless and counterproductive.
The post I was replying to originally was specifically saying that the medical community needed to be accepting blame for causing autism.
This is bullshit. We do not know what causes autism. We certainly do not have any compelling evidence that anything the medical community is doing is causing autism.
“Could it perhaps be related to the increases in various kinds of air pollution? Water pollution? Pesticides or herbicides in our foods?”
The West is on a decreasing trend of all those kind of pollution since the 70s.
“Or even the dramatic increase in EM signals being broadcast everywhere?”.
It’s funny people are entertaining the hypothesis that EM radiation causes autism in the same conversation where they are trying to assure you that a drug that’s increasingly taken by pregnant women and that is proven to pass the placenta, is 100% harmless and can’t have anything to do with increased levels of autism.
To be clear, I don't think that's a likely factor. I mention it merely because it is one of the dozens of factors that have changed over the past few decades that have nothing to do with the pharmaceutical industry.
Was replying to a commented which was downvoted to death entirely unfairly, so I'll paste my reply as a new comment:
Paracetamol/acetaminophen (the active ingredient in tylenol) is super toxic to the liver. Lots of people overdose on it, some by accident and some deliberately. As little as FOUR GRAMS can cause jaundice and fuck up your liver. If you have a fever, taking 1 gram every couple of hours might seem entirely reasonable, but it can kill you.
Regardless of any autism links, it's good to be careful with this stuff.
Without chronic ingestion of medications that compete for glucuronidation or certain CYP450 inducers like antiepileptics, FOUR GRAMS even as a single dose is virtually impossible to cause any harm.
One gram every 2 hours is 12 grams which is on the lower end of toxic doses.
Despite common belief, concurrent alcohol consumption surprisingly does not increase risk, since alcohol competes for CYP2E1 and reduces the rate of production of the toxic metabolite NAPQI. Similarly for chronic liver disease. The use of NSAIDS (ibuprofen, etc) with cirrhosis is absolutely less safe than tylenol at therapeutic doses.
Taking one gram every 5-6 hours for a maximum of 4 gram/day IS entirely reasonable.
I don't know how you jumped from "it's dangerous to take in to high amounts, even 4 times the recommended dose is dangerous" to "the recommened dose is dangerous".
When taken correctly it is very safe and had fewer side effects then NSAIDs like ibuprofen.
paracetamol is unusual in this respect, that the toxic dose is so close to the therapeutic dose, but the benefits outweigh the risks.
after I had dental surgery, I took paracetamol and ibuprofen in alternate doses every 4h - I would have been in screaming pain if I couldn't have both as an option.
A person in power makes unsubstantiated (and often disproven claims), and makes major decisions that affect all our lives based on those claims.
And the response ignores the fact that the people in power are making decisions based on complete nonsense and pointing to something fairly trivial that everyone knows about anyways.
I mean, I haven’t been to a doctor who hasn’t pointed out that there are limits to how much acetaminophen one can take. There’s a reason anything above a 650mg dose is prescription only. Theirs is a reason if you’re suffering from a severe fever doctors will give you both acetaminophen and ibuprofen and have you alternate them.
If there is a tiny minority that is apparently unaware of the fact that Tylenol in high doses can have adverse effects or at the very least not even aware of the fact that most medications need to be taken as prescribed or within the suggested limits, that’s a minuscule part of the problem relative to people in power making decisions based on unproven claims.
Tylenol itself is not toxic to the liver, the metabolite of glucuronidation is what is toxic. Which means paradoxically impaired liver function can actually reduce the effective toxicity of Tylenol.
Taking 1 gram every couple of hours does NOT seem entirely reasonable when the directions on every Tylenol bottle in the world say to take no more than 1g (2x500mg caps) every FOUR HOURS at most and no more than 4g per 24-hour period. Half the bottle is covered in ominous red warnings about liver damage.
It’s like saying jumping on subway tracks when there’s no train is entirely reasonable when there are ample warnings on the platform to not do that.
“ Regardless of any autism links” - there you go again with the innuendo. My dude if you want to warn about how dangerous Tylenol is in and of itself when misused, go right ahead, but leave autism out of it, you’re playing right into the “Tylenol cause autism” fearmonger’s hands.
> Was replying to a commented which was downvoted to death entirely unfairly
This place is so infested with Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) and Musk Derangement Syndrome (MDS) that it's almost impossible to discuss anything even tangentially related to them on their actual merits. Even if RFK Jr. provides ironclad scientific proof of this link they'll just deny it.
Some of them probably add the Red 40 food coloring that he banned back to their food out of spite to stick it to MAGA and MAHA.
>Even if RFK Jr. provides ironclad scientific proof of this link they'll just deny it.
As far as I know he is really well read/informed - most people are not in that league and such people are completely dismissive of anything that is counter-narrative.
We've known for years that tylenol affected thought processes:
https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2019/03/30/acetaminoph...
It is the safest painkiller currently available. Ibuprofen can cause gut bleeding and renal issues if overdosed on. We all know about opiates. Some facts - typical adult dose is 1g. Max suggested cap on the drug label is 3g per day (about 6 pills at usual 500mg dose). You need to take 10g (20 pills) to be at real risk of hepatotoxicity.
So 10 times the typical dose is when you have overdose effects. (basically 20 pills per day vs 2 pills per day).
Not your "wildly unsafe at slightly above usage levels" AT ALL (as someone posted on here)
This is not harmless - this might cause someone to take more dangerous painkillers when acetaminophen (tylenol) might have safely helped them. The autism stuff is plainly false and disproved.
> This is not harmless - this might cause someone to take more dangerous painkillers
Wouldn't be the first time our government intentionally put everyone in harm's way.
https://www.thegauntlet.news/p/how-the-press-manufactured-co...
It was also a trend way before COVID hit the scene, but its mishandling by both capital-controlled parties at every step to this day, was so egregious as to rule out Hanlon's razor as an excuse long ago.
https://web.archive.org/web/20240802024326/https://docs.hous...
Notice the most recent approved drama to bicker about is COVID vaccine access, when those don't even reliably prevent transmission. The conversation doesn't include the fact that an N95 respirator is the only effect method of stopping transmission and endless reinfections, the latter of which increase chances for long COVID complications like heart failure and a whole list of other things.
Intentional depopulation is a recurring theme in the US.
I'm not sure "the press manufactured consent for never-ending COVID reinfections" so much as people figured it would become another cold like the other four coronaviruses, regardless of what anyone wants.
I wish you were correct. Sadly it was:
1) Manufacture consent with the normal media outlets owned by the same capital interests as our political parties (see first URL)
2) After people were fed up with living in a COVID world with no serious alternatives or rethinking of society provided, they became impatient
3) Gov polls the populace to figure out how to milk political points while upholding the illusion of a functioning democracy (see second URL)
4) Gov says it's just following what the people were demanding (health and long term visions be damned)
5) People get endlessly reinfected and have no idea how much internal damage is racking up on their immune and other vital bodily systems
The scientific research has existed for years now, but it's been ignored by capital interests because it threatens the profits and consumption/GDP numbers of our primitively designed, outdated economic arrangements.
I'm sorry but as a non American I can only think about Rehab Officer Tylenol Jones from the Idiocracy movie since that's the first time I heard about Tylenol without knowing it's a drug, and in the movie everyone had well known American brands as their names due to overreach of corporate marketing into society, but that part of the satire went over my head as a European kid back then, thinking Tylenol was just a person's name and not a drug.
I wonder if Americans know how much of their society and culture bled incompletely into other countries via movies. Like for example after communism fell the youth here got hooked on American rap and hip-hop so we were using slang from those songs like friends calling each other the N word without knowing the context behind it since that's how black rappers addressed each other and they were rock stars here.
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What a sad uneducated comment.
May I ask: Are you a woman? One that's experienced pregnancy before?
If not, why are you mansplaining what they need to deal with an incredibly traumatic process, based on zero science whatsoever?
Tell me you’ve never had a migraine without telling me you’ve never had a migraine.
Untreated pain during pregnancy can be bad for the baby. "Suck it up" isn't medical advice, it's culture war nonsense.
You're not mentioning the balance of side effects from lower self care and other results of pain. (Worse nutrition, less exercise, worse sleep, ...)
> Why do women need Tylenol level painkillers while they're pregnant?
Go ahead, ask a few pregnant women. Maybe a few sleep deprived ones. How many do you think it will be before you get berated...
> they really need to just deal
Yes, there should be strict rules for pregnant women's behaviours. Blessed be the fruit. /s
I'm always surprised at the hostility to Acetaminophen on HN (or Paracetamol as we call it here in the UK).
It's one of the most commonly used medicines in the UK - and certainly the most popular painkiller.
YouGov even did a survey confirming that - https://ygo-assets-websites-editorial-emea.yougov.net/docume...
The safety aspects of it are not something that gets raised in the UK much - other than suicide attempts, which are going to happen no matter what medicine you use.
Probably the biggest risk comes from people not realising that other medicines (e.g. for cold and flu) often include it, so they double up on a dose.
Its so popular people will take it for mild inconveniences, which is absolutely not what you should do.
Why not?
Stresses the liver, also if its used frequently for mild inconveniences you should maybe go to the doctor, as frequent headaches or stuff like that can hint to more severe stuff.
It does not stress the liver at recommended doses. Plenty of people get frequent headaches and other aches that have no other severe stuff going on, or really anything that needs to be treated more than symptomatically. Scheduled tylenol is an effective element of a pain regimen for many people.
Imagine popping pills because of a headache lol. Weak.
There really are risks. It's just not worth it during pregnancy. The pain killing effects of tylenol aren't worth the potential risks during pregnancy.
https://www.mountsinai.org/about/newsroom/2025/mount-sinai-s...
You can't look at just one risk and say it's not worth it.
Like everything else in life, you must weigh all the risks and benefits.
Untreated fever also carries real risks - neural tube defects, congenital heart defects, orofacial clefts, miscarriage.
You need to treat fever, and NSAIDS have greater risks than acetaminophen.
It's irrational to let a minuscule and unproven risk dominate the decision when the other side of the balance has more evidence of larger risks to weigh.
I didn't mean to say it should never be taken. Sometimes medicines should be taken that have risks for the baby. But it shouldn't be taken for minor headaches and aches and pains like it can be when not pregnant.
What’s the alternative? Pregnant people are people too. They can’t take Ibuprofen, or opioids, or even Tylenol now.
Yeah my wife is also pregnant and sometimes it is really tough on her but she doesn't use any medication other than baby aspirin for blood pressure. The alternative is exercise, anti-inflammatory foods, and also realizing that it isn't just your body anymore and you can't hurt somebody else's chances for a very small amount of pain relief.
This is like saying "The risk of a traffic accident on the way to the hospital is unacceptable so I'll make her walk 12 miles to the hospital."
Walking 12 miles is not only uncomfortable, it is also higher risk to Mom and baby than driving.
You have to balance all the risks and benefits.
Right. And the benefits for tylenol are small.
Honestly I wouldn't know if it'd make a difference. The magnitude of pain relief we're talking about is puny.
Ibuprofen is NSAID (non steroid anti inflammatory), oaracetamol is not. Related but different.
As long as autism, there can be no causative link. Millions have autism, billions take paracetamol. Autism has, like its cousin schizophrenia, a strong genetic-familial basis. Hardly any environmental factor increases the risk so much to be worrisome.
https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/counter/pdf/10.1186/s129...
Data does appear to show a possible link, definitely at the least warrants further research.
Don’t you wish we have a short sell reporting data so we can check if people in the know already shorted the stock?
If it's already in the news, it's already too late to short. News events tend to quickly reverse as well so I'd be looking for a long position at a support level
he's talking about the person who created the news...
Unusual whales does a lot of reporting of this nature.
One could also take a look at pages like cheddar which track what they claim is unusual flow in options.
Who sold short? How big a bribe will be given to reverse this?
Coorelation does not mean causation.
I remember an old study linking ultrasounds to lefthandedness. It was legit. Families with access to ultrasounds lived in countries/areas where lefthandedness was more culturally accepted, places where it was not drilled out of kids. The study was correct, but anyone touting it as causation was totally incorrect.
Fyi, sharks are way more likely to attack people with australian accents. Never go swimming with an auzzi.
I had an ultrasound and I’m left handed. I finally know why!
You shoudln’t even be entertaining this lunacy with any response. Anything coming out of the RFK jr health department is batshit.
He was legitimately put into a position of power by the american political system. And this is an article by the BBC, probably the most respected news source on the planet. Crazy is now the norm, the leading voice. It must be confronted.
Your first point is correct, but it (like the second one) has no bearing on the issue of the medical soundness of the department's positions and policy.
"legitimately" is a stretch, given all the information that has come fourth in the past year.
Baader-Meinhof phenomenon at work; I commented about the ultrasound/handedness the other day.
I wonder whether the political actors in question don't understand correlation != causation, or whether they hope that enough of the populace does not understand it in order to further some goal. But what goal? Buying cheap drug shares? Seems ... silly.
Well, time to pick up Tylenol shares on the dip.
Maybe? Looks like it hasn't performed well over 5 years. I'd still rather hold something that I wanna hold for a long time.
When something like this happens there’s a non-zero chance some slimy hedge fund is behind this pushing conspiracy theories on gullible folks to tank a stock.
ugh, i am allergic to ibuprofen and aspirin (all NSAIDs to be precise). tylenol is my only OTC option.
You’re not going to become autistic all of sudden after taking Tylenol. The claim is that it effects the fetus during pregnancy
The amount of anti-science hysteria and sexism in this comment section is abhorrent. I expected better from HN.
Good time to buy. While the cult might take this to heart and stop using Tylenol alltogether, there will be lawsuits to protect the brand and the company, and considering the lack of proof, in the end they will suceed.
They are molesting the money again, but the company can just pivot to drinkable bleech beverages marketed on joe rogan, in the end an evidence-free health care system might be way more profitable in the short term.
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Maybe I never take enough but it's also such a weak painkiller that I always prefer to just feel how it feels and sense if I'm getting better or worse. And that is without believing it's super bad for me, just doesn't make sense as a trade-off.
Some times advil works. Some times aspirin works. Some times Tylenol works. Some times none of them work. There’s all kinds of substances that are available freely that can kill you if you take too much. NSAIDS, Imodium, DXM, iron supplements.
Water. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication Meat. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_toxicity
It’s the only painkiller allowed for pregnant women, so this leads me to believe this is some other form of conspiracy to control women (since the science does’t exist, it obviously doesn’t cause autism)
“May or may not cause autism”.
Yes? Those definitely were words I used to mock the article/RFK... Do you have anything to add about toxic levels of acetaminophen?
Like most medications - follow the instructions on the bottle and you’ll be fine. No need to satanize it.
Most medications have a buffer, so if you accidentally take an extra dose (instead of just 2 pills every 6 hours, but no more than 6 in a 48 hour period). Acetaminophen does not have that buffer. Even just slightly over the dosing recommendations can be lethal, and for a drug that's in hundreds of products, that's terrifying. Imo you're being exceptionally careless for one of the most dangerous OTC drugs we have available.
How is following the instructions being “exceptionally careless”?
It’s like using bleach to whiten clothes. The bottle says “do not drink”. I don’t drink it, I’m fine. If I misuse it, I’m toast, like with any other myriad household products that can kill you if you use them not as directed.
Why are doctors telling women that it's okay to take Tylenol during pregnancy in the first place? Everything they put in their bodies can have an effect on the baby so medication for pregnant mothers should be severely limited. Why haven't we learned from the Thalidomide scandal?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide_scandal
Tylenol only helps for minor aches and pains that frankly, pregnant mothers should just deal with for the good of their unborn child. The risk is not worth it.
RFK Jr. isn't right on everything, but he's not wrong on everything either and it's refreshing seeing someone head HHS that isn't in big pharma's pocket for a change.
Yeah, it’s refreshing seeing someone not in Big Pharma’s pocket.
Much better that he be in Big Wellness’s pocket which is an order of magnitude bigger, unregulated, and doesn’t need to provide evidence for their claims.
Is he in Big Wellness's pocket? I hadn't heard anything about that. Who's paying him off? He's a Kennedy with a net worth of about $15 million so he doesn't exactly need the money. He strikes me as an authentic true believer in his cause, but he could just be a really convincing con man, so I'd love to learn more about this.
Please link to some credible sources showing that he's being paid off by someone.
He literally just repeats whatever trends the crunchy moms on tiktok are latching onto. He's definitely not getting paid, but he's certainly carrying the banner and basking in the praise...
> doesn't exactly need the money.
has this ever stopped anybody?
> Why are doctors telling women that it's okay to take Tylenol during pregnancy in the first place?
Untreated symptoms are also bad for the baby, and other OTC painkillers are worse than acetaminophen. You have to become informed and choose the least bad option for your situation (trimester, medical history, etc) rather than let a demagogue point your outrage at a random imperfect solution.
"Not in big pharmas pocket" = "Baselessly refute expert opinion"
This is just another far-right ideological attempt at restricting women's bodily autonomy - this time the angle just happens to be nonscientific fearmongering about medicines.
See what you have done democrats? The reason these lunatics are everywhere including HN is solely because liberals didn't pass universal health care. If the choice is between the big pharma corporate puppetshow or the batshit insane fascist freakshow, eventually people go with the crazies.
> Why are doctors telling women that it's okay to take Tylenol during pregnancy in the first place?
Because there's no clear evidence to the contrary. Research and published papers would be more convincing here than an accusation.
> pregnant mothers should just deal with for the good of their unborn child
There's a number of things they should be restricted from for the good of the child of course, as men request. Blessed be the fruit. /s
The entire medical community is doing their impression of Shaggy, i.e. "it wasn't me!" But there are thousands of suffering parents and children and this lack of empathy really does nothing for no one. Another hand-wavy response I have heard is that given the new Autism Spectrum diagnosis, many more kids are now diagnosed with autism. That being said, none has even come up with a reasonably derived estimate saying that of the 5X increase in autism over the last 25 years, we can confidently say that nX of this is due to changing diagnosis standards. And if n is anything less than 5, the medical community has work to do in solving this problem and not passing the blame and accusing suffering parents of being crazy.
> this lack of empathy
Like cutting funding for autism research [1] and kids with autism on Medicaid [2]?
[1] https://www.disabilityscoop.com/2025/06/02/nih-autism-resear...
[2] https://nebraskaexaminer.com/2025/09/05/nebraska-lawmakers-h...
>lack of empathy
True. Infact I'd go so far as to say the medical community causes many of the health problem.
Speaking about empathy most people don't have it, not just the medical community. Even the victims will be victimizers at some point, it's very twisted situation.
( Btw, you have a very obvious pseudonym...)
> accusing suffering parents of being crazy
What? Who is supposedly calling parents of autistic children "crazy"?
Literally everyone including everyone in "the medical community" would like to know the cause of autism.
So we do the tried and true solution of listening to the deranged quack?
I almost can't even blame him he is so off the deep end. I still do of course, he should have the self-awareness to have never accepted and it is his massive ego that keeps him doing crazy, dangerous things. But whenever this mentally ill person does things that make the news, I never hear anybody blame the people who put him in that position, and leave him there despite the clearly harmful things he does every day. So shame and blame on everybody involved.
I do not usually side with huge corporations, but in this case I hope Tylenol drags that quack into court and make him prove the report.
We all know he cannot prove anything, even if Tylenol loses, ensure they cost RFK jr lots of $ in defending himself.
Does RFK Jr have a track recording of winning his cases or losing them?
Whether he wins or loses is irrelevant. This administration has a track record of ignoring judgements they don't like and facing zero consequences.
His prior legal track record has no relevance to his current work?
No, because, as forgotoldacc points out, Trump is going to just keep doing whatever he wants regardless, and he wasn't appointed based on actual expertise or prior success: he was appointed because he validates the biases of Trump's base.
Do they?
Or is it, perhaps, possible that, if there is indeed a real increase in the rate of autism, it's because of something that has nothing to do with our modern pharmaceuticals?
Could it perhaps be related to the increases in various kinds of air pollution? Water pollution? Pesticides or herbicides in our foods? Or even the dramatic increase in EM signals being broadcast everywhere?
Until there are reputable studies that can actually show something resembling a causal link, getting angry at the medical community, pharmaceutical manufacturers, or vaccine makes for saying they are not responsible is pointless and counterproductive. So far as everyone knows, it really wasn't them.
And while there may be some small subset of people "accusing suffering parents of being crazy", by and large that's also not something that's happening.
There’s a marked increase in mental illnesses diagnosed. My parents were heavily depressed and anxious, but in their day it was taboo to seek help and admit such a diagnosis. We are so much more sophisticated today.
> There’s a marked increase in mental illnesses diagnosed.
There was a marked increase in left-handedness once the 'stigma' of it was removed.
>Until there are reputable studies that can actually show something resembling a causal link,
Wrong approach. You prove that something is safe first (and there are ways to do it, one has to creative though) and then have people use it. One does not introduce something in the population and then trying to prove a causal link through stats. There are too many variable and it becomes easy to pass the buck by massaging numbers.
> You prove that something is safe first (and there are ways to do it, one has to creative though) and then have people use it
Acetaminophen is better studied than like 99% of foods and supplements.
So now that we're all terrified that one of our various pharmaceuticals might, hypothetically cause an increased chance of autism, we have to take them all off the market and do extensive testing of absolutely everything? All the painkillers, blood pressure medicines, immunosuppressants for transplant patients, antipsychotics and antiseizure meds—everything?
Surely you understand that that makes no sense at all? All of these medicines have already been tested and shown to be safe, based on the science and understanding of the time. That's why they're on the market in the first place.
For better or for worse, the burden of proof is now on those who want to show that they are dangerous.
We are not talking about medicines, we are talking about some that is frequently ingested/exposed to people. Things like plastics, additives, pesticides, EM signal. These are novel chemicals/radiation and are potentially slow toxins and showing a causal link from population studies is near impossible.
....nnno?
We are primarily talking about Tylenol. Paracetamol. Acetaminophen.
Perhaps you need to be reminded of the whole sentence you quoted from my post, rather than just the first subclause?
> Until there are reputable studies that can actually show something resembling a causal link, getting angry at the medical community, pharmaceutical manufacturers, or vaccine makes for saying they are not responsible is pointless and counterproductive.
The post I was replying to originally was specifically saying that the medical community needed to be accepting blame for causing autism.
This is bullshit. We do not know what causes autism. We certainly do not have any compelling evidence that anything the medical community is doing is causing autism.
There is far less environmental contamination now than there was in 1970.
And modern agriculture practices result in lower amounts of less toxic substances in the food supply.
This doesn't really average. There's less lead, but more micro plastics for example. There less cadmium, but more pesticides. Etc.
Or change of living conditions. Running around outside all the time vs sitting in front of a display.
“Could it perhaps be related to the increases in various kinds of air pollution? Water pollution? Pesticides or herbicides in our foods?”
The West is on a decreasing trend of all those kind of pollution since the 70s.
“Or even the dramatic increase in EM signals being broadcast everywhere?”.
It’s funny people are entertaining the hypothesis that EM radiation causes autism in the same conversation where they are trying to assure you that a drug that’s increasingly taken by pregnant women and that is proven to pass the placenta, is 100% harmless and can’t have anything to do with increased levels of autism.
To be clear, I don't think that's a likely factor. I mention it merely because it is one of the dozens of factors that have changed over the past few decades that have nothing to do with the pharmaceutical industry.
Was replying to a commented which was downvoted to death entirely unfairly, so I'll paste my reply as a new comment:
Paracetamol/acetaminophen (the active ingredient in tylenol) is super toxic to the liver. Lots of people overdose on it, some by accident and some deliberately. As little as FOUR GRAMS can cause jaundice and fuck up your liver. If you have a fever, taking 1 gram every couple of hours might seem entirely reasonable, but it can kill you.
Regardless of any autism links, it's good to be careful with this stuff.
Without chronic ingestion of medications that compete for glucuronidation or certain CYP450 inducers like antiepileptics, FOUR GRAMS even as a single dose is virtually impossible to cause any harm.
One gram every 2 hours is 12 grams which is on the lower end of toxic doses.
Despite common belief, concurrent alcohol consumption surprisingly does not increase risk, since alcohol competes for CYP2E1 and reduces the rate of production of the toxic metabolite NAPQI. Similarly for chronic liver disease. The use of NSAIDS (ibuprofen, etc) with cirrhosis is absolutely less safe than tylenol at therapeutic doses.
Taking one gram every 5-6 hours for a maximum of 4 gram/day IS entirely reasonable.
I don't know how you jumped from "it's dangerous to take in to high amounts, even 4 times the recommended dose is dangerous" to "the recommened dose is dangerous".
When taken correctly it is very safe and had fewer side effects then NSAIDs like ibuprofen.
So in summary: taking 4x the recommended dose of a medication is dangerous?
How many other medications would that apply to? Countless, I imagine. That’s why we have dosages on every bottle.
paracetamol is unusual in this respect, that the toxic dose is so close to the therapeutic dose, but the benefits outweigh the risks.
after I had dental surgery, I took paracetamol and ibuprofen in alternate doses every 4h - I would have been in screaming pain if I couldn't have both as an option.
I don’t understand these responses.
A person in power makes unsubstantiated (and often disproven claims), and makes major decisions that affect all our lives based on those claims.
And the response ignores the fact that the people in power are making decisions based on complete nonsense and pointing to something fairly trivial that everyone knows about anyways.
I mean, I haven’t been to a doctor who hasn’t pointed out that there are limits to how much acetaminophen one can take. There’s a reason anything above a 650mg dose is prescription only. Theirs is a reason if you’re suffering from a severe fever doctors will give you both acetaminophen and ibuprofen and have you alternate them.
If there is a tiny minority that is apparently unaware of the fact that Tylenol in high doses can have adverse effects or at the very least not even aware of the fact that most medications need to be taken as prescribed or within the suggested limits, that’s a minuscule part of the problem relative to people in power making decisions based on unproven claims.
>Paracetamol/acetaminophen (the active ingredient in tylenol) is super toxic to the liver
This is very true. ( and no, he is not exaggerating)
Tylenol itself is not toxic to the liver, the metabolite of glucuronidation is what is toxic. Which means paradoxically impaired liver function can actually reduce the effective toxicity of Tylenol.
Fair enough.
Taking 1 gram every couple of hours does NOT seem entirely reasonable when the directions on every Tylenol bottle in the world say to take no more than 1g (2x500mg caps) every FOUR HOURS at most and no more than 4g per 24-hour period. Half the bottle is covered in ominous red warnings about liver damage.
It’s like saying jumping on subway tracks when there’s no train is entirely reasonable when there are ample warnings on the platform to not do that.
“ Regardless of any autism links” - there you go again with the innuendo. My dude if you want to warn about how dangerous Tylenol is in and of itself when misused, go right ahead, but leave autism out of it, you’re playing right into the “Tylenol cause autism” fearmonger’s hands.
> Was replying to a commented which was downvoted to death entirely unfairly
This place is so infested with Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) and Musk Derangement Syndrome (MDS) that it's almost impossible to discuss anything even tangentially related to them on their actual merits. Even if RFK Jr. provides ironclad scientific proof of this link they'll just deny it.
Some of them probably add the Red 40 food coloring that he banned back to their food out of spite to stick it to MAGA and MAHA.
Please don't use far-right epithets.
>Even if RFK Jr. provides ironclad scientific proof of this link they'll just deny it.
As far as I know he is really well read/informed - most people are not in that league and such people are completely dismissive of anything that is counter-narrative.