Yet Another Study Finds No Causal Link Between Tylenol & Autism
from the can-we-be-done-with-this? dept
As you will recall, the combination of RFK Jr.’s announcement that he’d find a root cause for all this autism going around combined with Donald Trump’s idiotic claim that there must be some external environmental cause of all this autism going around resulted in both of these clowns telling America that pregnant women taking Tylenol is causing all this autism going around. Never mind how dehumanizing this all is towards the many, many human beings who are on the autism spectrum, nor the other causes RFK Jr. has magically found for autism.
There is no scientific reason to believe that any causal link between autism and prenatal use of Tylenol exists. But that hasn’t stopped people with far too much faith in this particular government from refusing to take Tylenol. It also hasn’t stopped from governmental bootlickers making asses of themselves with lawsuits against Kenvue, makers of Tylenol. Not long after this bullshit announcement, even RFK Jr. acknowledged that there is no proven causal link to be had here.
But if that isn’t good enough for you, quality scientific studies continue to be performed and demonstrate that no link between Tylenol and autism can be found.
Another large study has found no link between autism and Tylenol use during pregnancy, refuting claims by President Trump and anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. In the new study published in JAMA Internal Medicine, researchers analyzed electronic health records from 2001 to 2023 for more than 700,000 pairs of mothers and children in Hong Kong. Of those pairs, about 43 percent of children had exposure to acetaminophen in utero.
The researchers saw no link between prenatal acetaminophen use and either condition. It didn’t matter what dosage of acetaminophen was taken, when it was taken during the pregnancy (which trimester), how often it was taken, or how old the mother was at the time. There was simply no link between acetaminophen and autism or ADHD.
Now, as has been the case with some previous studies, and what RFK Jr. and his cronies point to when they make this dumb claim, you do get some correlative linking if you drop the sibling-matched design and instead just correlate between prenatal Tylenol exposure and a diagnoses of autism. The problem is that if you perform what is called a “negative control” analysis, that link disappears again.
Interestingly, there was a link when the researchers dropped the sibling-matched design and instead compared acetaminophen-exposed with unexposed children, which is a finding that has come up in other studies. But when the researchers performed a “negative control” analysis and compared children whose mothers had taken acetaminophen before ever getting pregnant or after they had given birth compared to mothers who didn’t use the painkiller, they also saw an association—one that is “biologically implausible.”
The idea behind a negative control analysis is to analyze a cohort of conditions that should not produce the experimental result, an autism diagnosis in this case. When it does anyway, you know that the previously perceived link isn’t really there. In this case, instances in which a mother took Tylenol before or after pregnancy and had a child that was diagnosed with autism shows that what could have been thought to be a link between the two is actually more likely exposing family, genetic, or environmental factors that are resulting in both a child with autism and a trigger for the mother, or future mother, to be taking Tylenol.
This is what we mean when we say there is correlation, but not causation. It is still a useful clue, in other words, but not in the way that Trump and Kennedy would have you believe. It indicates that the mothers who have taken Tylenol are experiencing something that is a trigger for doing so and may indicate some associated reason for producing a child with autism.
In other words, just because the paint is peeling off your walls and there is a blaring sound going off in your ears doesn’t mean that the blaring sound caused the paint to peel. Your house is on fire, causing both paint to peel and the smoke alarms to go off.
Which, frankly, happens to be a wonderful analogy for what it’s like to have RFK Jr. in charge of public health.
Filed Under: autism, quacks, rfk jr., tylenol
Companies: kenvue
Comments on “Yet Another Study Finds No Causal Link Between Tylenol & Autism”
This proves it!!
It proves that all studies are rigged and science is fraud!
You’re welcome for the view into the MAGAmind!
Re:
The study comes from Honk-Kong, the country that created the Covid-19 using USAID money to disseminate the virus over US through chemtrails to steal the 2020 election.
Now sure, it’s only correlation, but hey, it starts to look very obvious, isn’t it?
Re: Re:
For some value of obvious, sure, i guess?
For a moment I misread the first bit of italic text and thought it referred to the “anti-health secretary” and, well, fair.
Re:
It wouldn’t be respectful to refer to RFK Jr as the Anti-Health Secretary without referring to Trump (mentioned right before) as the Antichrist.
and there’s algae in your water, doesn’t mean it’s due to vandalism.
Re:
Al Gae, Al Qaeda, potayto, potahto
Oh good, I thought I might make my ASD symptoms compound if I took Tylenol to deal with this fucking rash of NAZIs and eugenics, but then I also learned Tylenol doesn’t help shit anyway and those compounded symptoms are just PTSD because this fucking country allowed the most vicious stupidity to be in charge.
Fuck RFK Jr and I hope his screw-shaped penis bone falls out.
Re:
TIL that RFKjr is a duck.
Can Tylenol sue for defamation
I wonder if Tylenol can sue for defamation since all these bull claims by RFK and his cronies are probably having a negative impact on sales.
The last few lines made me laugh. Thanks.
No...
…RFK Jr and every one of the sycophants in the administration are effectively immune from any lawsuit or prosecution. When you are a loyal subject of the king and have shown the proper amount of slobbering worship all sins are forgiven (as well as lawsuits and convictions).
Re:
Maybe, but Mad King Trump is famously fickle. Anyone could suddenly be declared an enemy and erased from history in a Stalinesque way, even if Trump has no idea who Stalin was. Or, hell, maybe Trump just forgets to write the pardon.
In this presidency, the only thing one can reliably predict is unpredictability.
“The idea behind a negative control analysis is to analyze a cohort of conditions that should not produce the experimental result, an autism diagnosis in this case. When it does anyway, you know that the previously perceived link isn’t really there.”
This is (a) research methods 101 material and (b) vastly beyond the comprehension of the lizard-brains who believe anything that RFK Jr. says.
Half a century of determined Republican efforts to destroy education at all levels have given us a large population that simply can’t grasp concepts like this. No matter how it’s explained to them or how often, they simply won’t get it. Ever. They’ll just dig in their heels and repeat the propaganda spread by “influencers” and other parasites, because they do understand that: it’s been dumbed down to their level so that they can.
Re:
I’ve found not even speaking slowly, and using terms they can understand (monosyllabic as much as possible). They still cannot/refuse to grasp evidentiary truths which they can physically SEE and HEAR. Instead they return a glassy eyed stare, and quote FUX nooz, RFKjr, or tRump. Their indoctrination and brainwashing appears to have included a complimentary craniectomy.
As long as they're making stupid correlations...
Every autistic person had drunk water at some point in their life, therefore water causes autism.
Every autistic person has breathed air at some point in their life, therefor air causes autism.
Every autistic person was born from a human, therefore having human parents causes autism.
Trying to ‘prove’ something doesn’t cause autism is a never-ending waste of time because there’s always something that you haven’t tested and the people you’re trying to convince don’t actually trust or believe science anyway, making it an even bigger waste of time that and resources that would be much better spent countering the toxic ideology that being autistic is only just better than being dead.
That would be the case, if Dr. Anthony Who had not been secretly funding gain-of-time-travel research on acetominophen at Wuhan Institute of Pharmacology.
Re:
Wait, why research time travel, I thought everyone knew that former democrat presidents have a time-travel/mind-control machine that they use any time a republican makes it into office, just borrow theirs.
Re:
You don’t reseaerch time travel: you just make a decision to research time travel and if your future self doesn’t promptly show up to say hi then you know that your research would have failed.
Another correlation that seems to be missing these days: When i first hear this nonsense years ago, i assumed there was a bad or wildly misinterpreted study (it was a wildly misinterpreted colloquial comment on a study) that was used as fuel for a lawsuit (yup). The suit went after Johnson and Johnson, as well as Walmart, Target (i believe), and perhaps others. Now, i am not saying that the correlation of big money with lawsuit targets is a causation, but it’s aliens.