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Comment by dmoy | Hacker News Reader

> Bypassing a doctor does open up access, but there may be risks, especially if folks don't take the medicine correctly.

In related news, it is shockingly easy to get messed up real bad by Tylenol. But you can get it in a 500-pill bottle from Costco.

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My cousin is a toxicologist and he was talking about this in the 1980s - that the public had no idea how incredibly toxic Tylenol is and how easy it is to over dose on it and cause significant damage to your liver and other organs.

The worst is that if you "OD" on tylenol, you won't die right away, but instead slowly and increasingly painfully over time, perfectly aware of what's going on.

Depends on the country. In the UK people typically are aware of the dangers of acetaminophen, and you can't buy giant bottles.

I'm seeing this point repeatedly through the thread, and it's like there is an implied "And we wouldn't want to put barriers to that, would we?"

And I'm thinking, maybe? Maybe if you can think of a medication that can wreck you that easily, the problem lies on that medication too?

Should every substance which doesn't mess you as hard as Tylenol be OTC?

That's pretty much a USA thing, though. In Europe you'll usually only come across blister packs, and they don't really go beyond 50 / box. It is a lot harder to accidentally OD when you have to individually remove every single pill from a blister pack, rather than just chugging a fistful straight out of the bottle.

Sure, but the context here is why it took so long for the US to allow otc bc pills, the same country that allows 500 pill bottles of acetaminophen

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