The Poison Pill to End the MMR Is Tylenol
rasmussenretorts.substack.com
rasmussenretorts.substack.com
If you want to call that an "organized fringe group trying to control the narrative", I suppose it's really just a different way of wording the same thing.´
It's not the moderators' job to decide what's true and impose that decision on everyone else. The community would hate it if we tried to run HN that way—it's probably one of the few things that political enemies would come together and agree on.
We don't have a truth meter [1]. It's the community's job to sort out what's true and false. It's the mods' job to (try to) ensure that people (try to) do that through thoughtful, respective conversation rather than flamewar, snark, or attacks, in keeping with the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
It's easy and all too satisfying to imagine that if the mods would simply impose your idea (<-- I don't mean you personally, but any of us) of what's true and false, what's lies and misinformation, etc., then the site would get magically and massively better. However, different users have radically different sets of what they consider true vs. lies—why should we select one and not another? This would just be a different way of imposing our own viewpoint on the community. It's not our temperament to do that, and as I mentioned, the community would never tolerate it.
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
My feed looks like what an actual, organic tech forum looks like. Discussing topics that are important to people in tech, which obviously includes the important happenings in politics, but is largely interesting stories in the geekosphere.
Not to diminish the work of mods, of course, but this is mostly about the users who immediately flag stories.
Mar 7, 2017
https://x.com/tylenol/status/839196906702127106
> Medical experts urge caution over use of acetaminophen-based painkillers during pregnancy > Ingredient found in hundreds of pain-relief drugs, including Tylenol, may impact fetal development
Sep 23, 2021
https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/acetaminophen-pregnancy-risks...
No good studies but better safe than sorry that's why there's a label
That was a good callout to provide justification for further analyses, such as sibling studies[1] which in turn do not seem to support the association. The biggest issue with your link is that the reason's you would take Tylenol in pregnancy are themselves risk factors for the associated conditions. In general it's pretty complex, which is why we have e.g. medical experts to help us contextualize as opposed to sensationalize it.
The biggest issue with most of these kinds of arguments is they aren't mad win bad faith. They start from e.g. wanting to support Trumps statements, and then source the links without context to justify it. Maybe that's not what this post is but it certainly feels like it.
The International Chemical Identifier is InChI=1S/C8H9NO2/c1-6(10)9-7-2-4-8(11)5-3-7/h2-5,11H,1H3,(H,9,10).
¹https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_paracetamol_brand_name...
First you've got names that describe the structure in some detail, like the International Chemical Identifier (InChI) & SMILES. For paracetamol, the InChI is `InChI=1S/C8H9NO2/c1-6(10)9-7-2-4-8(11)5-3-7/h2-5,11H,1H3,(H,9,10)`.
One level up is the IUPAC name, a systematic name for a compound which is less descriptive than the InChI but still generally allows determining the structure of that compound. For paracetamol, that's N-(4-hydroxyphenyl)acetamide.
Next up you've got generic names for drugs. Different countries have different systems for naming generics, but they're usually designed to give some hint as to the sort of drug it is. E.g. drugs with generic names ending in "-vir" are antivirals. Most names are standardized in the International Nonproprietary Name system¹ but some drugs (particularly older ones) have different generic names in different countries.
Last up you've got the brand names. These will often vary quite a lot & tell you nothing about the drug.
The INN wikipedia article¹ actually uses paracetamol/acetaminophen as the example for comparing various national naming standards.
¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_nonproprietary_n...
In the interest of playing Devil's Advocate - even though it's a fine article, I don't think it's promoted particularly good discussion. Partisan politics in general means that people just dig in their heels angrily rather than have good discussion, and the Trump administration - at risk of falling into my own trap here - is far enough away from conventional wisdom on many issues, including this one, in such a way that their decisions and discussions around them sort of inevitably become partisan.
I'd say the article is extremely opininated and biased against primarily trump and rfk. the article is very far from neutrally reporting facts. extremely hyperbolic and alarmist; immediately visible in the title itself. emotionally charged and advocating for political action.
Its full of personal attacks, trump is unhinged insane, incompetent, dangerous, and irrational?
The article seems to be entirely rhetorical. There's no audience for it. The only people who will find use if it are those who dont need any convincing.
Another commenter here missed that point, thinking that people should just ignore what Trump says. The point is that what Trump says can be used to influence downstream policy in ways that might appear unexpected, but are certainly intentional.
It certainly crosses a line that makes the article rhetorical at best. It can never convince anyone of anything.
There's so much vitriol that even if there's facts in there to discern, I cant see it through the hyperbole and polarization.
>I submitted it because the outlined logical consequences stood out to me that I hadn’t encountered elsewhere—- the announcement itself, regardless of its underlying merits, opens the path to reduce vaccine access for all.
I dont see any of that there. Maybe it is, but they lose the chance to make these points.
Scientific reference needs to remain objective and seek to maximize the audience.
Rhetorical polarized articles like this are the problem.
I mean, at this point an article would be biased not showing opinion against Trump and Kennedy. How else to discuss their unhinged rant on paracetamol and autism in an official press conference? I'm not kidding, I'd be suspicious of any article that keeps a very neutral language and seriously considers their unsubstantiated word slurry.
Like, who cares if he says Tylenol is bad for pregnant women? Just do whatever you want to do anyways.
Blaming Tylenol is actually a surprisingly harmless and almost a relief. Remember it used to be vaccines until a few days ago. Antivax sentiment is not inconsequential to the average person. Gun rights are not inconsequential to the average person. Women rights are not inconsequential to the average person.
I get that some progressive arguments seem to be only relevant to particular audiences - "why should I care about trans rights if I'm not trans?" - but reality is these are a small portion of the actual discussions which take a disproportionate amount of atention from issues that do affect everyone.
I know this: Reading the 690th article on Charlie Kirk or whatever other emotion and violence-driven content they are all pumping isn't the way.
Move to the other country, like one in the EU. There are some issues but not like this Tylenol madness.
> There is a way to reduce the risk of febrile seizure, by the way. Reducing fever prevents febrile seizures. You know how you safely reduce fever in babies? Tylenol. Which has now been designated by Trump and Kennedy’s entire HHS as the cause of autism, despite having no evidence to support that claim.
I doubt the administration is this devious or thinking as far ahead as she thinks. Her reasoning is ironically similar to Trump supporters, who rebrand every flub, fumble, and gaffe as some form of "5D chess" that normies just don't understand. But it's evident form the tariff policy that much what the administration does is just shot straight from the hip.
And it's not like this is a surprise. He campaigned with RFK. Kennedy's views on vaccines are well known. Trumps ability to do "medical" was amply demonstrated in his first term.
This is exactly what he campaigned on, and exactly what voters were presumably hoping for. They looked at the options and said, "yeah, let's have some more of this".
I think, to be fair, there are only two parties. You can only vote for one "package" of policies. Maybe you are a one-issue voter or maybe you weigh all the different positions of the candidates to find the one who aligns most with you.
I don't think it is accurate to say that all the people who voted for Trump approve of any individual policies -- like this one. So they are allowed to be as upset as anyone else about this stuff.
But you're right. A lot of voters weighed the set of policies and decided that mass deportations, suspension of due process, tarifing imports to raise domestic prices, slashing federal agencies like the EPA and CDC, muzzling free speech at universities and on TV, grifting for personal gain at every opportunity, all of which was explicitly spoken about during the campaign, was ok to get their single-issue promoted.
So yeah, lots of people voted for this. For all I know those same people think it's going just fine.
Which brings us back to, "just remember, you voted for this."
My issue with this take is the lack of evidence. I don't read about Trump voters calling their reps to try and push back (and let's be real, most Republican members of Congress these days would likely dismiss such constituents as being "paid protestors" or something). I haven't seen Trump voters out protesting against some part of the administration's policy. I _have_ seen anonymous reddit users in a Trump related subreddit say, "yeah, don't agree with this at all". Which leaves me wondering: how upset are they, really?
I worry for our future. As it stands, it is looking to be very, very bleak.
Didn't see any mention of that in the news.
Most mainstream news covered him blaming DEI and and most mentioned specifically people with disabilities. Many didn't go into the laundry list of specific disabilities Trump mentioned.
Exactly this. We no longer have a grand total of 3 TV channels; it's a conscious choice to tune to fox news and consume that rage-bate-as-a-distraction.
As long as it's profitable to offer up "bespoke" views of the world to individuals, there's next to no hope of those individuals being able to galvanize under a common and shared set of facts and that's a per-requistie for any sort of mass protest/change.
In the official product information sheets, they state that you should consult with a medical professional before using it during pregnancy.
A competent medical professional will tell you that it's OK to use in most cases.
A competent medical professional I’m sure will make their own judgement call which may be that it’s not okay to use while pregnant. We should leave that up to the medical professionals, but I’m glad the recent press conference helps raise awareness for medical professionals to consider.
1. Have actual democratic primaries and get rid of their super delegates.
2. Advocate for the rights of American citizens and not of those streaming illegally across the borders.
3. Protect American industry and labor. This doesn’t just mean propping up unions - it means making an actual effort to bring industry back to the US.
The rest is just theatre. So this autism declaration, or trans baiting is just the sideshow. IMHO - the those are the three main things for me to start considering the democrats again.
Yes, indeed, if the democrats were only more performatively cruel to illegal immigrants then I am sure they would win more elections. Why even tack that comment at the end? Do you really think democrats are supporting illegal immigrants at the expense of Americans?
The Democrats just needed to find a way to extend that instead of lifting it.
Granted the Obama years and years before were an issue as well. But Obama was a lot more efficient at deportation. Tom Homan was obama’s top person for removal.
Immigration - legal and illegal - high skill and low skill - are net positives to the economy and even our social safety-net programs. American citizens come out way on top in this whole deal by far.
And if you think giving immigrants a few bucks to get started is expensive, it's a pittance next to the costs of mass detention and deportation. They increased ICE's budget by 15x and it's now the most well funded law enforcement agency in the world.
It's true that border crossings surged in the Biden years. The apprehension rate however, was the same as Trump's. The vast majority of illegal border crossings end up in ejection or deportation. Over the whole 4 year term I think we have something around 2.5 million people who were actually released into the country while their cases go through the immigration courts.
And there's some research out there that suggests the immigration surge helped stave off a post-covid recession and softened inflation relative to the rest of the world
Now under Trump, we're projected to have the yearly first decline in population in ages.
The US admits 1million legal immigrants every year. This is in addition to people on a valid work visa and folks who are illegally here.
More importantly, the claim that immigration (illegal or otherwise) is at the expense of citizens is at the very least highly debatable, and not what most economists think. E.g. here's Paul Krugman:
> Until the 1990s many economists, myself included, believed that immigrants with limited formal education were substituting for native-born workers. As a consequence, we thought that immigrants would put downward pressure on the wages of less educated native-born workers. Most of us changed our minds in the face of evidence that immigrants were taking very different jobs from native-born workers with similar education. This meant that they were complements, not substitutes, even for low-education native-born workers, and probably raised their wages. For example, more immigrants to pick fruits and vegetables translates into lower food prices and higher real wages for native-born workers.
That is not to say that Americans must accept illegal immigration or even legal immigration, but the claim that it's at their expense is far from established.
> In Silver Bulletin’s polling average, the president is now behind by 4.2 percentage points on his handling of immigration-related topics, where he was once above water by seven percentage points at the beginning of his term. It’s clear why: the images of chaotic and sometimes violent ICE raids across the country have spurred outrage; in a Washington Post/Ipsos poll this week, the raids were the strongest issue motivating disapproval of the president, with 20 percent of voters who said they disapproved of Trump’s overall performance citing “immigration” issues as “the worst thing Trump has done” so far in office.
Although some people were always going to cheer on the cruelty they were promised:
> The reason for the more staggered decline (compared to other issues) was also prominent in the Post’s polling: 55 percent of respondents who said they approved of Trump’s overall job performance cited immigration as the “best thing Trump has done” since taking office. The seemingly disjointed result can be explained thusly: while Trump is gradually seeing his support base shrink on immigration-related issues, those Americans who remain in this camp are strongly supportive of the crackdowns.
https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-polit...
Germany has a huge manufacturing surplus, and yet its share of employment in industry has been declining for at least 40 years now.[1] "Industry" cannot be "brought back" [2] because what it once was no longer exists. Productivity in manufacturing has gone up through the roof, and manufacturing simply doesn't need many jobs now. Jobs are needed in professions like nursing and education.
> Advocate for the rights of American citizens and not of those streaming illegally across the borders.
That borders on stupidity at the level of climate-change denial or anti-vax. First, people are "streaming illegally across the border" because American citizens want them to help the economy. And if Americans change their minds and are willing to live with fewer immigrants in a weaker economy, at any specific point in time, the rights that need to be advocated are those that are in danger. At this point, however, it seems that the Trump administration is threatening the rights of both immigrants and citizens, which is why you see Democrats sounding the alarm on both.
[1]: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.IND.EMPL.ZS?location...
[2]: https://www.piie.com/blogs/realtime-economics/2025/closing-t...
While the manufacturing jobs of old cannot be brought back because they no longer exist - they've been eliminated by automation - there could be non-economic arguments for bringing back more manufacturing (e.g. a national security argument). The Biden administration did actually do that; the Trump administration is actively harming manufacturing with its exceptionally incompetent and stupid tariff policy (a very different tariff policy could hypothetically help manufacturing, but economists will tell you that subsidies - along the lines of what the Biden administration implemented - would be more effective and cause less economic harm).
The bottom line is that, on the economy, as in health, what most characterizes the Trump administration is an almost unbelievable level of stupidity and incompetence, and it will achieve none of the positive economic goals it purported to pursue (and is likely to achieve the opposite). This means that the only intended change this administration is bringing about is the Orban-style consolidation of power and authoritarianism, and a reduction in education and research.
If you want to look at things from a purely cynical point of view, that parties seek to "manufacture" voters, with the current dominant polarization axis, Democrats' clear interest is to have more educated and/or informed Americans, while Republicans' clear interest is to have fewer.
I would aggree with you that this "is just theatre" and as long as whoever is in charge is looking into the important stuff on economics and public policy, we could ignore the theatrics. I don't think this guy is doing a good job on the "important" stuff, but that's beyond me and I don't really have a say on tariffs, immigration or whatever else on someone else's country.
However, the "theatre" he does hurts real people in the real world. Trans people get killed or refused care, kids get shot in schools and even his own allies get hurt in the heat of the political theatre he creates. I must say I'm actually kind of glad he switched aim from vaccines to Tylenol: the whole antivax thing was extremely dangerous to the population as a whole, while blaming Tylenol will maybe hurt some pharma sales that's all. I wish he went with this discourse from the start, instead of spreading fear over vaccination during the times the World needed vaccines the most.
With that said, my whole point is that, unfortunatelly, political discourse has power, even if it's just theatrics. I wish you folks had more than two options in the US so you wouldn't need to choose his hateful and harmful discourse over the opposition, but sometimes you have to make do with what you have and it's not going to be good.
I don’t agree with the administration on abortion and trans policies. There is a lot more to trans than just trans men in women’s sport and bathrooms.
Immigration enforcement should have better due process and it should be welcomed by both Democrat and republicans. There is no reason for democratic law makers to claim not to comply with federal law.
Either way - the points I put out is something I hear often in the US. Most people get shutdown in public for even appearing to agree with the current admin on policy even if they don’t agree with the implementation theatrics. It’s a bit of a shit show here when it comes to having an honest conversation.
This basically had no impact because the political ads just said she was going to open the border and use your taxes to pay for transing your kids anyway. The Dems can't reasonably change how they're viewed in the media environment and if they do manage to take out a moderate position on something they'll just be seen as the slightly less effective option - once everyone agrees the border needs to be tougher, why not vote for the party that's louder on immigration anyway?
Superdelegates exist but have no vote in the first round unless their votes collectively can have no impact on the outcome; this reform was adopted for 2020 and beyond by the DNC in 2018.
The other points are just arguments that Democrats need to adopt MAGA positions on currently salient, highly-divisive issues for which preferences are highly correlates with other MAGA policy preferences, which would remove the reasons many Democratic voters support the party without (because of the correlation of preferences) making the party more palatable to most people who currently disagree with the Democrats on those issues.
Bus drivers and airline pilots get mental evaluations, and they are only responsible for two hundred people at a time. Yet person responsible for whole country can have any mental illness.
No, the reason people don’t discuss this is that the next question is “so you have a mandatory evaluateion, what are the consequences, and who selects the evaluator?” And you very quickly realize that any proposal is either:
(a) adding nothing substantive that isn't already covered by existing provisions allowing for removing people for incapacity, or
(b) creating a new and unaccountable seat of power, or
(c) designing a replacement (which may be an improvement!) for the processes discussed in (a) to which the evaluation mandate is a jumping off point that turns out to be superfluous.
Also, you realize that to effect anything with any consequences for the Presidency and some other offices, legislation doesn’t work, you need a Constitutional Amendment.
No one is defending the NIH or Fauci or the math department at UCLA in a way that makes sense to a majority of Americans... Why these are even under attack in the first place is beyond me.
The democrats need to change and run a compelling alternative, and I see no evidence that will happen any time soon.
The democrats and the left have, among other issues:
- refused to run legitimate primaries, instead propping up Hillary when she was unpopular, Biden when he was senile, and Kamala when she was also unpopular and a clearly bad candidate
- wasted a lot of goodwill advocating for policies that are unpopular with the center of the country, including trans in woman sports, the border, and crime
- ignored, minimized or outright spoke down to half the country (the “deplorables”)
- spent decades advocating globalization and ignoring the economic effects on half the country
What compelling democratic candidate is there to run in 2028? What is the compelling Democratic vision? The only fresh new charismatic faces I see are AOC and Mamdani; and while I think they are impressive politicians, those types of policies will not win over the center of the country and would lose in any national elections.
And I don’t know what the center of the country looks like, either. If the center favored careful, conservative policies, Trump would not have won.
Politics no longer make sense to me. I say Democrats should just run the candidate with the most charisma and fuck everything else.
“Politics no longer make sense to me. I say Democrats should just run the candidate with the most charisma and fuck everything else.”
Personally, I think they should focus on running candidates that have the best chance of winning. Politics is a competition!
We thought we live in a world of science, reason and kindness. Sure, not everyone is a scientist, or understands it all, but somehow we have recast the mediaeval human into someone who instinctively believes in experiments and peer reviewed papers, not pagan rites and magic.
But I think this must have actually disappeared a long time ago and we just didn't notice. There was no one combining charisma, credibility and the willingness to build support out of setting science on fire.
I'm not even really picking on the US here, I think the rest of the West is not much better.
I'm not a doomer though. I'm sure we can turn it around, or rather that we will bounce back, sooner or later. I just hope it will be a conscious effort rather than a reaction to being utterly burned, like the changes that came from the two world wars.
You know a claim about Trump is insanely wrong when Snopes debunks it.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-inject-bleach-covid-...
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. So I asked Bill a question that probably some of you are thinking of, if you're totally into that world, which I find to be very interesting. So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous — whether it's ultraviolet or just very powerful light — and I think you said that that hasn't been checked, but you're going to test it. And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way, and I think you said you're going to test that too. It sounds interesting.
ACTING UNDER SECRETARY BRYAN: We'll get to the right folks who could.
THE PRESIDENT: Right. And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that. So, that, you're going to have to use medical doctors with. But it sounds — it sounds interesting to me.
IMHO, mostly false isn’t insanely wrong.
I'll never forget the look on Dr. Deborah Birx's face after this was said.
Regardless, saying that injecting bleach might work and should be studied is an incredibly stupid thing to say.
Snopes is only saying that he didn't say a very specific stupid thing. He still said a (very slightly) different stupid thing. It's not much of a defense.
I think most who point to this statement, they see it as evidence of how pitifully stupid this man is.
So for most people who like to talk about this statement, it's still true -- it's like a 3rd grader is spitballing on how to solve a pandemic.
I got the covid vaccine and setup appointments for everyone in my family to get the vaccine and I think not getting the vaccine is crazy, but that doesn’t mean I support the government forcing every person to get the vaccine. However, I think it’s a bit frustrating that by not approving the vaccines for Covid it is a lot harder for people to get these vaccines.
Also, I think the idea that we have all this healthcare it’s super expensive yet people aren’t really getting healthier is a legitimate criticism of our system and that we do need a more holistic view on healthcare.
>Also, I think the idea that we have all this healthcare it’s super expensive yet people aren’t really getting healthier
Americans don't "have all this healthcare". Americans avoid going to the doctors because they cannot afford it. Other countries pay dramatically less for healthcare and get better results.
Even just prescriptions in the US is absurd. People aren't taking medicine they need because a pill or injection that was invented 60 years ago and costs less than a penny a dose is sold for hundreds of dollars a week.
In my experience they do work exactly that way, you take a vaccine and then you are far less likely to get the disease. It’s true that you cannot reach herd imunity or reduce the spread until you get a large enough population. I’m still think it’s a choice thing though.
>A pill or injection that was invented 60 years ago and costs less than a penny a dose is sold for hundreds of dollar a week.
Currently, I take 3 different generics popular generics that cost a few bucks a month. I could get it covered under my insurance, but I prefer to just pay cash without insurance to buy in larger quantities direct from Amazon as it works out to be about the same, but I don’t have to manage the inventory. I also take a semiglutide for weight loss, which costs thousands upon thousands a year that insurance brings down to $25 a month. But it wasn’t invented 60 years ago. Someday it will probably be available extremely cheap though.
I think most senior citizens would agree that most common medications that make it on the generic list really don’t cost much in the United States.
There is a point where the your personal choice affects thousand upto millions negatively. At that point it stopps to be a perosnal choice.
The problem is there are some people who have real actual reasons they can't take the vaccine. They need the population to reach herd immunity for them to be protected. If other people opt out and there's no herd immunity, they die.
I'm not familiar with how things work in the USA, but this statement from the article seems to say the reverse:
> When Kennedy signs this, the MMRV will not be covered by many insurers and it will be unavailable to most people in practice.
I'm guessing that means currently most people are free to make their own choice on whether to get the vaccine independent of any financial considerations. If is speculations are on target they will have to pay for the vaccine, so the decision has more constraints - and so is correspondingly less free.
About 9 out of 10 unvaccinated children will get Measles, of those about 1 in 1,000 will suffer sever complications like brain damage or death. I guess if you are poor, your pretty likely to means you accept the 0.1% risk.
Doesn't sound super safe for kids who have small livers given the typical dose is 500mg to be honest.
The dosage in children’s Tylenol is much smaller than that—you don’t get a dosage near that size until kids are around 11.
A typical 500mg adult dosage tablet isn't recommended til the child is > 72lbs.
They make smaller tablets. Smaller tablets can also be cut up. And there's liquid preparations that can be tuned to whatever level is needed.
Or don't give kids things that are meant for adults
The typical dose is not 500mg for small children. For instance see https://www2.hse.ie/medicines/paracetamol-for-children/how-a...
> If your baby is age 2 to 3 months, give them 2.5ml of [a specified] syrup. A 2.5ml dose contains 60mg of paracetamol.