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Comment by baobun | Hacker News Reader

OotL: What's the angle on this acetaminophen/paraceamol/Tylenol drama in the media? It being one among many factors in autism does not discount other explanations so I can't see a "they're burying it" angle. We already know by now that acetaminophen is a dangerous shit drug that should be avoided by most and usually have other better options in the first place. The usual suspects for manufacturing opinions through these kinds of media plays (like J&J are prone to) would rather like to downplay it I presume.

Is there a lede?

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Take focus away from the previous outrage from the day before. It was cancelling Jimmy Kimmel, then $100k HB1 visas, before that I already forget, what was it he did the day the Birthday Book dropped?

It doesn't matter if these declarations are suspended or don't go anywhere, as long as it overwhelms the news cycle for the day.

For reference, this is a strategy called "Flooding the Zone". It's commonly associated with Steve Bannon, one of Trump's early ideological backers.

https://justice-everywhere.org/general/flooding-the-zone-and...

> It doesn't matter if these declarations are suspended or don't go anywhere, as long as it overwhelms the news cycle for the day.

And distracts from the Epstein files not being fully released as promised.

I don't think there's any specific reason for people to want the reason to be tylenol specifically, but RFK had announced that he was going to solve autism by September and it seems like he really just wanted to come up with an explanation for autism that blames it on some sort of medicine that people can simply choose not to use. Tylenol is something that people have considered as a possible cause of autism, although the best/biggest study seems to have pretty clearly proven that use of tylenol doesn't actually cause autism, so it's a fairly obvious thing to pull out if you just want to come up with some medicine to blame for autism.

Perhaps the better question is why he isn't blaming vaccines, which is what many people expected him to do, but maybe there was too much pushback from the rest of the administration on that.

He promised us "the" cause of autism. What we've gotten, even in the purchased expert testimony, is a minor contribution to autism at best.

So are we still waiting for the big news about what really causes autism? Everybody assumed he was gonna say "vaccines". He's got another week to go. Is this all we're going to get, or is there more?

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