Texas Attorney General sues Tylenol makers over autism claims
bbc.com
bbc.com
This seems like one such thing, it's a ploy for the public, it distracts from other things, it takes space away from other thing in the news, it ties up courts and others.
Then when he won reelection I concluded I was consuming media in an echo chamber.
This fear you're commenting on goes way farther back than dt.
Ballroom, mueller investigation, Benghazi, guantanemo, tan suit, parkland, Alex Jones, mission accomplished, 911. These all got airtime. Some longer than others.
You're commenting on the nature of media to fill silence with noise, and the expectation we place on the reader to triage the news.
Moore knew something stunk, but he was groping around in the dark in a totally different political climate less receptive to questioning authority.
It could be the case that the level of cronyism and weaponizing we see today is the same amount as in the past.
It's up to the reader to determine how much of their opinion is due to bias, and how much is due to a real increase in nefarious political strategy. Some are more diligent about checking their sources that others.
To be fair to Trump, he was the target of lawfare after his election loss in 2020, for instance. He claimed later that he would have vengeance. Not a magnanimous move, but Trump is not magnanimous. He has stated before that he enjoys destroying his enemies, with relish and verve.
In any case, when we fixate on one political figure or party, we lose sight of the general picture. In sociological terms, Trump is not very important. He is more of an expression of the times than their cause. He may catalyze certain changes, but he's hardly alone in doing that. In the broad sense, the general historical trajectory is not really deflected by him.
A wiser perspective is to look at broad trends. One should read Plato's Republic. The decadence of society described in that book - degenerating into timocracy (rule by honor), then oligarchy (rule by wealth), then democracy (rule by freedom), ending finally in anarchy - are a good context for understanding how these processes tend to play out.
To be fair to reality, no, he wasn’t. He committed a number of very serious crimes flagrantly out in the open and the Justice Department was inordinately slow in responding to them out of a number of factors, including institutional partisan bias (even under Democratic Administration the bulk of the federal criminal investigatory apparatus has always been Republican, including political appointees at the FBI, and every single FBI director in the bureau's history), concern over appearing political trumping concern over enforcing the law, and, well, a number of other things.
News triages the newsworthiness. Viewers triage what elements of the news that are most meaningful to them.
I don't really see the problem, except qualms about execution.
The reader has to wade through all that to triage the absolute importance.
After years of consuming media that led me to believe dt was a Russian spy or at best a political underdog I stopped believing there was some grand scheme that he's trying to overtake the government. Half the country voted for him twice, the dedicated investigation did not convict him of collusion, the supreme court is doing its job.
Do you not see the trend to keep you anticipating some terrible coup etc?
(Incidentally, in the US, divide-and-conquer often happens on racial grounds, for example. When American oligarchy starts feeling threatened, it can easily reach for the race card by giving the appropriate people a platform to manufacture paranoia, grievance, outrage, indignation, and antipathy. Solidarity breaks down. People stop talking about how badly they're being governed and manipulated by gov't and private interest and shift focus toward hating each other. Indeed, this is how democracies function in practice. Whereas dictatorships often rely on a good deal of brute force, oligarchs in democracies must be craftier in their methods - this includes the abuse of media, or the phenomenon of sexual lib, as described by Aldous Huxley, as another intersecting example. The citizen cannot know he is subject to manipulation or coercion. Media and education become instruments of conditioning and inculcation, with society functioning as a force multiplier.)
And yet, when the people at the top, the ones implementing these strategies and policies, are explicitly lionizing Hitler in a variety of ways, on top of mimicking his policies, strategies, values, and ideals, suddenly treating the comparison as if it's absurd or illogical starts to seem like it's trying to distract us from something...
I partly agree with your general observation in parenthesis there, it seems this situation is being significantly sponsored by the American oligarchy (e.g. Thiel).
The irony is all of his concerns were about the spread of Marxism in the US. Well, it turns out the methods are useful for anyone.
detailed report about it from RAND Corp: https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html
The approach can be considered something of a DDoS attack on your attention span and mental energy: keep up a constant attack, and then, at intervals known only to the attacker, drop the flow just for a second to allow for an attack -- in this case, to allow for the official party line to be created and spread via Fox News, RT, etc.
When mentally exhausted, people eventually gravitate to that which hits their "bellyfeel" best, and by pandering to that and tying it into whatever agenda you want to push, you can essentially push a narrative that is 100% against the interests of the people supporting it.
Capitalism's ruthless, creep-into-everything marketing approaches make this even easier, since there exists apparatus to do this already, and all you need to make it work is to pay for the marketing (via ads, influencers, marketing bots, etc.).
There was always going to be a day of reckoning. If you want multiculturalism, you need to follow Europe's lead with everything from strictly banning Nazis (Germany), to healthcare, to getting over 90% mutlilingualism (Nordic countries).
Yeah, I remember reading about all those US feudal lords that preceded slavery...
I read this recently on Hacker News, in a discussion about "They Thought They Were Free" (1955) [1]
This is something that Russia has been doing for more than a decade:
> We characterize the contemporary Russian model for propaganda as “the firehose of falsehood” because of two of its distinctive features: high numbers of channels and messages and a shameless willingness to disseminate partial truths or outright fictions. In the words of one observer, “[N]ew Russian propaganda entertains, confuses and overwhelms the audience.”2
> Contemporary Russian propaganda has at least two other distinctive features. It is also rapid, continuous, and repetitive, and it lacks commitment to consistency.
> Interestingly, several of these features run directly counter to the conventional wisdom on effective influence and communication from government or defense sources, which traditionally emphasize the importance of truth, credibility, and the avoidance of contradiction.3 Despite ignoring these traditional principles, Russia seems to have enjoyed some success under its contemporary propaganda model, either through more direct persuasion and influence or by engaging in obfuscation, confusion, and the disruption or diminution of truthful reporting and messaging.
* https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html
Steve Bannon used the same technique during Trump 1.0:
> While watching the news coverage of Steve Bannon’s initial appearance in federal court on Monday, I kept thinking about his 2018 confession to the acclaimed writer Michael Lewis. His quote is like a compass that orients this crazy era of American politics. “The Democrats don’t matter,” Bannon told Lewis. “The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.”
> That’s the Bannon business model: Flood the zone. Stink up the joint. As Jonathan Rauch once said, citing Bannon’s infamous quote, “This is not about persuasion: This is about disorientation.”
* https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/16/media/steve-bannon-reliable-s...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Bannon#Political_ideolog...
This is just a way to jam up the courts, but make no mistake -- Big Tech is allowing it to happen.
What possible justification(s) did they have for something so stupid? Never seen anything like that in business contracts, but then I've never bought/sold anything to Texas.
https://www.texastribune.org/2022/01/31/texas-boycott-israel... as an example of it being considered unconstitutional by federal judges. Not sure whether it has been actually annulled yet.
>" it was rewritten to exclude individual contractors and only pertain to businesses with 10 or more full-time employees and when the contract is for $100,000 or more."
So it didn't apply to us anyway!
BTW I'm not boycotting Israel. I just refuse to sign any agreement that I won't.
He’s running for the U.S. Senate [1] and pandering to idiots.
[1] https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/5575242-rove-cautions-...
I'm honestly not even sure he is running for Senate. He might just be going turbo MAGA in hopes that Trump tries to buy him out of dropping out with an administration appointment, the way they did with Adams in NYC [1] (until he bombed out in the polls).
The Republican party has developed a perverse incentive structure where running in the primary as an unelectable nutjob in order to get bribed to drop out is a precedented strategy [2].
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/05/nyregion/eric-adams-saudi...
[2] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/arizona-gop-boss-quits...
I’m sure the inevitable retraction of autism links will get the proper coverage it deserves.
There is an established statistically measurable link between some viral infections during pregnancy and autism. So there is a statistically measurable link between Tylenol use (which reduce fever and pain) with the person having fever and pain.
If there is published science claiming so, they have to now argue for why this science is misleading or wrong instead of simply dismissing the case for having no scientific ground. The science is lazy but not outright wrong, and has not been retracted.
The tragic part is that it's far worse for the baby for a the mother to have a high unchecked fever or infection, or to use any other painkiller (most of which are well known to be dangerous during pregnancy). So even if there is a remnant risk after taking relevant variables into account, it is a far preferable risk to continue to use it.
You can't claim that "science says there's a measurable link" when the science in question says the link is just a correlation based on Tylenol being used to treat the causal link (fever from viral infection). Science isn't about finding correlation. It's about identifying causal links. That's why we do experiments.
Science is fundamentally about finding correlations. We measure things we think are interesting to measure, and try to see if it matches our models and theories. The study found a correlation in their data, and that correlation is real. If that is where that study ends then it's still a valid study. Other papers could apply some more complex statistics to make a guess at the cause, or an aggregate study can take data from a collection of previous studies to re-process the data for new insights.
The "scientific consensus" ends up being what the largest samples studies with good statistical rigor seem to agree on. But that always ends up murky to use in court. "Published paper says X" is usually where most popular science ends, and in this case they're right. "Scientific consensus" is pretty clear that the cause is likely viral infection during pregnancy, but scientific consensus isn't written down anywhere as scientific consensus.
We've been fighting for 30 years about MMR and autism, which was a single retracted study discredited by every study since. And how we're gonna somehow discuss in courts about the correct statistical model to explain a real correlation.
Yeah, we mostly agree. Sorry if I was a bit harsh. I have been very frustrated about the MAHA push away from science based medicine and into lawyer based medicine.
Your point about it being difficult to defend and easy to apply manipulative rhetoric around statistical integrity and methods is a good one.
One of the things about a jury trial is that the science itself is never on trial, and there's always a risk that one side can just out-maneuver the other.
They're unlikely to win any defamation lawsuits given how unsettled the actual research is.
Obviously people at the company are going to be aware of the studies and have to respond to them internally. That's literally their job.
This is substantively different than the "tobacco coverup" in a magnitude of ways - but we're talking about an alleged coverup for something that the company doesn't have a history of covering up, for a tiny segment of their customers.
Regardless of the actual risk of Tylenol, Occam's Razor should not lead us to assume a coordinated coverup.
Polititions, so correct on both counts!
But why all the attention? It's... tylenol. Why is POTUS and Texas AG and whatnot getting up on a stage in front of the media and going to war against an extremely boring OTC medication that no one has every cared about. There are no conspiracy votes to get here. RFK made it all up.
Is this a corruption thing? Are they shaking down the manufacturer? Is it being blown up for speculative reasons? I note that Johnson & Johnson spun it off just two years ago. Is there a plan behind this?
Seriously, what's actually going on? This smells like some kind of weird conspiracy but I can't see anything but irrationality.
RFK (or maybe Trump) gave themselves an arbitrary deadline of September this year to "find the cause of autism" which obviously meant they had to find a scapegoat. Some speculate that they went after Kenvue/J&J because they weren't kowtowing hard enough to the administration and there was junk science around Tylenol/Autism links which made it an easy target.
The link isn't solid, so there's not exactly much of a case, and probably better to take it for high fever than taking nothing at all... we think.
The big deal is that it's yet another case of government and big corporations hiding evidence that things aren't what they want us to think they are. RFK's big deal is simple:
1- autism diagnosis rates have skyrocketed
2- food today isn't what it used to be, what with all the dyes and not-food things put into food
3- daily diet advice is wildly inconsistent and based on old data
4- things which we've been taking for granted, like "tylenol is perfectly safe" or "the covid vaccine is perfectly safe" when neither are strictly true causes people to have LESS trust in the government, not more. Rather than treating everyone like idiots, give them information to make informed choices. There'll still be idiots either way, but better (in his mind) to let the rest make up their own minds on what they put into their bodies
Second: this is one of the most common drugs on the planet, and has been for half a century. If there was a clear effect with non-trivial magnitude, someone would have noticed.
As to the rest:
> based on leaked memos
That is a laundered Daily Caller story! It's a single screenshot of a single email, which doesn't even contain the word "autism". Given the context, if you force me to flag a conspiracy here: this thing you linked is probably fabricated to enable this very freakout.
I mean, absent other criticism: it's talking about "studies". Studies get published. Surely you could just look them up and see if they show a link, no? Well, no, obviously, because the Caller didn't. Or they did, and they didn't support the breathless hyperbole.
> That is a laundered Daily Caller story
I did point that out in my other posts around here on the topic, I missed it on this one. The fact that the article doesn't contain everything is irrelevant; I'm pointing it out under the assumption that there's more than just a PR stunt for the Texas lawsuit. Maybe more will come out in discovery, or maybe it really is just a PR stunt. Time will tell.
> I mean, absent other criticism: it's talking about "studies". Studies get published.
The thing that's wild to me in all of this is that people complain for years that industry shouldn't regulate itself, that it's too involved in studies about itself, and yet here we are, defending an indefensible status quo. Big Tobacco didn't publish their own studies showing how harmful tobacco was, and the extent and years that they knew about it and did nothing were big contributors to the judgments against them.
> this thing you linked is probably fabricated to enable this very freakout.
That would be pretty wild, but I imagine these memos will be part of the discovery in the Texas lawsuit. If it turns out to be nothing, then people will move on like they always do.
> people complain for years that industry shouldn't regulate itself, that it's too involved in studies about itself, and yet here we are, defending an indefensible status quo.
You are inferring from the article (as it wants you to believe) that somehow this letter declares the existence of heretofore unknown studies funded, performed by and then suppressed by Johnson & Johnson. It doesn't say that, at all. The author just thanks someone for sending them a PDF or whatever.
So I see a partisan rag making an ambiguous point and assuming that the straightforward interpretation ("ambiguous evidence" is like the easiest bet in science) holds. You see it, having already been primed with an interpretation, and need to start filling in details to preserve the conspiracy you've already adopted. Occam argues strongly that the Caller is just wrong and publishing garbage spin, as they've done many times in the past.
Please stop.
1. Diagnosis rates. Because diagnosis criteria has changed.
2. Sure okay. Don't eat junk food. Why are you pitching a little fit about it?
3. Don't know enough about dietary guidelines to comment on their quality, but the guidelines are updated based on best available science.
4. If you'd actually listen to doctors and researchers, rather than what your echo chamber claims, you'd know they don't claim any of it is "perfectly safe", just that it's safer than the alternatives like getting covid, or running a high fever when pregnant.
But, the question was why is RFK involved? The answer, it appears, is that he is putting the blame on the government - including the FDA - for not doing its job to regulate industry. Food should contain food. Europe understands this, but America has been a little slow to catch on.
> the guidelines are updated based on best available science
This has almost never been true, given that the available science has long been funded by the ag and food industry. The most recent updates are good for policy documents, but worthless for the average person. He's been promoting a simplified version.
> If you'd actually listen to doctors and researchers, rather than what your echo chamber claims
Actually, that claim has been thrown around, by both doctors in the public arena as well as the government, especially in tandem with the phrase "when used as directed".
All in all, I'm mostly interested to see if there's any actual evidence that comes out from discovery, or if this is all just a big PR stunt by the Texas AG.
Russia? The country whose military is shitting the bed fighting an army that can’t project more than a third into its interior, whose “hypersonic” missiles are being shot down by 90s Patriot kit and whose space programme has—sensibly—seemingly given up on landing on the Moon?
Chinese authoritarianism can be sung some praises. At least until the wolf warriors get overconfident and tank the advantages meticulously eked out by their colleagues. But Russia? It’s chosen a policy of near-term vainglory at the expense of the Russian state existing within its current borders come 2050.
His own VP and health secretary have even called him Hitler but wised up so that they were allowed on the train!
I believe white men have voted majority Republican in every election since 2000, probably going back further but I haven't bothered to check
Out of curiosity, how?
I mean, it's entirely possible to live without being a university professor, too...
If you can't figure out how to call someone by their own name, go pack boxes in a warehouse for a living.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers]
In January 2005, at a Conference on Diversifying the Science & Engineering Workforce sponsored by the National Bureau of Economic Research, Larry Summers sparked controversy with his discussion of why women may have been underrepresented "in tenured positions in science and engineering at top universities and research institutions". The conference was designed to be off-the-record so that participants could speak candidly without fear of public misunderstanding or disclosure later.[42]
Summers had prefaced his talk, saying he was adopting an "entirely positive, rather than normative approach" and that his remarks were intended to be an "attempt at provocation".[43]
Summers then began by identifying three hypotheses for the higher proportion of men in high-end science and engineering positions:
The high-powered job hypothesis Different availability of aptitude at the high end Different socialization and patterns of discrimination in a search[43] The second hypothesis, the generally greater variability among men (compared to women) in tests of cognitive abilities,[44][45][46] leading to proportionally more males than females at both the lower and upper tails of the test score distributions, caused the most controversy. In his discussion of this hypothesis, Summers said that "even small differences in the standard deviation [between genders] will translate into very large differences in the available pool substantially out [from the mean]".[43] Summers referenced research that implied differences between the standard deviations of males and females in the top 5% of twelfth graders under various tests. He then went on to argue that, if this research were to be accepted, then "whatever the set of attributes ... that are precisely defined to correlate with being an aeronautical engineer at MIT or being a chemist at Berkeley ... are probably different in their standard deviations as well".[43]
Summers then concluded his discussion of the three hypotheses by saying:
So my best guess, to provoke you, of what's behind all of this is that the largest phenomenon, by far, is the general clash between people's legitimate family desires and employers' current desire for high power and high intensity, that in the special case of science and engineering, there are issues of intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude, and that those considerations are reinforced by what are in fact lesser factors involving socialization and continuing discrimination. I would like nothing better than to be proved wrong, because I would like nothing better than for these problems to be addressable simply by everybody understanding what they are, and working very hard to address them.[43]
Summers then went on to discuss approaches to remedying the shortage of women in high-end science and engineering positions.
This lunch-time talk drew accusations of sexism and careless scholarship, and an intense negative response followed, both nationally and at Harvard.[47] Summers apologized repeatedly.[48] Nevertheless, the controversy is speculated to have contributed to his resigning his position as president of Harvard University the following year, as well as costing Summers the job of Treasury Secretary in Obama's administration.[49]
Summers's protégée Sheryl Sandberg has defended him, saying that "Larry has been a true advocate for women throughout his career" at the World Bank and Treasury. Referring to the lunch talk, Sandberg said, "What few seem to note is that it is remarkable that he was giving the speech in the first place – that he cared enough about women's careers and their trajectory in the fields of math and science to proactively analyze the issues and talk about what was going wrong".[50]
In 2016, remarking upon political correctness in institutions of higher education, Summers said:
There is a great deal of absurd political correctness. Now, I'm somebody who believes very strongly in diversity, who resists racism in all of its many incarnations, who thinks that there is a great deal that's unjust in American society that needs to be combated, but it seems to be that there is a kind of creeping totalitarianism in terms of what kind of ideas are acceptable and are debatable on college campuses.[51]
---
> If you can't figure out how to call someone by their own name, go pack boxes in a warehouse for a living.
This disdain does more harm than good to your political goals, which makes me have to consider the proposition that you are more interested in appearing progressive than achieving progressive goals.
What might this look like?
It might look like AOC taking a trip down south to spend the day with southern folks at a pig pickin', a crawfish boil, a monster truck show, day on the shooting range, etc.
Pretending there was some big conspiracy by Dems to silence people for different opinions is flat out delusional. Hillary was correct on her "deplorables" comment but was too early; right wingers are perfectly happy to cheer on cancel culture, corruption, and civil rights violations as long as illegals are being deported and sent to a labor camp in El Salvador.
They're getting everything the voted for.
This logic is fundamentally flawed. Pointing this out to people (often in strong language) makes them defensive. This creates the perfect combination to get people to vote against their best interests.
It's not about "being progressive" or "elite". It's about playing to the fears of people who are already fearful.
Also, they are reactionary; the top priority of reactionaries is to destroy their opposition, not to achieve other things.
And by destroying government, they leave a power vaccuum for powerful private parties to fill.
The autism claims have no basis in fact and "because RFK and Trump said so" isn't evidence.
So options are dismissed immediately, J&J settles, Texas drops it after discovery (if they fail to find a smoking gun), or it goes to trial and Texas has to actually prove it.
Look, I'm not saying that it's going to happen that way in this case. But in terms of possible outcomes, it's one that is possible.
Plus, Tylenol is... a pretty large product, and I don't think they're willing to just flush that entire product line down the toilet.
https://www.financialexpress.com/world-news/us-news/bombshel...
The leaked memos went to DCNF via a law firm with prior suit with Kenvue, so take it with however much salt you want, but there does appear to be internal concern over the data.
If the strategy is to get a settlement without agreement to fault extracting a bit of money to avoid the cost of litigation and use that also as a political hammer to reinforce the popular perception that the claim of a link is true, I can certainly see it being (despite being wildly unethical, an abuse of public office, etc.) an understandable course of action (I don't think it ultimately works even there, unless there is also separate corrupt pressure to settle by people abusing government, perhaps federal, offices in different ways—but that is also a possibility—because even a no admission of guilt settlement becomes hard for J&J publicly if even meaningful moves public perception.) I don't think there is much chance that they win a verdict at trial and survive appeals on it, but... that doesn't have to be the goal.
Great way to dispense a few billion of taxpayer money in settlements as a favor while everyone's distracted by the story and laughing about how dumb RFK and Trump are.
They're not that dumb. Anything that seems particularly illogical has underlying motives. Look and you'll find more instances of this. Much more.
How about: RFK is smart, but insane, and Trump is genuinely stupid, as people who meet him have been saying for decades.
Based on what evidence?
I do not like the man. I find his behavior to be corrupt, immoral, and unethical.
And I also do not hesitate for one moment to admit that he is a singular figure in history who has a deep understanding of human beings and how to exploit them. That may not be classic-elite-intellectual-book-smartness, but it is some kind of smartness, and far from stupid.
Or, at least, he is very sincere in his convictions about many very dumb things
1) Ken Paxton is a powerful idiot/golum. Throw rocks, carefully.
2) Acetaminophen is waaaaaaaaayyyyyyyy overtaken/prescribed
3) Acetaminophen should not be added to most opiod preparations (e.g. common hydroxies of 5mg/325mg oxy/acetaminophen) [it quickly fucks up the liver at high/constant dosage]
4) Reverting to purer opiod pills would reduce the imports/effects/DEATHS related to fentanyl-laced streets drugs (whether the users are actively or deceptively seeking fent directly), it kills when mistaken/miss-taken.
5) Can we please just replace all of Texas' higher political representation... maybe do a "national reset" of political powerhouses by imposing term/age limits upon house reps at state/national levels, as well as similar to how Texas does SCOTex with mandatory retirement at 75 years old. There should certainly NOT be leaders that are 80+ years old! Retire, already; you earnt it, remember (can you remember?)..!
6) [trigger warning: trauma] I would recon things like GM (and other early childhood trauma) are more determinant in eventual autism claims, which would support its much higher prevalence among US boys/men.
7) In general acetaminophen-based products are overprescribed. I'm not sure if this was a rumor, but back two decades when I attended my first (and only) year of medical school: we were taught that acetaminophen was only put into opiod preparations to deter addicts (which was laughable, even then, since half the class had some sort of chemical addiction — we knew it well would not deter).
What does "GM" mean here?
...is more accurate. The procedure you make jest at is among the most horrific "medical" surgeries I have ever witnessed (during my brief medical training, doctor dropout, myself "cut") — I have seen few adult humans express such similar pain (either facially or even with words). Absolutely barbaric, which few medical reasons immediately justify.
I graduated summa cum laude from a public Texas high school, attended college on a full-tuition scholarship, attended a Texas medical school for one year, only, and then left Texas permanently, about a decade ago.
But I will always identify as a Native Smart Texan™, friend.
I moved to a then-less_conservative state, which is now solidly red... so probably moving again, within a few years, specifically to a more moderate, but rural state.
If we want to really discuss "unfair" can we talk about Texas' recent gerrymandering?!