Heard a radio ad a few hours ago looking for class action participants who took Tylenol during pregnancy and had a child later diagnosed with “autism”.
Tylenol has long been associated with lots of different conditions, and I usually wrote this off because the use of both it and ibuprofen is so pervasive that actual causality is nearly impossible or at least dependent on such specific conditions that the likeliness of it being causal to any particular outcome is lottery small (Not denigrating these chances, just like someone always eventually wins the lottery, someone will always eventually have a catastrophic adverse outcome to just about anything).
The ad struck me because it’s kind of shocking to me that “autism” related suits aren’t a ton more prevalent since it’s heterogeneity kind of lends itself to associating whatever etiology is convenient to it. It feels like this type of “neuro” based lawsuit is only getting started, for example suing producers of “unhealthy” foods for diabetes incidence or “processed” foods for dementia/multiple sclerosis incidences.
It’s bizarre to me that we don’t even have physiologically defined or even consistent behavioral descriptions of these conditions, yet still the perception of them is “settled science” enough that we are thinking about liability. This attempt to make objective statements based on heterogeneous subjective criteria was completely beyond me scope of imagining, but there it was on the radio, implying to parents that their children are “autistic” because of Tylenol.
The science aside, this is some NASTY fuckery. How does (McKesson?) even deal with this, these guys basically implying that their cash cow causes brain damage?
Skimming through the evidence, boy is it thin yet perfectly suited toward this type of litigation (at least to the US “preponderance” standard). It looks like questions were raised when looking at Wakefield’s work and turned over many other nearly every other pervasive environmental factor, including Tylenol and glyphosate based products. And over the last two years (since the complaint was initiated) magically lots of questionable validity science has popped up to support it.
Sampling of relevant work:
Evidence the U.S. autism epidemic initiated by acetaminophen (Tylenol) is aggravated by oral antibiotic amoxicillin/clavulanate (Augmentin) and now exponentially by herbicide glyphosate (Roundup)
Endocannabinoid System Dysregulation from Acetaminophen Use May Lead to Autism Spectrum Disorder: Could Cannabinoid Treatment Be Efficacious? (fucking stoners).
I think my overarching point is that we generally don’t think our current state of understanding as harmful, most researchers who pump out mediocre/poor/misleading science as a requirement of their funding don’t really have the scope to understand how impactful it can be in completely unrelated areas, and not in a good way.
I also need to grouse eventually about how statistics have ruined science (sorry John Snow, you knew nothing).
On the other hand, I need to find that 800 number…