Mr. Paxton filed the suit against Johnson & Johnson, which sold Tylenol for decades, and Kenvue, a spinoff company that has sold the drug since 2023.
The Texas lawsuit claims that the companies knowingly withheld evidence from consumers about Tylenol’s links to autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The suit also claims that Kenvue was created to shield Johnson & Johnson from liability over Tylenol.
This lawsuit is the first by a state that seizes on Mr. Trump’s allegations that the use of acetaminophen products like Tylenol during pregnancy could cause neurodevelopmental disorders. The issue has been a longstanding concern among some followers of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s top health official, but the idea gained traction with Mr. Trump’s remarks.


We’ve had two whole generations of people using acetaminophen during pregnancy. Why have we not seen a massive uptick in autism to match? After accounting for increased screening and changes in definition and attribution, there’s a slight rise in autism rates that doesn’t align at all with acetaminophen use.
And where are the J&J studies showing that the supposed link was known to that particular company?
They’d do much better targeting plastic and PFAS manufacturers, as their products are known to cause the cellular mutations that can lead to cancer and autism.
You are approaching this all wrong.
It’s not about evidence. It’s not about science.
It’s about what feels good
It’s about what makes some con artist money.
I will always upvote The Demon-Haunted World. Should be required reading for every adult.
If you’re in high school or college, read this book!
It would certainly result in a lot fewer so-called “adults” who have an Imaginary Friend in the Sky
What gets me is that studies show that autism is highly genetic.
In identical twins, ASD in one usually leads to a diagnosis of ASD in the other 96% of the time. Which lines up with a high affinity to genetic factors.
In fraternal twins we have seen, a 16% when a given sex ASD is diagnosed leading to an opposite sex ASD diagnosis. A 36% when a female ASD is diagnosed leading to a female ASD diagnosis. And a 31% when a male ASD is diagnosed leading to a male ASD diagnosis.
This lines up with genetic factors from a particular parent that are expressed with the gonosomes. That it affects higher in women is a hint that it may be within the X complex gonosomes. If Tylenol played a serious role in the development of those things then we’d see different data here. That opposite sex fraternal is nearly half the amount for same sex fraternal, really hammers home the notion that we’re dealing with something genetic. But at the same time we don’t know what genes.
The core argument with RFK is oxidative stress. But literally everything causes oxidative stress, not getting the correct amount of sleep causes oxidative stress. And that’s the bigger issue with the studies that RFK has forwarded about Tylenol. Their argument is a confusion of causation and correlation.
And this has been pointed out by a ton of concerned scientist. That’s not to dismiss the data that RFK has provided, it is pointing out that the data they are using doesn’t point to the conclusion they are indicating directly.
I can imagine that Texas could possibly prevail on their case given that even scientist, including the ones RFK cites, aren’t 100% sure that Tylenol has any role in any of this. This isn’t the first time some group or even a State sued over poor science, but it’s really frustrating because Texas has a duty to provide for their citizens and here they are using a poor conclusion to some data to do something that’s no in the interest of their citizens.
get outta here with your science. Drinking Mountain Dew prevents gayness.
There was alsoa few years in the 80s when acetominophen was recalled and no one used it beacuse of fear. No effect in autism rates. Just like lower vaccine uptake last decade has not affected autism rates. We let the idiots do the experiment.
All these issues already existed before acetaminophen was even discovered. This is the result of letting incompetence go wild
Many countries avoid this drug because of its strong liver toxicity. No differences in autism rates.