SpankyMcFarland

This unsubstantiated allegation about Tylenol may discourage women from taking it who need it. Some may say, quite reasonably if the allegation were true, that it’s not worth the risk of an autistic child. Where is your common sense then that conflicts with the advice of responsible medical bodies across North America? The effect of these claims on the use of Tylenol cannot be predicted or controlled.

The vast majority of countries in the world have already recognized Palestine. America is the odd man out there. Its policies on that matter are a gift to China. I’m more worried about Canadians who love Donald Trump. How they do that and stay loyal to our country is a mystery to me.

But some women will surely listen to arguments like yours and say to themselves, I don’t want to raise my risk of having an autistic child at all, and will avoid Tylenol altogether when they are ill and would have benefited from it.

I’m in a madhouse of Trump fans. In Canada which is even more reprehensible. Are you not able to read and understand any of the evidence I have presented here? Raising false fears about Tylenol will discourage women from using it who would have benefited from it. You will reduce the quality of health care for those who believe you. Drugs have enough genuine risks without inventing more.

Completely different drug and set of evidence.

The debate is about whether Tylenol causes autism. You have presented no good evidence that would convince most responsible Canadian physicians that it does, just a bunch of people as uninformed as yourself. The fact that you would still use it despite your claims opens up a whole different set of problems for you and anybody who listens to you. The person who is infatuated with Trump here is not me as any reasonable person can see.

Erring on the side of caution doesn't make sense when you are wrong about the risks.

You know you have lost the argument on whether Tylenol causes autism and now you are changing the debate into whether you would still use it or not. OK, Dr. Fox, you’ve decided your patient needs Tylenol. What do you tell them about the risk of autism you are convinced this drug carries?

Nearly every other country in the world has done this already. America is the outlier, not Canada.

Lower levels of ‘useful’ energy. Entropy increases but energy is conserved. Evolution does not require ever higher levels of organization. If conditions on this earth favour bacteria again that’s what we will get. Our planet is in a universe. That’s the system it’s in. Isolated apparent decreases in entropy don’t mean a thing.

A classic Mossad move. You gave the game away there. The whole place feels a little…psychiatric.

If we had an ignore function here I would put most of the large MAGA faction on it. Much of what they offer is puerile abuse, eg “you’re a liar”, and it gradually drags everyone down to the same level. There’s nothing to learn from it.

Trump is wrong. Of course, I never said anybody should be ‘eating Tylenol’. I actually pointed out in a post that political arguments can lead to such extremism. There is no good evidence of that. Talk to the local experts in your province if you don’t believe me. Contact the dept of OBGYN in UBC and ask the head of dept if they agree that Tylenol causes autism. Contact anybody in authority in health care. Of course, as if I need to say this, I do not encourage the use of any medicine in pregnancy beyond the minimum needed. You’ve spent page upon page spreading misleading information about Tylenol and you think that mightn’t put women off using it? Enough. I think I’ve made my case which of course is not my case - just what the experts are saying. I happen to believe in science.

Their beliefs are their business. The dividing line is when those beliefs are invoked to justify policies - I’m right because God appointed me and he’s telling me to do this, that and the other. If God’s will becomes an argument in itself then a country is in trouble.

Iran is the one of the world’s most ancient states and, like China, has had authoritarian rule almost uninterrupted for many thousands of years. The people in charge may not know much about providing prosperity or freedom but they are well versed in how to oppress the population. I suspect the regime may loosen its overtly theocratic side and become more like the Ba’ath outfits that used to reside next door. The attack by America and Israel probably strengthened it - everywhere in the world people rally round the flag when foreigners are involved like that.

Try and leave your wretched politics out of this matter. You’ve spent pages denouncing Tylenol as a drug in pregnancy. Fine. What are your alternatives exactly? Please list the possible dangers of each drug as well so that women who will have to use these know what they are getting themselves into. Start with aspirin.

You’re a little evasive there. What dose of aspirin would you advise women to take for fever?

Theocratic thinking has no place in government. When a country’s leader starts acting as if God is telling him to do stuff and that anyone who disagrees with him is a blasphemer, the results are invariably disastrous because there’s no possibility of rational discussion or error control. The catastrophes of Iran and Hamas should be evidence enough for anybody. Religion must be a strictly personal matter that stays in the home and places of worship.

Will you stop with the political nonsense and try and evaluate the data? I have already pointed out multiple flaws with the Harvard study and even with one of the authors in this thread. He wasn’t even allowed to answer questions by his university on the paper recently and was rebuked by a judge for his testimony in a related case. By contrast, look at the Swedish study - fantastic record keeping on 2.5 million births from a unitary health system over a 25 year period. No American study on this subject compares remotely with that.

There is no good evidence of a causal link between Tylenol and autism. That’s the current medical consensus. There is an association in some papers. There is also an association between violent crime rates and ice cream consumption (in summer) but nobody imagines a cause and effect there. Whatever about minor aches and pains, fever in pregnancy poses a problem for physicians in the absence of Tylenol. Many of the alternative drugs carry genuine, well documented risks, as does not treating it as well. Members of the public should not be expected to read and understand the medical literature on any matter. That’s what the experts are there for. If everybody on the medical and governmental side behaves as they should the system works well to provide patients with the best available evidence.

A problem arises when people in positions of authority speak inaccurately about the evidence and mislead women on it. As UK health minister Wes Streeting says, this is a debate where politicians should follow the best advice made available to them by experts in the field which has been the norm for many years in well-run countries. Only in places like North Korea is the leader expected to know everything about every subject. Would we want Trump to advise Elon Musk on how to build his rockets?

What sort of evidence would you like? Have you read the Swedish study? As Wes Streeting says, pay no attention to him or any other politician - this isn’t their area of expertise to put it mildly. What don’t you understand?

There is still no good evidence that Tylenol causes autism. That’s what women should hear. The Swedes took 25 years worth of data from their country, virtually every singleton birth, to demonstrate that. Here is the response of the UK’s minister of health to Trump’s frightening and ill-informed claims: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/22/trump-tylenol-experts-autism

So now that you’ve removed Tylenol from the list what would you recommend to treat fever in pregnancy?

Again, why don’t the bodies advising clinicians agree with you? Just answer that question. I’m not sure you understand the weight doctors attach to such statements. Do you really think obstetricians are going to risk their careers and their patients’ welfare just to argue with some politician? The people advising these specialists have looked very carefully at the evidence you cite and are not convinced by it because it’s not good evidence. The flaws in the research are obvious even to me. The Swedish study is the best and it found no significant effect from Tylenol. And I suggest you look at the risks incurred with other medications as well. For example, no pregnant woman should be taking NSAIDS after 20 weeks. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/health-canada-pushes-back-trump-tylenol-1.7642192 https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/autism-and-tylenol-what-the-science-says-1.7641821 https://recalls-rappels.canada.ca/en/alert-recall/acetaminophen-recommended-treatment-fever-and-pain-during-pregnancy