News

From what I can tell they've got a few eggs in this basket:

• JF(C)K Jr. and trump and Dr. Oz and the gang are selling the "cure" for autism which is just a random supplement and trying to scare people into buying it.

• If they can tell the public that essentially the safest and most common medication is evil and everyone believes it, they can essentially say anything they want and define medicine for their own profit in the future.

• Lawsuits can be profitable even if they're bullshit. If they hurt a company and invest in their competitors, they can make money even while paying for a frivolous lawsuit. Plus they might even win with how brainwashed everyone is these days.

• Autism and ADHD are scapegoats for conservatives and they can get people to follow them just by targeting these so called evil neurodivergencies. Kinda like Hitler targeting Jews and others for all of Germany's problems, they target immigrants and neurodivergents and transsexuals (oh my lol).

• Distract from the Epstein files and illegal overhaul / takeover of the government for fascism as always

Is it extortion of some sort?

It's a shakedown. They want an out-of-court settlement.

Does anyone have an angle on the strategy here?

Paxton's in a heated primary with Cornyn over his Senate seat, so this could all just be about getting his name in the headlines on the eve of an ugly primary fight.

Also might be a classic Trumpian shakedown. Like, this can all go away if J&J throws Paxton a few million in campaign donations.

Release the Epstein files.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Epstein_client_list

We have so many people dead to rights, from the Birthday Book to the Flight Logs to the Virginia Guiffrey testimony. You can only say this so many times before people stop giving a shit. Like, what does anyone think Kash Patel and Pam Bondi are going to do about it? What does anyone think the fucking NY or CA AGs are going to do about it?

Nobody is coming to take Elon Musk or Peter Mandelson away, even assuming you have them dick deep in a live boy and a dead girl on high resolution video with Epstein giving the double-thumbs up center frame.

Oof... Just liver failure and kidney damage. Close, tho!

We have seen a massive uptick. That's the whole problem. In 1970 the rate was 1:10,000 and now it's 1:30

But the reason for the massive uptick is because we understand autism better and can diagnose it easier. But idiots don't understand that and assume something must be making more autistic kids than before.

You are approaching this all wrong.

It's not about evidence. It's not about science.

It's about what feels good

I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness

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.

Because that’s what they’ve voted for

The joke of Texas Politics is that we've got Reagan Republicans on the right and Dixiecrat Democrats on the ahem left. Then we're told to pick our poison. If you're waiting for Congressman Henry Cuellar and Mayor John Whitmire to save you, then you'll be waiting a long time.

There are plenty of genuinely good and gracious people in my state. Come down to Houston and help "Food Not Bombs" hand out meals to the homeless as fast as we can, before the HPD can knock over our tables and drag the volunteers off in handcuffs. Come join the Women's March that filled the streets of downtown. We have them ever year. Or join the local DSA that's been crusading to unionize the retail sectors and boycott IDF-affiliated terrorist organizations for over a decade.

Or just stay for the electoralism, where you can wait in line for seven hours to cast a ballot and get arrested at the end of it. The idea that "this is what we voted for" is a fucking lie. We're occupied territory. About as free to govern ourselves as any Hawaiian native protesting the United Fruit Company or Okinawa resident getting raped by a US serviceman.

The first case of lung cancer was (insert year), cigarettes weren’t introduced until (later year).

I’m not claiming Tylenol causes autism, but your logic isn’t disproving either.

Just a reminder that Europe had the concept of “Changelings” for 2,000 years, where babies that suddenly changed and became difficult or antisocial were thought to have been replaced by a fairy. These babies were then left in the woods to “return them to the fairies”

This practice has been documented for thousands of years.

Autistic people have existed for thousands of years, just now we don’t call them changelings and abandon them in the forest.

"A causes B" doesn't imply that B is only caused by A, so this is pointless to bring up

That being said, RFK is a colossal idiot and the Tylenol-autism thing is a pretty clear-cut case of correlation≠causation.

I mean, you'd like to think courts are a place where evidence is reviewed and truth is ratified. But... glances at the US Fifth Circuit...

I like how corporations are people that can legally re identify as something else on a whim.