Not too long ago, the corporate media seemed interested in protecting Americans from potentially harmful medications, to the point of broadcasting fabricated stories about deadly ivermectin overdoses. Yet, with a different president in office, the media is now hard at work downplaying medication safety concerns brought up by the FDA. When it comes to acetaminophen, what can we believe?

To begin with, any medical professional who pretends not to understand the life-threatening dangers posed by Tylenol is lying to you. In my years spent training in the pediatric ICU, by far the most common — and most dangerous — overdoses we saw were of acetaminophen. If such ingestions are not treated very aggressively, with regular checking of blood Tylenol levels and continuous infusion of the liver-protecting antidote, serious injury and death can ensue. Every single ER and ICU doctor and nurse knows the Tylenol overdose protocol just as well as they know the stroke treatment or asthma attack protocols — these are common emergencies that medical staff regularly treat and train on.

Indeed, the data confirms Tylenol toxicity is the leading cause of acute liver failure in the country, while Tylenol overdoses cause tens of thousands of ER visits per annum, killing five hundred Americans yearly. That’s roughly 500 more Americans than are killed each year by ivermectin overdoses, by the way. So please, please think twice before posting reels of you downing acetaminophen in your handmaid outfits to stick it to bad orange man, ladies.

Does any of the above prove conclusively that Tylenol use in pregnancy is always dangerous? No. But think back to your or your loved one’s last pregnancy. Do you remember the long, long list of forbidden items? Pregnant moms aren’t even allowed to eat cold cuts, or medium rare steak. Why must expectant mothers chew shoe leather for 9 months? Have there been extensive randomized controlled studies of Swedish twins proving that second trimester salami is fatal? Of course not. But given that there’s a chance of undercooked meats carrying some germs, doctors play it safe and advise moms to avoid them. Now, consider that Tylenol kills significantly more people yearly than black forest ham — is it responsible for doctors to encourage pregnant moms to take it without good reason?

Looking at Studies

What of the supposed link to autism? Let’s go to the studies. Many anti-MAHA voices, including beloved former Federalist writer David Harsanyi, are spreading the word about a massive 2024 Swedish study of 2.4 million children that purportedly debunks any such link. Here’s how I know that these skeptics have not actually read this study: the study methodology admits it did not actually ask pregnant women whether or not they were taking acetaminophen. Instead, midwives asked about use of all medications generally. Let me repeat: the study being spread around the world claiming to prove Tylenol in pregnancy is not linked to autism did not specifically ask pregnant moms whether or not they were taking Tylenol. Perhaps not the firmest foundation to bet one’s child on.

Any doctor understands that when you ask a patient what, if any, medicines they’re taking, most will tell you about their currently prescribed antibiotic or their vital blood pressure medication, but they will rarely mention their regular morning Claritin, their greens supplement, or the Motrin they took for a backache last week. This is medicine 101 (as many fans of the series “Dr. House” will recall); you can’t take it for granted patients will remember to self-report any product they take, you have to go looking for it. In sum, it is the height of irresponsibility to make a study of Tylenol use without specifically asking whether the patient is taking Tylenol.

A Better Study

Now let me tell you about another study the skeptics clearly haven’t read. This one, published earlier this year and notably coauthored by the dean of the Harvard School of Public Health, found significant cause to support President Donald Trump’s warning. Trust me, Cambridge, Massachusetts, is not MAGA country. Yet this massive review of 46 prior studies included a detailed debunking of the Swedish study — noting for instance, that the guesstimating Swedish researchers found only 7.5 percent of the moms in their study took Tylenol, while several other contemporaneous Swedish studies that actually bothered to ask whether moms took the drug found much higher usage rates (63.2 percent, 59.2 percent, 56.4 percent).

The Harvard study also throws a wet blanket on the Swedish team’s use of sibling groups, noting that it only served to magnify the bias of the study. Now, the Harvard review cannot conclusively prove a link between Tylenol use in pregnancy and autism, and the authors clearly state that the correlation strongly suggested by the evidence is not definitive proof of causation — yet it seems that the association is at least strong enough to be cause for concern. As the authors conclude, “We recommend judicious acetaminophen use—lowest effective dose, shortest duration—under medical guidance, tailored to individual risk–benefit assessments, rather than a broad limitation.” In fairness, that’s actually more pro-Tylenol than Tylenol itself once was — here’s the company in 2017 advising against use of its products during pregnancy.

No Definitive Answers

In short, while we have no definitive answers (and likely never will, considering the ethical dangers of staging a randomized control trial on pregnant moms), it seems clear that Tylenol easily meets the “cold cut” standard of caution for expectant moms. It is absolutely a responsible and wise position to warn Americans of the possible dangers posed by this medicine. True, the experts in pregnancy, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, disagree. But those were the same experts encouraging pregnant moms to take Covid injections at a time when there was literally not a single safety study done on the long-term effects of that experimental mRNA injection. Let’s just say their credibility is in about the same shape as an acetaminophen-ravaged liver.

Some pundits claim to worry that this latest MAHA move will increase anxiety in moms-to-be, but is it any different than telling them their child might die if they have a medium rare ribeye?