4 ms·

Can someone explain the angle here? I mean, I get why personally RFK Jr. might have opinions about stuff. I can imagine him putting his finger on the scale he

by ajross 1y ago

Can someone explain the angle here? I mean, I get why personally RFK Jr. might have opinions about stuff. I can imagine him putting his finger on the scale here or there. But why all the attention? It's... tylenol. Why is POTUS and Texas AG and whatnot getting up on a stage in front of the media and going to war against an extremely boring OTC medication that no one has every cared about. There are no conspiracy votes to get here. RFK made it all up. Is this a corruption thing? Are they shaking down the manufacturer? Is it being blown up for speculative reasons? I note that Johnson & Johnson spun it off just two years ago. Is there a plan behind this? Seriously, what's actually going on? This smells like some kind of weird conspiracy but I can't see anything but irrationality.

hypeatei 1y ago
> Can someone explain the angle here? RFK (or maybe Trump) gave themselves an arbitrary deadline of September this year to "find the cause of autism" which obviously meant they had to find a scapegoat. Some speculate that they went after Kenvue/J&J because they weren't kowtowing hard enough to the administration and there was junk science around Tylenol/Autism links which made it an easy target.
zdragnar 1y ago
RFK didn't make it all up. J&J execs have been concerned about a possible link for years, based on leaked memos: https://www.financialexpress.com/world-news/us-news/bombshell-memo-claims-johnson-amp-johnson-admitted-to-tylenol-autism-link-years-ago/3991363/ https://www.financialexpress.com/world-news/us-news/bombshel... The link isn't solid, so there's not exactly much of a case, and probably better to take it for high fever than taking nothing at all... we think. The big deal is that it's yet another case of government and big corporations hiding evidence that things aren't what they want us to think they are. RFK's big deal is simple: 1- autism diagnosis rates have skyrocketed 2- food today isn't what it used to be, what with all the dyes and not-food things put into food 3- daily diet advice is wildly inconsistent and based on old data 4- things which we've been taking for granted, like "tylenol is perfectly safe" or "the covid vaccine is perfectly safe" when neither are strictly true causes people to have LESS trust in the government, not more. Rather than treating everyone like idiots, give them information to make informed choices. There'll still be idiots either way, but better (in his mind) to let the rest make up their own minds on what they put into their bodies
- ajross 1y ago
  First, nothing you write seems to explain why we're seeing Trump at a podium or Paxton filing a suit. Why not just have the FDA announce an investigation? Second: this is one of the most common drugs on the planet, and has been for half a century. If there was a clear effect with non-trivial magnitude, someone would have noticed. As to the rest: > based on leaked memos That is a laundered Daily Caller story! It's a single screenshot of a single email, which doesn't even contain the word "autism". Given the context, if you force me to flag a conspiracy here: this thing you linked is probably fabricated to enable this very freakout. I mean, absent other criticism: it's talking about "studies". Studies get published. Surely you could just look them up and see if they show a link, no? Well, no, obviously, because the Caller didn't. Or they did, and they didn't support the breathless hyperbole.
  - zdragnar 1y ago
    I think what I was trying to get at is that we see RFK at the podium because he doesn't trust the FDA is regulating industry as it should. Food should contain food, not dyes and other things, etc etc. > That is a laundered Daily Caller story I did point that out in my other posts around here on the topic, I missed it on this one. The fact that the article doesn't contain everything is irrelevant; I'm pointing it out under the assumption that there's more than just a PR stunt for the Texas lawsuit. Maybe more will come out in discovery, or maybe it really is just a PR stunt. Time will tell. > I mean, absent other criticism: it's talking about "studies". Studies get published. The thing that's wild to me in all of this is that people complain for years that industry shouldn't regulate itself, that it's too involved in studies about itself, and yet here we are, defending an indefensible status quo. Big Tobacco didn't publish their own studies showing how harmful tobacco was, and the extent and years that they knew about it and did nothing were big contributors to the judgments against them. > this thing you linked is probably fabricated to enable this very freakout. That would be pretty wild, but I imagine these memos will be part of the discovery in the Texas lawsuit. If it turns out to be nothing, then people will move on like they always do.
    - ajross 1y ago

by ajross 1y ago

hypeatei 1y ago

> Can someone explain the angle here? RFK (or maybe Trump) gave themselves an arbitrary deadline of September this year to "find the cause of autism" which obviously meant they had to find a scapegoat. Some speculate that they went after Kenvue/J&J because they weren't kowtowing hard enough to the administration and there was junk science around Tylenol/Autism links which made it an easy target.

zdragnar 1y ago

RFK didn't make it all up. J&J execs have been concerned about a possible link for years, based on leaked memos: https://www.financialexpress.com/world-news/us-news/bombshell-memo-claims-johnson-amp-johnson-admitted-to-tylenol-autism-link-years-ago/3991363/ https://www.financialexpress.com/world-news/us-news/bombshel... The link isn't solid, so there's not exactly much of a case, and probably better to take it for high fever than taking nothing at all... we think. The big deal is that it's yet another case of government and big corporations hiding evidence that things aren't what they want us to think they are. RFK's big deal is simple: 1- autism diagnosis rates have skyrocketed 2- food today isn't what it used to be, what with all the dyes and not-food things put into food 3- daily diet advice is wildly inconsistent and based on old data 4- things which we've been taking for granted, like "tylenol is perfectly safe" or "the covid vaccine is perfectly safe" when neither are strictly true causes people to have LESS trust in the government, not more. Rather than treating everyone like idiots, give them information to make informed choices. There'll still be idiots either way, but better (in his mind) to let the rest make up their own minds on what they put into their bodies

ajross 1y ago
First, nothing you write seems to explain why we're seeing Trump at a podium or Paxton filing a suit. Why not just have the FDA announce an investigation? Second: this is one of the most common drugs on the planet, and has been for half a century. If there was a clear effect with non-trivial magnitude, someone would have noticed. As to the rest: > based on leaked memos That is a laundered Daily Caller story! It's a single screenshot of a single email, which doesn't even contain the word "autism". Given the context, if you force me to flag a conspiracy here: this thing you linked is probably fabricated to enable this very freakout. I mean, absent other criticism: it's talking about "studies". Studies get published. Surely you could just look them up and see if they show a link, no? Well, no, obviously, because the Caller didn't. Or they did, and they didn't support the breathless hyperbole.
- zdragnar 1y ago
  I think what I was trying to get at is that we see RFK at the podium because he doesn't trust the FDA is regulating industry as it should. Food should contain food, not dyes and other things, etc etc. > That is a laundered Daily Caller story I did point that out in my other posts around here on the topic, I missed it on this one. The fact that the article doesn't contain everything is irrelevant; I'm pointing it out under the assumption that there's more than just a PR stunt for the Texas lawsuit. Maybe more will come out in discovery, or maybe it really is just a PR stunt. Time will tell. > I mean, absent other criticism: it's talking about "studies". Studies get published. The thing that's wild to me in all of this is that people complain for years that industry shouldn't regulate itself, that it's too involved in studies about itself, and yet here we are, defending an indefensible status quo. Big Tobacco didn't publish their own studies showing how harmful tobacco was, and the extent and years that they knew about it and did nothing were big contributors to the judgments against them. > this thing you linked is probably fabricated to enable this very freakout. That would be pretty wild, but I imagine these memos will be part of the discovery in the Texas lawsuit. If it turns out to be nothing, then people will move on like they always do.
  - ajross 1y ago