Nobody Knows How Tylenol Works

(scientificamerican.com)

12 points | by pykello 20 hours ago ago

6 comments

  • sorokod 18 hours ago ago

    Tylenol is a brand name owned by Johnson & Johnson. The active ingredient is Paracetamol aka Acetaminophen

    • utdoctor 18 hours ago ago

      They were actually spun off from J&J a few years ago

  • tibbydudeza 17 hours ago ago

    This article makes me very suspicious - is this a plant for a certain narrative ?.

    We grew up on Panado (tm) for pain relief - nothing happened to anybody in our family since it was introduced on the market certainly no autism.

    • bitwize 17 hours ago ago

      I'm willing to concede that there's more evidence for an acetaminophen-autism link than for a vaccine-autism link, but since we're talking "minuscule" vs "zero" that's not saying a whole lot.

      • lesuorac 16 hours ago ago

        I would hope so.

        The guy who spawned the whole vaccine's causes autism wasn't actually claiming _all_ vaccines cause autism. It was a commercial endeavor for people to buy his vaccine [1].

        Granted, if you notice something is bad (say lead in gasoline) it's pretty worthwhile for you to profit from improving it. But the thing actually needs to be demonstrable bad.

        [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_MMR_autism_fraud

      • wiredpancake 15 hours ago ago

        If by "evidence" you mean correlation.

        There is a correlation about mothers taking acetaminophen leading to Autism. There is also a correlation about mothers drinking water and it leading to Autism.

        Doesn't mean its the right connection. Effectively every first world mother in the past few decades has taken acetaminophen whilst pregnant, given its one of the only possible pain medications allowed, yet we don't see 99% Autism rates.