It Could Happen Here - Does Tylenol Give Your Baby Autism?

Episode Date: October 1, 2025

James is joined by Dr. Tyler Black and Dr. Kaveh Hoda to discuss the MAHA claim that the medication Tylenol is increasing the incidence of autism.  Sources: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2817406See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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so you can work, create, and boost productivity all on one device. I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and on the new season of heavyweight... And so I pointed the gun at him and said this isn't a joke. A man who robbed a bank when he was 14 years old. And a centenarian rediscovers a love lost 80 years ago. How can a 101-year-old woman fall in love again? Listen to heavyweight on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The murder of an 18-year-old girl in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved for years,

until a local housewife, a journalist, and a handful of girls, came forward with a story. America, y'all better work the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns. Listen to Graves County on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And to binge the entire season, ad free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcast. Hi there, this is Josh Clark from the Stuff You Should Know podcast.

If you've been thinking, man alive, I could go for some good true crime podcast episodes, then have we got good news for you. Stuff You Should Know just released a playlist of 12 of our best true crime episodes of all time. There's a shootout in broad daylight. People using axes in really terrible ways, disappearances, legendary heists, the whole nine yards. So check out the Stuff You Should Know true crime playlist on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome to the podcast. It's me, James, today, and I'm very lucky to be joined by a couple of people who I am about to introduce to discuss the very important topic of does Tylenol give your baby autism?

I think we probably already know the answer, but nonetheless, we have half an hour to talk about it. So you will hear Dr. Carve Hoda laughing. That's me. That's Carve, yeah, many of you will know him, but he's a medical doctor. host of the House of Hod podcast. And I'm also joined by Tyler Black, who's a psychologist in British Columbia. Welcome, Tyler. The psychiatrist. Psychiatrist. Fucked it up. Them's fighting words, James. Them's fighting words. Yeah, no, I know. Yeah, it's like when people call me a sociologist, I understand. Or even worse, an anthropologist. It's a pleasure to be here

and no worries. Tyler is Canadian, so to see him correct somebody on something makes me happy. No, I'm very sorry. Yeah, but that's why. he's very sorry he's very sorry about that i love tyler very much he comes on my show not infrequently and one really pleasant thing that's happened one little bright spot in the last i don't know five years of terror that have been happening medically is seeing tyler gradually over time become grumpier and more willing to fight yeah that's the only bright spot i've had thank you tyler for that yeah you bad i imagine that's the side effect of your consumption of acetametaphimit, it should maybe also made you.

Got a cut back, bro, got cut back. Yeah. All right. For those not familiar, where are we talking about Tylenol might be the name you're familiar, especially if you're American, people like to use brand names a little more. I still find that very confusing and I've lived here for the better part of two decades. But why are we talking about Tylenol? Tyler, do you want to introduce this concept?

Sure. So, yeah, Tylenol goes by paracetamol in UK and, and, other places in the world. It's acetaminophen here. So it really is not talking about Tylenol, though the shorthand that the political people who've been talking about it have specifically called out the brand Tylenol,

which is bizarre. But this stems from both a mission that RFK Jr., when he took over as the HHS, sort of had, which was to find the cause of autism, which is, you know, his political quest to find some environmental cause. I mean, he started as an environmental lawyer. I don't think he's doing this disingenuously.

I think he truly believes there was an environmental cause to autism. But of course, RFK-wields science, probably driven by the brainworm. And so he has this way of having a conclusion and then finding the science to support it. And it was very clear that he was going to point towards vaccine, vaccine schedule. And at some point, this is definitely coming. I think this might be a roundabout way to do it through fevers and Tylenol. But the Tylenol link is something that has been a question mark. So a really quick aside will be that when drugs are regulated,

the drug companies have very little natural interest to study it in pregnant people. It only brings them risk. There's no reason to do it. You are required to submit what studies you have on animal toxicity in utero and these types of things, but not really that much for humans. And so the drug companies usually put their hands up and go, talk to your doctor about using this. And then the rest of us in medicine,

have to take that information that's been generated about this medication and try and interpret it on pregnant people. And it creates this system where we create the evidence over the next 20 years in what we call pharmacolids or post-marketing studies where we basically, has there been a problem? Did we find any birth defects? You know, and we kind of do it backwards. It kind of makes sense because you couldn't really do an RCT on pregnant women to start with if you didn't know any reason for the for the drugs. So it's, it's one of those sort of loopholes. And so this natural conversation has resulted in science that points in a number of directions. Does acetaminopin cause autism can't be answered by the current science? Because it's all cohort data. It's looking backwards. It's

looking at populations. It's confounded. However, the best study was published in 2024, which makes the timing of this announcement really awkward. There was 2.5 million people. It was, I believe it's a Danish study. Swedish. Swedish study. Okay. And in that study, there was a small link found, but because they had 2.5 million people, they could check that link by looking at sibling pairs within that 2.5 million. So in that group, they had 16,000 sibling pairs, both exposed to and not exposed to acetaminopin. And lo and behold, they found that there was no relationship there. So this really is one of the more definitive correlational studies that says pretty much any effect we're seeing is probably confounded.

it probably isn't due to the acetaminophen, though there are some animal studies that might hint at it. It appears to be minor, and Kavei, I see you're about to say something, yeah. First of all, that's exactly right. I think that there are a lot of things that Maha and RFK Jr. talk about that are just insane and you can dismiss out of hand. This is a topic that is not complete rubbish. It is something that has a little bit of nuance and we can talk about. As Tyler was just mentioned, there is some evidence that there might be a small, relationship. But the real key is determining if it's a causal relationship or just correlative.

Are they just related for some reason or another? Or are they caused by each other? And that study that he talked about, that Swedish study looked at about 180,000 infants that had parents that were exposed to acetaminophen. What's really elegant about that is that it looked at the siblings. That's why it's such an important study. And that's what I say, it closes the door on the matter? No, I agree with Tyler. I think the preponderance of evidence now is that there is no connection between Tylenol and autism. But I don't know if this study totally closes the door. It is really well done, though. So they showed that if you look at siblings, if you look at a family, there's no connection. You take out some of the variables. You take out some of the confounders there that can obfuscate

or confuse an issue. You take those out of the picture and you see that there's no relationship between Tylenol and acetaminopin. What's interesting, in that same study, that Swedish study, if they then put those back in, if they didn't account for the siblings, then yeah, it showed that there is a little bit of evidence, a small

basic relationship between acetaminopin and developing autism. But once you start accounting for some of these really tough to account for variables, then you start to see that that falls apart. And that implies

that most of these other studies are not causal, but correlative relationships. The sort of 2025 update is, and I think this might have, I think as that we learn more about it, this might have been something that was either solicited or developed in tandem with RFK and his goals, but there was a publication in 2025 by, I think, the Harvard Dean of Medicine who has been a plaintiff's witness for attorneys battling Tylenol in developing autism. there is a bit of a financial conflict of interest there. Right. Yeah.

Baccarelli. Yeah, Dr. Baccarelli, who published a study called a navigation review. And it's basically a sciencey version of, let me tell a story and here's the evidence that supports it. Basically, what they did is they took the number of studies. They counted the number that pointed towards Tylenol as a factor and they counted against it. And they found about 20-something in total.

The majority of them found a link to Tylenol and autism. and then a minority found no link. But of course, that's not really how we do science in 2025. If we had two studies, and you can actually look at his studies, and some of these studies are 200 people, 300 people, 500 people. And then you have this other study that's 2.5 million people. You know, in the real world, that larger study would dwarf the significance of the other ones. But in the way that this navigation study was set up, they're all kind of equal.

In fact, he treats the non-confounded sample that Kavei was mentioning as its own study, and then he treats the controlled sample with siblings as its own study. So the same study from Sweden was cited twice, one for and one against. You can see how you could shape a narrative, which is what a narrative review is. It's when you shape a narrative. It's not a very sciencey way to do things. We like to do systematic reviews, and this did provide. a bit of cover because now everyone in HHS can point towards this study by the Harvard

deed of medicine published in BMC environmental studies, peer-reviewed, showing that a navigational study shows that there could be a link. But it really, if you read the study, any scientist reading it would be like, yeah, there could be a link. But the largest study in that group suggests there is no link. Right. Yeah, someone's playing games with evidence to when they've already decided what their conclusion would be. Yeah. Let's talk about this fascination with autism that exists in the Maha, right, make America healthy again for those who are not familiar. What's happening here? People are probably diagnosed with autism at a higher rate now than they were when these people were young, right? That is not, however,

well, I will let you guys explain that. Explain how that doesn't mean that we're giving children autism, if that's my understanding is correct. Sure. I mean, I'll jump in first. So there's a number of ways to test whether or not the rate is truly increasing. So the first thing to say is over the world, we've seen a gradual increase in the global population that has autism from about 0.8% of the population to about 2% of the population. That's what's happened over the past 25 years of studies across the world. Now, that's not exactly the exponential rise that you often hear about in the United States. The United States has a lot of unique features. So you have a ton of people working in this area. You have a ton of researchers. Lots of people have access to health care.

There's many reasons why global numbers might not look like American numbers. But the general idea behind this increased rate of autism, most of that increases due to our change in diagnostics and the way that we label things. So when RFK was a kid, there were kids that were excluded from school because they were literally called retarded. They were not allowed to come to school. They were known as spazas and goofs and they were the ones that, you know, were made fun of. And they struggled throughout life. Now, were they called autistic? No. Did they have the same symptoms that the kids today that are being diagnosed with autism have? Probably. And the way that we can control for that, there's some really elegant studies. One is we take diagnostic criteria

from children. And then we ask adults currently living today to go through a structured interview looking for those things. And guess what? We find the same rate in adults that we see in kids. This idea that it's an exponential rate. Now, I think the rate is also increasing, but I think it's increasing gradually. And this is because the extreme of ages are having kids more often, especially at the older end. We do know that older age is related to autism, especially older age of the father. And we also know that premature babies and babies with significant developmental disabilities are surviving their postnatal period. As soon as they're born, instead of instantly dying or dying during childbirth or not being able to be

resuscitated, they're kept alive and survive. And this is good. But this does mean that there's more neurodiversity in the world because, of course, these children have encountered significant harm. Yeah, I agree with that. I do think that the diagnostic criteria has expanded, and that's part of why we see more. But yeah, I think the two things we know that are related are some genetic predisposition, if there's people in the family that have it, and the older age of patients. And as we get older, I'm an older father myself, you know, you see more with older patients. And that's more common now than it's ever been before. So these are all a part of it.

And once you take a look, for example, going back to that Swedish study in 2024, that was so good, that sibling study looks at the genetics of it. And once you account for the genetics of it, you start to be able to say, okay, maybe this other stuff like Tylenol isn't important. Yeah. Yeah. Is there a gender element to this as well? Yeah.

I may have misremembered here, my understanding is that women, femme people tended to be diagnosed at a lower rate until relatively recently. Yeah. So not only is there a gender component, but I do think that the biological sex of the child has an impact on the genetic expression because it seems like the transmission to males

is higher than the transmission to females. So there might be something buffering about that extra expression. chromosome. You know, we have this shrimpy little Y chromosome that makes us all degenerates. You only have one Y chromosome. You cut. Sorry. Are you a Cere male? I have two Y's Y. Y. Y. If you know, hairy, my ears are. So there are a number of disorders that the X, the extra X chromosome is protective for. And I do wonder if that's the case for autism. But what's also true is we have stereotypes about what girls should be and what boys should be. And that leads to boys being diagnosed with autism more frequently than girls. So the girl that's quiet and awkward and anxious is labeled

as an anxious kid a lot more quickly than when you see that in a boy that the parents think autism or the clinician thinks autism. So there could be some social reasons for that discrepancy as well. And then the last thing I really wanted to say is the really tragic thing about all of this is profound autism, which autism is a factor. Profound autism is extremely disabling for people around the person. Generally, autistic people enjoy their lives, especially if the world is set up in a way so that they can live safely and without impediment. Autistic people are perfectly content to be autistic. And this whole idea of autism being this travesty, this epidemic, this blight on society is really doing a disservice to the wide variety

of people that we're now calling autistic. Because when our criteria expanded, we created a whole space of autistic people who are very what we would call non-profound autism. These are people that have difficulties in social communication or do the same thing over and over despite it being at an abnormal level, but it's what they need to soothe themselves. That will be called autism now. Now, would a parent want a child who's in a home constantly rocking back and forth and just soothing themselves by licking their fingers or whatever, you know, some very severe autistic behavior. No, that probably wouldn't be the parents ideal. But I've worked with so much autism in my life. I'm a child and adolescent psychiatrists. They've seen so many

autistic kids. They can live happy, happy, happy, happy lives autistic. So I'm not a fan of the blight sort of messaging of it either. Yeah, I'm really glad you mentioned that because that's one of the worst things about, in a sense, one of the most damaging things about it. People who are living happy, healthy, and fulfilled lives are being like slandered or pathologized or rided by the government of this country and that's fucked.

And I'm sure we'll have an impact on those people because it would have an impact on anyone to see this condition that, as you said, right, like may be difficult for people who are not familiar with it to navigate but it doesn't mean that you can't have a fulfilling and happy and very pleasant life suddenly suggested there's some kind of

massively disabling and terrible travel you and that the person who gave birth to you is to blame for this, right? Right. That's what really bothers me. We're always trying to find ways to blame mothers. This is a manel, and I apologize for that listener. Please don't at me for that. But part of what this is is like control over women. And while that Swedish study mentioned may not completely close the issue,

I think it's pretty clear that the evidence pretty strong against there being a connection between Tylenol. And to make a wholesale governmental recommendation as a country for us to move this way to make such strong claims, to have a president come out and just say, grit your teeth and bear it to women in regards to the one medicine

that we've told them they can use during a pregnancy is insane to me. So there's the autism issue and the insult, essentially, to that community, but also to women in general, it's insane to me that this is happening right now. Again, there is a bit of nuance to this issue, as I mentioned. It's not like totally insane to ask about and question it, but to make a wholesale directional change in how we recommend managing patients

with our pregnant is nuts. It's just nuts. Yeah. And to piggyback on that, you know, like it's really normal. It was normal advice in 2024 for us to say, Yeah, you can use Tylenol, but try to use it sparingly. We're not really sure. Use it when you need it, though, because we do know that pain and fever and these types of things are bad for the baby.

Right. You know, so this kind of way in which it's now been massage. So I saw a letter from Dr. Marty Macquarie, who's another grifter, who's now in the American political system there, has written a letter basically saying at the bottom, use it judiciously, and it is the only one that's approved. But that's exactly where we were before. There was no need for a pest conference. Every doctor was saying, use Tylenol sparingly, but you can't use it?

James, can I tell you what's driving me crazy about this? Yeah, please. This administration has done something, Trump in general, has done something that has blown my mind, which is somehow time and time again, I find myself defending people and things that I would never want to defend.

Like, first of all, I'm watching Jimmy Kimmel. I don't know how that happened. I blame Trump for that. Second, like, Tylenol is a dangerous medication. I'm a liver doctor. Yes. Suicidalologist.

Tylenol overdose is causing acute liver injury and acute liver failure is a massive real issue across the world. And it is, it's a real thing. So there are reasons that we should be watchful of Tylenol, but this is not one of them.

Right. Yeah. Personally, I'm a champion of all Tylenol should be like the UK. It should be an individually wrapped pieces because there is evidence that that reduces the rate of intentional overdose and even ICU overdoses that cause liver failure. So take away freedoms. This is the medical freedom crowd. It's amazing. Yeah, we should take an advertising break and then come back so we'll do that. Oh God, that would be fantastic if I could take an advertisement. I could use an ad right now so bad. Amazing. It's going to be for

yeah, fucking lemon pepper water, which is the only pain treatment you should be taking. Bark to put between your teeth. It's going to run. Sure, yeah. Go get some leaves and fucking eat them. What can get wrong? Come on.

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How can a 101-year-old woman fall in love again? And I help a man atone for an armed robbery he committed at 14 years old. And so I pointed the gun at him and said, this isn't a joke. And he got down, and I remember feeling kind of a surge of like, okay, this is power. Plus, my old friend Gregor and his brother tried to solve my problems through hypnotism. We could give you a whole brand new thing. you're like super charming all the time. Being more able to look people in the eye.

Not always hide behind a microphone. Listen to heavyweight on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All I know is what I've been told, and that's a half-truth is a whole lie. For almost a decade, the murder of an 18-year-old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved, until a local homemaker, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story.

I'm telling you, we know Quincy Kilder, we know. A story that law enforcement used to convict six people, and that got the citizen investigator on national TV. Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, producer, and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find. I did not know her and I did not kill her or rape or burn or any of that other stuff that y'all said it. They literally made me say that I took a match and struck and threw it on her. They made me say that I poured gas on her. From Lava for Good,

this is Graves County, a show about just how far our legal system will go in order to find someone to blame. America, y'all better work the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns. Listen to Graves County in the Bone Valley feed on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season ad free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Hi there, this is Josh Clark from the Stuff You Should Know podcast. If you've been thinking, man alive, I could go for some good true crime podcast episodes, then have we got good news for you.

Stuff You Should Know just released a playlist of 12 of our best true crime episodes of all time. There's a shootout in broad daylight, people using axes in really terrible ways, disappearances, legendary heists, the whole nine yards. So check out the stuff you should know true crime playlist on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we are back. Thank you for that message from leaf pain relief. Hit the spot. It's good. Don't eat leaves. I saw someone posing with a,

they were taking their graduation pictures, very nice setting. I'm not going to say the flower, I guess just in case. No. It can call it quite remarkable hallucin. nations and it is not a good idea to be like huff it. It's a nice looking flower. If you didn't know, you might huff it. Well, now I want to know what the hell you're talking about. You're going to

tell me later, I'm assuming. You've lived in California your whole life. How do you not know this? Yeah, I'll text you after we're done. Dandelions? Is it dandelions? I've been told not to snor daisy. It reminds me, though, there was a TikTok video of, there's been a few of women proudly being pregnant and ingesting Tylenol. And to be clear, that's a, that's an insane response to this problem. Like, please don't take Tylenol as a point. As Kevin was saying before the break, right. Palinol does deplete the glutathione in your body, and it is toxic to your liver. If your liver doesn't have the glutathione necessary, it directly injures the liver. And this is what happens when you take an overdose, is it overwhelms the amount of glutathione that your liver

has, and it causes liver damage. So in most pregnant women who want to keep the baby are very judicious to begin with, not just like downing shit willy-nilly, you know what I mean? Like, they're like, oh, God, this is really bad. I better take something. And Tylenol, by the way, sucks. You know, as a pain medicine, you know, it's not going to, it's like the thing you take when they won't give you anything else. It's not a great one.

So to take it from them without a good reason, without a proposed mechanism, if you're going to make extraordinary claims, you have to have, if not extraordinary evidence, preponderance of it. So this is really bothering me, as you can tell, because it does not exist. Yeah, I think something you mentioned earlier, like you said, you're backed into a corner where you're defending, like, a big farmer and Tylenol specifically, like, is the one thing that they've tried to do is, like, inhabit nuance and then disingenuously use it. Absolutely.

Yes. Yes. That's the entire anti-vaccines move. Yeah. Yeah, right. And then it leads to people responding in a way that it raises nuance entirely. I understand where we get that response, but it's not the correct response, right? People want you to be like, this is 100% safe, right?

They want you to say this is actually the perfect medication and it's fine and you should have it for breakfast. And the HHS tweeted out a statement that Tylenol did in 2017, basically saying we don't recommend Tylenol in pregnancy, but no drug maker recommends any medication. They all say specifically, talk to your doctor about this medication. allowed to recommend the medication. Only doctors can. So when they're using that language and then HHS tweets it out, HHS is tweeting it out specifically to give the illusion that we don't want pregnant people to be taking this medication. They specifically said we don't recommend it and that's a

nuance and that's how they use it and it just sucks. Right. That's exactly right. And title and all the makers of it, by the way, I am curious about the fact that Johnson Johnson spun off Kenview. I wonder if they knew this was coming and that's why they did it the same way that DuPont spun off. It was only three years ago that they did that, right? You know, like DuPont spun off the company in charge of all their P-FAS, their forever chemicals, because they knew shit was coming down the pipeline. I wonder if that

was the same reason here. Tilell did this. Well, they put Band-Aid and Nutrigena in the same group. So I think it was more just to consolidate home stuff. Interesting, yeah. You've got a press conference coming next week about Band-Aid cancer. Cause anxiety. Yeah. Anyways, it's very

interesting to me that this is happening at all, really. I mean, what I thought was interesting about the press conference, and I wonder if you guys picked up on this, too, was, you know, I was wondering, why is this pivot happening? How can RFK Jr. be happy about this? He can't be happy about leaving his crusade against vaccines. The Maha community behind him, clearly, doesn't love that aspect. And I wonder why they were pivoting to that. And I wonder what you guys think about that. I did feel that during that press conference, Trump really went out of his way to sort of give lip service. We should talk about this, too, about vaccines. He talked about vaccines a lot, even though there's no new evidence about vaccines causing problems. And Trump gave this terrible

advice about breaking up the vaccines, which we know is a terrible idea, because that's going to lead to decrease uptake overall. The more visits you have to go back to, the less likely you're going to do it. So the more likely you're not going to be vaccinated. But it made me wonder why this is happening now, why they decided to make this pivot. And I wonder what you both think about that. My theory is the link with fevers. If I'm being really conspiratorial, I would say that they're going to try and link vaccine-induced fever to autism. And they're going to say, oh, we thought it was the Tylenol, but it turns out to be the vaccines. It's the fever, and the fever is caused by the vaccine. Yes, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

My theory is gender, I think, that telling pregnant people to suck it up is, when you've got, you know, your dudes all standing on the podium there, right? Like, the majority of pregnant people are going to be women. It's something that men have been doing to women for millennia. Like, it's a safer bet than, yeah, your kid might die, but, you know, you never know. Yeah, yeah. Which actually, you know, that brings up another thing that I think we should talk about, which is what Trump kept saying. Yeah. Trump kept saying, don't take it, but he was like, what's the worst that happens?

Nothing bad will come of it. So it invokes this precautionary principle, which is like, you know, why not avoid the Tylenol? Yeah. What's the worst that can happen? And that doesn't work here. No. Because we know that people are taking this for a fever. Tylenol is not good for inflammation.

It doesn't work on inflammation the way Advil-Abiprofen does, but it can work on a fever. And we know that fever can have some risk at least as much, if not more, than Tylenol, in harm to the, baby and harm to the pregnancy. So to me, the precautionary principle just doesn't apply here. And to hear the president, I never heard a president give medical advice before like that. It blew my mind. I felt like I was disassociating while I was watching this. I'm like, this cannot be real life.

And he said it so unequivocally, don't take Tylenol, just suck it up. And I tweeted something that I read from Dr. Glock and Flokin, who is one of my favorite medical comedians, but he said this will kill people. And I do agree. I think people were very incredulous when I said, this will kill people. And they were like, what do you mean? People dying of a fever? I'm like, yeah, kind of. Like, fevers can be really bad for you. And if you're not going to hospital and the only thing you have is Tylenol, it's a really good idea to take the Tylenol. And there's some people that don't go to hospital for lots of reasons. And fevers can kill you. They just can. Yeah. So I disapprove of the Canadian and Englishmen referring to the hospital as hospital.

I'm going to need you guys to refer to it as the hospital. I forgot about that, yeah, always for the definite article. Taking it to a hospital, yes. Thank you, guys. But, yeah, I think you're right. Like, there is no harm option here, right? Like, that is a damage is done when people don't take this. Right.

I just imagine this poor mom, you know, at home, you know, doesn't have great health care, but does have a bottle of Tylenol and is battling a, sorry, I'll Americanize this like 104 degree fever. Thank you. Don't make me do math. Yeah, you're welcome. Don't make me do bad. You know, and, you know, it's around that 100,304 mark where we actually get really worried about the person's brain. We get really worried about their health and what's going to happen.

And what would happen to that person in hospital? They would absolutely get Tylenol right away prescribed by a doctor right that moment. And so I worry about this, I worry about this mom presenting the hospital with her fever. She's pregnant. And the doctor's say, okay, we're going to give you Tylenol. And she says, no. Yeah, right. Why?

Because I don't want my child to have autism. Because people are listening to this guy. First of all, again, the hospital. Second, they're going to listen to this guy. It's insane. People are really going to take this advice. And I could see, you know, especially the more Trump following people, saying you will never give me Tylenol, not in this hospital. And so it does sound silly that not taking Tylenol could kill you.

But if you're so scared of Tylenol because it causes autism, that you don't take it when it's recommended to you by a doctor where it's prescribed to you by doctor, you could die. And I won't be surprised when there are more fever-induced deaths in 2025 and 226 in the United States. I already have the CDC wonder data search ready to go because I study mortality all the time. And I am absolutely sure we're going to see a few more fever-induced deaths than we would have previously. Jeez. Yeah. Come on, why is this taking so long? This thing is ancient.

Still using yesterday's tech, upgrade to the ThinkPad X1 Carbon, ultra-light, ultra-powerful, and built for serious productivity, with Intel Core Ultra processors, blazing speed, and AI-powered performance. It keeps up with your business, not the other way around. Whoa, this thing moves. Stop hitting snooze on new tech. Win the tech search at Lenovo.com. Unlock AI experiences with the ThinkPad X1 Carbon, powered by Intel

core alter processors so you can work, create, and boost productivity all on one device. I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and on the new season of heavyweight, I help a centenarian mend a broken heart. How can a hundred and one year old woman fall in love again? And I help a man atone for an armed robbery he committed at 14 years old. And so I pointed the gun and at him and said this isn't a joke. And he got down, and I remember feeling kind of a surge of like, okay, this is power. Plus, my old friend

Gregor and his brother tried to solve my problems through hypnotism. We could give you a whole brand new thing where you're like super charming all the time. Being more able to look to people in the eye. Not always hide behind a microphone. Listen to Heavyweight on the IHeart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All I know is what I've been told, and that's a half-truth is a whole lie. For almost a decade, the murder of an 18-year-old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved, until a local homemaker, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story. I'm telling you, we know Quincy killed her. We know. A story that law enforcement used to convict six people and that got the citizen investigator on national TV.

Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran. My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, producer, and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find. I did not know her and I did not kill her, or rape or burn or any of that other stuff, that you all said it.

They literally made me say that I took a match and struck and threw it on her. They made me say that I poured gas on her. From Lava for Good, this is Graves County, a show about just how far our legal system will go in order to find someone to blame. America, y'all better work the hell up.

Bad things happens to good people in small towns. Listen to Graves County in the Bone Valley feed on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season ad-free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Hi there, this is Josh Clark from the Stuff You Should Know podcast. If you've been thinking, man alive, I could go for some good true crime podcast episodes, then have we got good news for you?

Stuff You Should Know just released a playlist of 12 of our best true crime episodes of all time. There's a shootout in broad daylight, people using axes in really terrible ways, disappearances, legendary heists, the whole nine yards. So check out the Stuff You Should Know true crime playlist on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Maybe like we can finish up by explaining to people like, You know, if you're talking to someone in your family, right, someone who maybe isn't a listener, sadly, to either of our podcasts. I know this isn't directly the area either of you specialize in, but from what I understand, pregnant people, like the way that drugs are categorized, as we spoke about earlier on, there's not like, yeah, go ahead and take all of these, right?

There's like, probably fine if you have to, probably a bad idea unless you really need to and, like, maybe some straight up don't. Yeah. Can you explain that for people? Sure. So there's a classification system and it's technical, but it's exactly like that. There are very few medications that are like totally fine. These are medications that are given during pregnancy that have been well studied in pregnancy. But for the most part, pretty much everything else.

So in my world of psychiatry, you know, SSRIs and antipsychotics and benzodiazepines and whatnot, they all have the same classification, which is basically contraindicated, don't take it, unless your doctor prescribes it for you. Now, we still get pregnant people with depression and psychosis and who need all these medications. Yeah. And so we do have to interpret it based off of the data that we have. And the data that we have always comes late.

So if we find a problem, it's found too late. And generally, it's precautionary. So typically, I don't know, Kavei, if there's a similar thing in GI work, but, like, for me, I'll get a call all the time. Oh, we have this woman. She's 32. who she's really worried. She normally takes antidepressants,

but she's thinking about stopping them because she's really worried about passing into her baby or whatever. And I'm like, how bad is the depression? Well, it was really bad. She was hospitalized three times and nearly died. I was like, you probably want to keep antidepressant treatment going

and just let her know that there could be some harm to the fetus, but depression is way worse. And we just go with God, you know, do your best. There are certain medications where we are going to say you absolutely shouldn't take these during pregnancy. And you should discuss that with your obstetrician.

You should talk that over with your gynecologist and your primary care doctor. You should talk it over with your medical team. That's great. But every medication has some small amount of risk, some larger than others. But it's really about the risk versus the benefit. And this has been well studied by the experts. And what you've heard, what those people have heard from Trump and, RFK Jr. is well outside of the normal recommendations from the experts like the ACOG,

the American College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. The people who have been keeping our pregnant patients alive and relatively well for many, many years. This is well outside of those recommendations. And while it's an interesting topic, and I think maybe, you know, sure, I'd like to see more studies on it. I'm never going to say don't study this more. Right. I would say, that the preponderance of evidence and scientific belief and medical belief in this one goes against what they're saying. And I would say at least talk it over with your doctor. If you have a question, talk it over with your doctor. And that's, you mentioned before, town law has sort of like, you know, try to hedge its bets by saying talk, get over with your

doctor. But the reason they do that is they know most doctors are going to be reasonable about this and follow the scientific evidence that's there. So I would say if they really have a question they should talk about with their doctor because Trump, whether or not they love him or not, this is well out of his range of understanding. And he is getting, it's like a game of telephone. He's getting a version of the medical information transmitted to him by RFK Jr. who is getting a weird version of it from his belief system. And it's being supported by people who are there solely just, just there to do the beck and call of Trump. at this point. And that's super dangerous. And so if they can keep an open mind about it,

talk it over with their doctor, continue to do what their parents did, I think they're going to be okay. Yeah. Real quick, because like for reasons that are largely related to the way that we do healthcare in the United States, people sometimes are reticent to talk to their doctor, unable to talk to a doctor. Reliable sources of medical information versus the shit that you find on Google. Give us like a five-minute primer. Yeah. So, you know, in almost every day, jurisdiction, there is an official health agency that you can go to their website and get good health data. So in BC, we have HealthLink BC, and there's a number that you can call to speak to a nurse. In America, you have great. I would say it used to be great. Like Cleveland Clinic used to be

really great, but they got a little hokey. I would still say, you know, there are some really good American places that you can go. Mail Clinic has a lot of public facing information that has pretty good general descriptions. But just make sure it's from a place that is official because there is a whole space now that's going to be opened up because the second part of this presentation that RFK gave was about a generic medication that might help some people with a very specific form of autism. And I promise you the amount of huckstering that's going to happen based on that. The alternatives, you know, we made a joke about lemon water before the ad break,

But there are going to be people who are going to be selling the alternative to Tylenol that is autism-free. And that's really worrisome. Be wary of anyone that has something in their Instagram, their TikTok, their wellness post that uses the words detox, be wary about ancient remedies, be wary about anyone that is selling something like Dr. Oz, who, by the way, sells a version of the full. olinic acid or the leukovorin that they're talking about here. So be wary about that. We don't sell shit. Be wary about people like Dr. Baccarelli, the dean of Harvard epidemiology, who, by the way, I've heard is a good doctor from the friends I have in Harvard.

They say he's not a bad guy. But be wary about the fact any time you see someone's making $150,000 off a court trial to sue Tylenol and has a vested interest in these things. So you should be wary about those things That's definitely something to look for And if you're looking for a trusted source Speaking of Hucksters You could listen to my podcast

The House of Pod Anywhere you find podcasts Where we're going to talk about Medical stuff just like this And I will bring you trusted sources Beautiful That was all a long play To get you to listen to Kave's podcast

But no I mean it for the long con I'm in for the long con buddy Thank you for helping us clear that up a bit I think it's a real rough time for health care in general, and especially people with autism, like, or neurodivergent people, it really fucking sucks to see the entire federal government bad-mouthing people. So, yeah, we are thinking of you.

Very similar to the issue with trans kids. Like, I'm a Canadian, you know, and we have right next door to my province, Alberta, which is very much taking the route to Florida and other things with respect to trans policies. And it's just got to suck to be a trans kid in Florida. to right now. It's got to suck to be a trans kid anywhere in America right now, knowing what's coming down the pipeline. And it'll be the same for people with autism and families with autistic kids. Yeah. Yep. I could conservatively complain about this for another three hours. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We didn't even talk about hepatitis B, by the way. We can talk about hepatitis B.

We can talk about that some of the point. Okay. There's just so much. There's so much and it's so terrible. And you're absolutely right. It's really like for that community right now. By the way. I wanted to debunk something because it's been said multiple times. Yeah, yeah, get it. RFK and a whole bunch of people have said, I didn't know anybody autistic when I was, you know, when I was a kid or whatever. I've never met someone autistic my age. Donald Triplett was the very first person diagnosed with autism in 1943, I believe, 1943. He just died last year. I think he was something like 80, 90 years old. Okay? Yeah. Autistic people. are old too. This idea that there aren't old autistic people is so ass backwards. It was just not

diagnosed. Yes. And it's such a shame because when Donald Triplett passed, you know, like people in psychiatry notice, that's not the type of thing that people in the world notice, but he was the very first autistic person. He lived a full life. He was an engineer. He had autism. It was diagnosed. He was the first ever case diagnosed. And he also lived a life. And so for RFK to just erase him completely and say, I've never known an old person to have autism is just ridiculous. Yeah. And like if you conduct yourself as RSK does,

but it's being a piece of shit to neurodivergent people, then even people who have been diagnosed, not just going to be like, hey, man, yeah, I wanted to talk to you about my autism. Yeah, about my autism. Because you're being a turd to them and like you're being unkind. Yeah, like, what do you expect? Yeah.

I mean, yeah, Tyler Grandin is like, how old is she? now, like in our 70s? I mean, it's absurd to think that this is a totally new thing. I mean, it also tells me that he was probably a bit sheltered and probably didn't mean enough people. Wow, a kind of be sheltered? Wow. Yeah, yeah. He's had a different experience of life to many of us. It's fair to say. I got through the whole podcast without making a toddler and all pun. I'm very proud of that. I usually do pretty much every time and it pisses my wife off so much. I'm really proud of you, man. I know. You've shown a lot. of growth. Yeah. Yeah, that's great. I was going to make one, but I thought I'd leave it. I didn't want to offend. Yeah, thank you very much. Where can people find both of you on the internet if they'd like to? Or, you know, in person. Don't find me in person. Do not do that. As you can listen to my podcast, the House of Pod, anywhere you listen to podcasts, you'll hear people like James. You'll hear people like Tyler. Last time Tyler was on was actually for episode 284. We did an episode on.

adult, ADHD, with author Rax King. She's Brad, so that's a good episode to listen to. And you can find me on Blue Sky at KavemD. I still have a Twitter account and Instagram account, but I don't really use those that much. So find me on Blue Sky. Blue Sky, by the way, as a shout out as a plug, I think it's good for science. If you're interested in science-based stuff, it may not be that much fun for everything else, but at least in terms of like if you want to follow doctors, scientists, that's a good place to go. That's where a lot of us have gone. So I'll be there at Blue Sky. Yeah. And I'm, I am still on Twitter, Tyler Black 32. I'm slugging it out. It is a lot of hate and a lot of death threats now, especially as I've been on a few trans podcasts. I've been on quite a few

medical antivax and vaccine podcasts. So, you know, I'll pop up from time to time on a podcast or something, but I'm not really have anything to plug anymore. I'm just really hoping that we can continue to fight this sort of it's a really disgusting reality in this decade that misinformation has won the day and literally misinformers are the political leaders now

and misinformation has just eroded science to the point where I don't know if America's ever going to get it back. Yeah. If we do, this has set us back many years. This has set us back many, many years. Yeah, it's pretty bleak. Well, that was fun.

Yeah. Let's end on that hopeful note. Yeah. All right. It Could Happen here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. Ah, come on.

Why is this taking so long? This thing is ancient. Still using yesterday's tech, upgrade to the think pad X1 carbon, ultra-light, ultra-powerful, and built for serious productivity with Intel core ultra-processors, blazing speed, and AI-powered performance. It keeps up with your business, not the other way around. Whoa, this thing moves. Stop hitting snooze on new tech.

Win the tech search at Lenovo.com. Unlock AI experiences with the ThinkPad X1 Carbon, powered by Intel Core Ultra processors so you can work, create, and boost productivity all on one device. I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and on the new season of heavyweight... And so I pointed the gun at him and said this isn't a joke. A man who robbed a bank when he was 14 years old. And a centenarian rediscovers a love lost 80 years ago. How can a 101-year-old woman fall in love again?

Listen to heavyweight on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. The murder of an 18-year-old girl in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved for years, until a local housewife, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story. America, y'all better work the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns. Listen to Graves County on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And to binge the entire season ad-free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Hi there, this is Josh Clark from the Stuff You Should Know podcast.

If you've been thinking, man alive, I could go for some good true crime podcast episodes, then have we got good news for you. Stuff You Should Know just released a playlist of, 12 of our best true crime episodes of all time. There's a shootout in broad daylight, people using axes in really terrible ways, disappearances, legendary heists, the whole nine yards.

So check out the stuff you should know true crime playlist on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast.