With this particular case, it's not as if they completely pulled this one out of thin air... NIH and Johns Hopkins were barking up the same tree about 5-6 years ago.
In analysis of umbilical cord blood, researchers discover that elevated levels of acetaminophen is associated with up to three times the risk of autism, ADHD diagnosis
hub.jhu.edu
One in 36 children were identified with autism in 2020, a 22% increase from 2018 and a 98% increase from 2010. Simultaneously, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) diagnoses increased 36% from 2003 to 2016–2019. Despite this surge, their ...
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
The researchers analyzed data from the Boston Birth Cohort, a 20-year study of early life factors influencing pregnancy and child development. They found that children whose cord blood samples contained the highest levels of acetaminophen—the generic name for the drug Tylenol—were roughly three times more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD or autism spectrum disorder later in childhood, compared to children with the lowest levels of acetaminophen in their cord blood.
Their findings were published last week in JAMA Psychiatry.
The study, which was authored by Johns Hopkins postdoctoral fellow Yuelong Ji and colleagues, the team measured the biomarkers of acetaminophen and two of its metabolic byproducts in umbilical cord blood samples from 996 individual births.
Compared to the group with the lowest amount of acetaminophen exposure, the children in the middle third group were about 2.26 times more likely to have an ADHD diagnosis and 2.14 times more likely to have an autism spectrum disorder diagnosis. Those with the highest levels of exposure were associated with 2.86 times the risk of ADHD and 3.62 times the risk for autism spectrum disorder, compared to those with the lowest exposure.
The actual "
Tylenol *may* be a possible factor" claim isn't entirely baseless.
However, the legal angle they're pursuing is that "The makers deceptively marketed the drug to pregnant women"...that's going to be an uphill battle to prove.
To use an analogy:
If I owned a restaurant...
Saying "Rob sold burrito bowls that we found out after the fact
could've had some contaminated tomatoes, but we're not 100% sure, so it's
possible that it was the cause of that food poisoning increase we saw last year based on the overlap of people who ate at his restaurant"
...is very different than the affirmative assertion "Rob
knew he had tainted ingredients, but deceived other people by selling them anyway"
One can reasonably speculate the former, however it's going to take some extraordinary evidence to prove the latter.
Hence the reason that even RFK said:
"The causative association ... between Tylenol given in pregnancy and the perinatal periods is not sufficient to say it definitely causes autism. But it is very suggestive," Kennedy told reporters, citing animal, blood and observational studies.
So not only is it lacking terms of there being proof that it's a "definite" cause, it's going to be even tougher to prove in court "it is the definite cause, and the drug company knew it but lied about it"
abcnews.go.com
