Copy and pasting from my other reply to this claim:
Please don’t continue to share this “fact.” I know it sounds like a really good gotcha, but it’s not. Tylenol is just a brand name producer of the drug acetominophen, known in most of the rest of the world as paracetomol. It’s been around since at least 1878, and possibly earlier (there are claims it was produced in 1852). Autism was first described by Leo Kanner in 1943. Obviously, anyone sane knows that it’s been around a lot longer than that, probably as long as humans have been humans, but the people you’re trying to reach with this claim are obviously going to assert that it first appeared around the same time that it was first identified, or, at the very least, that it’s appearance likely aligns with the invention of paracetomol.
Adding to that: “links to” doesn’t mean “is exclusively caused by”.
That gotcha would only work if that was the claim.
So the argument reads a little like “People died before the Ford Model T entered the market, so obviously deaths aren’t caused by cars running over pedestrians.”
Yeah, they could just as easily pivot to “Well, sure, autism was around before that, but it didn’t happen nearly as often.” Kind of like cancer and modern carcinogens. It’s just a foolish line of argument that makes us look stupid.
And it’s completely unnecessary. The evidence that autism is genetic is overwhelming. Anyone who is going to listen to facts already has the facts right there, and anyone else isn’t worth trying to convince.
Yeah, they could just as easily pivot to “Well, sure, autism was around before that, but it didn’t happen nearly as often.”
In fact, that was their actual argument. This is what Trump said:
First, effective immediately, the FDA will be notifying physicians that the use of, well, let’s see how we say that. Acetaminophen. Acetaminophen. Is that okay? Which is basically, commonly known as Tylenol. Can be associated with a very increased risk of autism. So taking Tylenol is not good. I’ll say it, it’s not good.
Within the rest of the rest of the speech you can clearly see where Trump goes off script and does his regular monkey-in-a-suit act, and he says stupid shit as always, but that up there is the core claim: “Can be associated with a very increased level of autism.”
That’s a claim that’s totally not affected by the “but autism existed before Tylenol” argument.
The whole argument is a strawman, nothing else. And that’s really infuriating because there are ample real arguments for this point. It’s not hard to argue that Tylenol has no link to Autism. But making up a strawman argument and butchering to even tear that strawman down is ridiculous.
Edit: It makes me think that this meme wasn’t actually created by anyone who is against Trump. It feels so incredibly dumb and easy to disprove that it probably was created by a magat to make fun of everyone who doesn’t worship Trump.
Copy and pasting from my other reply to this claim:
Please don’t continue to share this “fact.” I know it sounds like a really good gotcha, but it’s not. Tylenol is just a brand name producer of the drug acetominophen, known in most of the rest of the world as paracetomol. It’s been around since at least 1878, and possibly earlier (there are claims it was produced in 1852). Autism was first described by Leo Kanner in 1943. Obviously, anyone sane knows that it’s been around a lot longer than that, probably as long as humans have been humans, but the people you’re trying to reach with this claim are obviously going to assert that it first appeared around the same time that it was first identified, or, at the very least, that it’s appearance likely aligns with the invention of paracetomol.
Adding to that: “links to” doesn’t mean “is exclusively caused by”.
That gotcha would only work if that was the claim.
So the argument reads a little like “People died before the Ford Model T entered the market, so obviously deaths aren’t caused by cars running over pedestrians.”
Yeah, they could just as easily pivot to “Well, sure, autism was around before that, but it didn’t happen nearly as often.” Kind of like cancer and modern carcinogens. It’s just a foolish line of argument that makes us look stupid.
And it’s completely unnecessary. The evidence that autism is genetic is overwhelming. Anyone who is going to listen to facts already has the facts right there, and anyone else isn’t worth trying to convince.
In fact, that was their actual argument. This is what Trump said:
Within the rest of the rest of the speech you can clearly see where Trump goes off script and does his regular monkey-in-a-suit act, and he says stupid shit as always, but that up there is the core claim: “Can be associated with a very increased level of autism.”
That’s a claim that’s totally not affected by the “but autism existed before Tylenol” argument.
The whole argument is a strawman, nothing else. And that’s really infuriating because there are ample real arguments for this point. It’s not hard to argue that Tylenol has no link to Autism. But making up a strawman argument and butchering to even tear that strawman down is ridiculous.
Edit: It makes me think that this meme wasn’t actually created by anyone who is against Trump. It feels so incredibly dumb and easy to disprove that it probably was created by a magat to make fun of everyone who doesn’t worship Trump.
Fair enough I edited my post.