Join Malcolm and Simone Collins as they dive into the viral controversy surrounding Tylenol, pregnancy, and autism. From RFK’s claims to TikTok trends, they break down the science, the media reactions, and the real risks behind the headlines. The discussion covers medical studies, social media challenges, political polarization, and personal stories about pregnancy and autism. Whether you’re a parent, skeptic, or just curious about the latest health debates, this episode offers a nuanced, evidence-based perspective.

[00:00:00]

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I am excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be going over something that I have found really fascinating, which is both RFK, saying that, you know, Tylenol and pseudomona could lead to autism or other birth complications.

And then more interesting the left’s reaction to it for me where there have been viral trends of women just taking lots of Tylenol, I can’t even TikTok, and there was one report of a death from this and we’ll get over whether that report is likely accurate. I hope it’s

not,

I think it’s plausibly accurate.

I think over 50% chance that it’s accurate. And we’ll do, I mean a lot of

Simone Collins: people overdose on Tylenol. All the time anyway, so, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well you don’t know when you’re trying to get like TikTok points or something like that. I mean, these other women who are doing this and there have been thousands of videos of women doing this that are getting millions of views.

Right. I hope they’re just

Simone Collins: drinking something fake [00:01:00] out of Tylenol bottles or, or taking fake pills. They’re taking.

Malcolm Collins: Well, they’re,

Simone Collins: yeah. May I, I hope they’re taking, you know, like your pills.

Speaker: I got a call, very frantic call at four o’clock in the morning from a husband whose wife is now dying of liver failure on a ventilator in an ICU, um, because she was trying to prove that Tylenol doesn’t cause autism because of, um. What Trump said on the news, mind you, that’s a Harvard study. Now, whether or not you believe the Harvard study or not is not, not the issue here.

The issue is that she’s somewhere between 23 to 25 weeks and she overdosed on Tylenol and she’s going to die. She’s not gonna come off that ventilator. People are, are just taking massive amounts of Tylenol to prove, prove Trump wrong. I mean, weren’t these the same people who put Harvard and Fauci and the pillars of science?

On a pedestal. And now they refuse to believe [00:02:00] 28 weeks pregnant. You know what, I’m gonna take some, the title, we’ll see. The oph gonna work like a charm and my baby won’t have autism.

Speaker 3: How dumb are they that you hate a president enough? To risk the health of your unborn child, and where the hell are the, the men who made him pregnant? Mm. Probably, I’m telling you, I would have an issue. This is not new. The warning not to take acetaminophen during pregnancy is not new. It is. Well.

Simone Collins: So,

Malcolm Collins: and we’ll get into this for people who don’t know Tylenol is by like, mu, let’s ignore the JFK, let’s ignore the new studies that we’re gonna go into.

Mm-hmm. It was considered to be the safest pain reliever when you’re pregnant, but not. Safe for pregnancy, it, it was the safest option when you needed an option. [00:03:00] Yeah, and to be

Simone Collins: clear, in multiple pregnancies we have used Tylenol, and that is because you have to balance risks. So if you have a really high fever and you have, for example, a first trimester baby.

You, you risk giving that baby neural tube defects if they are exposed to a high fever. So for the baby we just had who is now in the NICU and was otherwise very healthy, he basically sustained an injury while being born. So nothing inherently wrong with him. I had a very high fever. Moments after the embryo was transferred and then like one week after when neural tube development began, I was definitely on Tylenol.

Like everyone was like

Malcolm Collins: aware of is is cost benefit trade off with this stuff ‘cause we’re, we’re also gonna go over in this. Even if RFK is right about everything he’s saying, what is the actual risk of one of the complications from Tylenol? And it’s still fairly low. Mm-hmm. I say a single one to 2% increase in, in probability.

Yeah. And this is [00:04:00] based probability, not, you know, if the, if the original risk was 1% and now the new risk is 2%, you could say, well, it increased by a hundred percent, or it increased by 1%, it

Simone Collins: doubled your risk, which sounds so scary.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And, and but the, sorry, the point I was gonna make here is it’s as if these people hate, like our political side more than they love their children.

They would just decide to risk their, and when I say risks, their child, Tylenol itself said in tweets, in multiple tweets that will go over. Do not take this when you’re pregnant.

Mm-hmm. It

has not been approved for use in pregnancy and it may have negative consequences.

Mm-hmm.

When people asked if they could, so like, this is mainstream, the company itself saying don’t do this.

Everyone should know that you can’t just take infinite Tylenol. But I think these people are just like, my side says, Trump is bad for saying [00:05:00] x, therefore. I don’t need to like, like do they not even research? Did they not even Google before? They just start taking a ton of Tylenol when they’re visibly pregnant?

I mean,

it reminds me of in, in Scotland I heard one of the, a report from my friend of, of a girl who he knew from like inner city Glasgow. ‘cause that’s where he grew up, where she was smoking when she was pregnant. And they were like, why are you doing that? And, and she said she heard it made the, the baby smaller so that giving birth would hurt less.

Oh.

So there are astonishingly stupid people out there. Well, and, and there’s

Simone Collins: the, the other example of I, someone on, on social media was complaining that they ordered a grocery delivery that included Tylenol and the person who delivered the groceries substituted it for acetaminophen and was like, didn’t you know that Trump said that Tylenol isn’t safe?

And. They’re

Malcolm Collins: the

Simone Collins: same thing.

Malcolm Collins: The same thing. Yeah. I know. And the Simone has been bemoaning the entire time this [00:06:00] controversy has been going. How upsetting it must be to be at Tylenol just because Trump cannot pronounce acetaminophen. Yeah. And we know that’s why he said Tylenol. ‘cause there’s this feature apparent, we’re like.

You describe it, you described it to me this morning. Oh my. It’s

Simone Collins: the, no, you have to, I’ll, I’ll try to find a clip of the press conference. Yeah. Where Trump, you know, makes this big announcement about RF K’s report on acetaminophen. And he’s like, oh man, I’m gonna mispronounce this. And he tries to say the word acetaminophen and butchers it multiple times.

And, and Kennedy, RFK is just standing right behind him the whole time with his pain, look on his face and you know, his voice is super screwed up. So he is saying acetaminophen, acetaminophen. And like obviously Trump is not hearing it and you could see his, his lips moving and he’s trying to tell Trump, obviously Trump didn’t listen to the white Stripes.

And, and,

Malcolm Collins: and a and did they talk about acetaminophen?

Simone Collins: Yeah. There’s this, the, you know, you have no taste in medicine. Acetaminophin. Okay. You see.

Speaker 5: First, , effective immediately the FDA will be notifying physicians at the use of ace. [00:07:00] Well, let’s see how we say that. Ace acid, acetaminophen. Acetaminophen. Is that okay? Yes. Which is basically commonly known as Tylenol during pregnancy can be associated with a very increase. Risk of autism. So taking Tylenol is, , not good.

Alright. I’ll say it, it’s not good for this reason. They are strongly recommending that women limit Tylenol use during pregnancy unless medically necessary. That’s, , for instance, in cases of high fever.

Simone Collins: Well, so the,

Malcolm Collins: the great thing here about all of this and, and I will know when people are like, like, what are your guys deeper thoughts before I get into this?

Simone, you believe that there actually aren’t. Particularly like you think that RFK messed up the studies that [00:08:00] he was citing. I think that maybe you were told this by a progressive journalist without actually looking into the volume of studies that he was citing. Okay. So I, I, I think he is likely accurate that there, there probably is some complication there.

I also really, my

Simone Collins: understanding is that this is one of those issues where he, there, there wasn’t enough correction used. Like when you ultimately correct for. A bunch of factors that you should be correcting for in a, in a study, which is hard. It’s a very nuanced thing. Right.

Malcolm Collins: But that’s, you sort of have the impression that this was like one study of like 20,000 people.

Yeah. When it was like. Eight studies of like 80,000 to 200,000 people each. Mm-hmm. Done by different teams that all came to around ...