Tylenol Doesn't Cause Autism

You look to see if the association holds between siblings where one was exposed and the other wasn’t. The association didn’t hold so that means that there’s probably a confounder that drives Tylenol usage AND autism.

If Tylenol caused autism you’d expect siblings exposed it to get autism more frequently than those who weren’t exposed. This controls for environment, mothers genetics, etc much more.

Imagine if there’s a gene that makes women more likely to take Tylenol (more frequent headaches, perhaps) AND causes autism. This would make it look like Tylenol causes autism under a simple analysis. But the sibling control would be null (because Tylenol exposure and autism are both an effect of the gene). Something like that happened here.

make sense?

That’s wrong. For some reason Baccarelli only counted the discordant pairs in both exposure and outcome and tried to discount Gustavson because of that. There actually were 380 pairs of siblings discordant in exposure for > 28 days.

They then try to favor an earlier study on the same cohort (Brandlistuen et al) by claiming it had a larger sample size. This study only had 134 pairs of sibs discordant on exposure.

This is a really bad error by Baccarelli to tabulate discordant pairs differently. It feels almost intentional to desperately try and downplay the better, but null, Gustavson study.

Ahlqvist found the same result. The two largest and best controlled studies found a null result.

Two null results from sibling studies show that there is clearly a confounder - possibly one that drives Tylenol use and neurological disorders. Prior studies that don’t use sibling matched controls are thus extremely suspect because of this. I’m not sure how anyone could argue otherwise.

Of course there could still be an effect form Tylenol. But the balance of the evidence now doesnt recommend changing doctors advice to pregnant women. Especially when maternal stress and fever are known without a doubt to be harmful to the developing baby

Thanks for explaining.

Did they discount children without siblings? That wouldn't be fair to families who have only one son or one daughter.

Sibling correlation is not as strong as a study on twins because siblings still have different DNA.

med.stanford.edu

Twin research indicates that a vegan diet improves cardiovascular health

Emily Moskal

A Stanford Medicine-led trial of identical twins comparing vegan and omnivore diets found that a vegan diet improves overall cardiovascular health.

Link:med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2023/11...

"The study authors selected healthy participants without cardiovascular disease from the Stanford Twin Registry — a database of fraternal and identical twins who have agreed to participate in research studies".

This is much stronger than simply siblings. I would have to criticize any study that only looks at siblings for a genetic link.

Quite the novel you got there, little fella. But just the same points that have been disproven for pages in this thread.

A rehash of nothingness.

You can’t do a sibling study on only children, I’m not sure what you mean exactly.

You also can’t have twins where one is exposed to Tylenol in utero and the other isn’t. So siblings are the best you can do.

A sibling study is less confounded in ways that matter here. Both the big sibling studies found an association before controlling for sibs but a null result after.

That strongly suggests there’s some confounding variable that determines both Tylenol use and neurological development issues. Interesting to hypothesize what that may be, but strongly suggests Tylenol is not causative.

Failure to provide a substantive critique for many pages suggests that you just don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m happy to engage with you if you’ll make an effort.

It’s apparent you want to rehash the last 20+ pages of everyone disproving your attempts here. I don’t.

What’s the point of restating what’s already been stated several times that has clearly disproved your argument. Do you really think you posting your failed argument for the 10th time is suddenly going to make it valid? Let me guess. Your favorite movie is Groundhog Day?

You are admitting the limitation and weakness of your "siblings" effect.

Twins are much better.

scmp.com

Explainer | What was China’s one-child policy and why was it so controversial?

China’s one-child policy was rolled out in 1980 and was strictly enforced with various punishments before being replaced by a two-child policy in January 2016 and a three-child policy in May 2021.

Link:www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/art...

China had a one-child policy for many years.

It's very unfair to simply throw out the raw data into the trash if parents have only one child. Your "siblings" effect is discriminatory.

The raw data shows an increase in autism with tylenol. You're going to have to do better than that to twist the interpretation into: "There is no link at all".

Yeah, sounds like the post of a typical disgruntled liberal who lost and wasted his vote on the candidate with no answer and no policies. Congrats.

Yeah, that Kamala was a real winner, eh? And that BIden too. How about Obama and his lying madness. You sound like a sore loser.

You don’t throw the data in the trash? They publish all the data and do a separate analysis on the siblings. It’s not discriminatory (???) to say “some sets of people are better for answering this question.” Siblings remove family level confounding.

I’m beginning to think you don’t fully understand how the sibling control calls the link in the raw data into question. I’ll spell it out again. Imagine if there was a third, unknown factor that made mothers more likely to take Tylenol AND have kids with autism. If you didn’t look between siblings that had different exposure to Tylenol, it would look like all the moms who took more Tylenol had more autism cases. But in reality, there was an extra variable that caused BOTH of those things - Tylenol use and autism.

also, Can you explain to me how you could possibly study this with twins. You’d need one twin who was exposed to Tylenol in the womb and the other who wasn’t. How is that possible? Do you understand the issue there?

China: we have created a new bone glue that can fix stress fractures in 3 minutes.

America: Don’t listen to experts, Tylenol is dangerous.

Does it make sense if this is a multivariate situation - YES! Bud, your "Imagine if..." scenario is what *I* have been saying. What I am trying to get you to understand is that Ahlqvist et al literally eliminated dozens of contributing factors and isolated for one - acetaminophen. Correct, when isolated for acetaminophen alone and eliminating COfactors the association goes away. To put it simply, the confounders they eliminated could actually be COfactors. See what I mean?

Image:i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/11/28/16/...

Image:i2-prod.plymouthherald.co.uk/news/uk-w...

Image:www.interbasket.net/wp-content/uploads...

Michael Jordan is listed at 6' 6", and his older brother is listed as 5' 9".

There is genetic variance within the same family. You're acting like your "siblings" adjustment is 100% effective.

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Relating Human Genetic Variation to Variation in Drug Responses

Although sequencing a single human genome was a monumental effort a decade ago, more than one thousand genomes have now been sequenced. The task ahead lies in transforming this information into personalized treatment strategi...

Link:pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC34488...

"Genetic variation likely contributes substantially to the variation in drug response observed across human populations."

1. You admit that twins would be better when analyzing a genetic link to autism.

2. 2 brothers may have different genetic effects to the same drug at the same dosage.

The Swedish study says, "Second, exposure assessment was not perfect. Antenatal data in the Medical Birth Register only recorded whether a birthing parent used acetaminophen, without regard to dose, duration, or timing."

You cannot control for siblings with 100% accuracy if they were born 1-5 years apart without any measurement of dosage.

You claim your "sibling" adjustment is "so good" or whatever, but there are flaws, and you can't seem to admit it.

The raw data shows an increase of autism with Tylenol. You have the freedom to bet your own baby's health if you are a woman. I don't know what gender you are.

"We actually don't recommend using any of our products while pregnant."

Ive just nailed 10 pints, multiple super shorts, and some random extras. My autism is cured!