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Notes -
Trump and RFK blame acetaminophen for childhood autism. I couldn’t find a transcript yet, but the meandering press conference is recorded here. Was this on anyone’s bingo cards?
I’m confused. I vaguely knew that the Trump campaign had decided to fight autism at some point, but I always figured it was appeasement for the antivaxxers. Is there an untapped pool of Tylenol haters out there? Is this a stalking horse for a broader wave of FDA guidelines targeting the usual suspects?
Maybe there’s some sort of political smokescreen going on. We don’t appear to have started any new wars, and domestic hate for Trump looks more or less like it did since last week. If it’s a distraction, it’s not a very efficient one; I had a hard time finding reporting on it, and all the sites that bothered were also eagerly blasting his abuses of the Justice Department and the Supreme Court. That leaves the old-fashioned political motive of throwing meat to the base. Maybe Trump is just checking off campaign promises. But again, it’s so niche.
I suppose there could be some sort of personal beef. If Trump is trying to tank someone’s stock, uh, this is still a pretty weird way to do it.
That’s not even touching the medical case. The administration doesn’t appear to have provided much substance behind their claim. This will dissuade approximately no one. Enjoy your fresh CW battleground.
It means they didn't find shit.
Of course, they can't say that. You saw how the base treated Kash Patel and Pam Bondi when they came up empty-handed after the Epstein investigation. Much easier to put-out some face-saving press release. "Uh, it was the uh, the pills. You know, the red ones. That's where autism comes from. Tylenol. Yeah..." No one ever got fired for telling pregnant women not to take drugs.
Should I wait to see the evidence he used to reach that conclusion, or is that just my insane moon epistemology talking?
I mean, I'd like to see the evidence, too, but I think the elephant in the room here is that the autism crisis is primarily memetically driven - both in that more functional autism behaviors can be turned into more dysfunctional autism behaviors by a more memetically hostile modern environment (the nonsexual equivalent of the "guy who wants to fuck toasters" thing), and in that the category of autism (and particularly a spectrum of autism) is itself a hostile meme propagated by psychopaths to pathologize their natural enemies.
Compare and contrast transgender.
Did you just call Scott a psychopath who pathologizes his natural enemies?
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