If you don't believe in free speech for everybody, regardless of what is said, whether you agree with it or not, then you're not in line with being an American. Are you a terrorist or a fascist? We explain and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya on Tylenol.
00:13:02.400Understand that everything you choose to put into your head will grow whatever it is you think you want.
00:13:10.800If it's not in line with what you're thinking, what you're choosing to think about yourself and your country all day, you're never going to create a peaceful, loving, caring, united country where we can all get along if your thoughts are constantly, I've got to stop these people.
00:14:55.320Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by?
00:15:00.860Let me ask you something, and this is not something I'm just asking yourself.
00:15:04.580This is something I've been wrestling with.
00:15:06.100Not just as a broadcaster, but as a citizen, as a dad, a husband, a believer, a man who has spent, really honestly, most of my life now trying to understand the arc of history and the voice of God through all of it.
00:15:23.600The question I've been asking is a tough one.
00:15:33.960This thing we call Western civilization, this project that was born in Judea, refined in Athens, tested in Rome, reawakened in Wittenberg, baptized again on the shores of our own Plymouth Rock.
00:15:51.780This is a gift that we were all handed.
00:19:39.960The West was an idea to escape all of the old oppressive ideas.
00:19:45.060It's the idea that man himself is made in the image of God and that liberty does not come from kings or government, but it is a responsibility from heaven.
00:19:57.440That truth exists, that evil exists, that evil exists, and courage is required every day.
00:20:06.680Education, self-education, not self-medication.
00:20:11.720Self-education is required from each of us every day.
00:20:16.500It's the idea that a man can speak his mind and not be silenced by a mob or a monarch, that a child can dream and not be forced into slavery, whether that's the slavery of the body or slavery of the mind.
00:20:31.600The West is an idea that reason and revelation walk hand in hand, they're not at war, that beauty matters, that kindness matters, that empathy matters, that beauty matters, that sacrifice is holy, that justice is blind, and mercy is always near.
00:20:55.800However, that's what we inherited, and that's what we squandered.
00:21:08.160We allowed comfort to replace conviction.
00:21:12.340We allowed entertainment to replace education, pleasure to replace purpose.
00:21:17.980We handed screens to our children instead of our scriptures.
00:22:25.340And this civilization, no matter how rocky it is, whatever its sins may be, was built on the blood of martyrs and prophets and poets and pilgrims and moms and dads and soldiers.
00:22:57.700Because I believe resurrection is real.
00:23:02.880And not just in the tomb outside of Jerusalem, but in the bones of any group of people that return to truth.
00:23:13.700Any group of people, any individual that returns to God, returns to honor, returns to truth, no matter how unfashionable, no matter the cost, returns to truth with humility, asking for forgiveness from their God, from their fellow human beings.
00:23:37.780It's not too late for any group of people that return to family, to community, to accountability, to self-accountability and responsibility.
00:23:53.420It's not too late because I have to tell you, I really strangely mean this.
00:24:03.980What an honor it is to live at this time.
00:24:09.800And after Charlie's death, I feel that way even more.
00:27:24.760And certainly don't overdo it to make some ridiculous political point.
00:27:28.180It's just heartbreaking to hear that story of someone whose liver failed because of some crazy politics.
00:27:35.780The key thing that we found that led to the announcement is that there's been a whole sort of range of research in recent years
00:27:43.240that establishes that there's this association between taking Tylenol late in pregnancy
00:27:49.660and subsequent neurodevelopmental conditions like autism, like ADHD.
00:27:55.640There's a big fight in the literature over how strong that association is.
00:27:59.660So some people think it's really strong and other people think it's less strong.
00:28:03.740In my review of the literature, I thought that there's enough there to tell people, especially pregnant women, to be careful with it.
00:28:14.460If you have a high fever and there's no other way to manage it, then, yeah, you should, with the advice of your doctor,
00:28:19.460take some so that you can manage the fever, which itself is also bad for kids and for moms.
00:28:25.020But if it's less harmful than that, if it's less serious than that, then, you know, avoid taking it because it's just good medicine.
00:28:35.140I believe I have an obligation when I see something in the scientific literature that people should know about
00:28:40.940to help them make decisions in their own lives that I should be able to tell people with the caveat that's exactly what I've said.
00:28:47.220And that's exactly what we were doing in the last few days is to tell people, look, there is this literature.
00:28:52.720Most people I've talked with don't know about it.
00:28:54.980They don't realize that there is this.
00:28:57.040I'm looking at a Reuters story from 2013.
00:29:00.240Too much Tylenol in pregnancy could affect development.
00:29:03.900Too much frequent use towards the end of pregnancy may be linked to poor language skills and behavior problems among children, according to a new study.
00:29:11.860I mean, this is not this has not been a secret.
00:29:14.840And I don't understand why all of a sudden this is insane.
00:29:18.920Because did you ever, ever intend on saying you cannot take it, we're banning it?
00:29:25.860Or were you just saying, hey, you should be careful of this?
00:29:43.780Talk to your doctor before you take it.
00:29:45.460Even the Tylenol label says to be careful in pregnancy because there aren't great, you know, like toxicology studies were done in pregnant women before Tylenol was approved for the population at large.
00:30:20.000And then all of a sudden all these groups that were before he said that in favor of opening schools somehow all of a sudden changed their mind in contradiction to what the scientific evidence was saying and said we should close schools.
00:30:31.160There's something very odd about how some people react to what President Trump said is a more charismatic version of what I just said.
00:30:40.200Like he said, don't take it unless you need to take it, unless you really need it.
00:30:45.980That's the sum and substance to what he said.
00:30:50.220If you're pregnant women, think carefully about whether you should take it given this evidence.
00:30:54.760I mean, I don't want five years from now, after the scientific debate's been resolved and maybe it turns out that it is actually directly linked to autism, that for years of people taking it, thinking that we don't know, when you could just say now, do prudent medicine.
00:31:48.740It's not a lot to say that you can take it if you're pregnant because they have never tested it on women formally in a way that satisfies the FDA.
00:31:57.660It's very difficult to do these kind of studies on pregnant women.
00:32:00.620You can just imagine, do I recruit a whole bunch of women who are expecting and then say, well, I'm going to randomize you and give some of you Tylenol and some of you placebo and we'll see what happens.
00:32:13.180I mean, that kind of study would be pretty hard to organize and kind of unethical almost.
00:32:18.520And so they don't have any evidence on this.
00:32:20.100And so they they're supposed to say, as they did in 2017, that, you know, we can't recommend pregnant women take it because they don't have they don't have evidence to document its safety to the satisfaction of the FDA.
00:32:33.540Now, the game played then is like doctors can tell you whatever they want.
00:32:38.260They're not limited by the FDA, which is appropriate.
00:32:41.200Right. Doctors ought to be able to assess.
00:32:43.060Your individual situation and make recommendations.
00:32:46.880And so, again, that is essentially what we were saying to the public.
00:32:51.780If you if you really need to talk to your doctor and then decide, knowing now what the literature says, this is the president's announcement essentially was a form of informed consent for the whole public.
00:33:46.880I mean, I'm new to new to the D.C., so I guess maybe I'm still learning.
00:33:50.700But like I I thought the big news from this was that we were going to we are we are the NIH has just launched this massive autism data science initiative where we've gotten a dozen research teams examining the question of 13, actually.
00:34:05.160But research teams examining the question of what is the cause of autism and why has it risen so high in prevalence over the coming years?
00:34:13.460These are mysteries to medical science.
00:34:17.280It's going to be complicated, whatever it is.
00:34:18.880But we're finally starting to ask the questions in a way that's going to likely produce answers.
00:34:23.540I thought that was going to be the big news out of this.
00:34:25.880There's also a big, big announcement about this new treatment, this treatment that a lot of doctors have found effective for some, not all, but some kids who are profoundly autistic.
00:34:35.180In some cases, I've seen case reports where it's restored speech.
00:34:41.620You know, it's a drug called Leucovorin that's been used for 40 years.
00:34:46.620It's basically like it helps bring folate of a vitamin into your brain.
00:34:50.820And the theory is that there's like folate deficiencies in some autistic kids in brain early in development, in cognitive development.
00:34:59.520The FDA is going to make an indication change.
00:35:01.260So it's more widely available CMS is going to make this so that Medicaid, you can get it if you have Medicaid or, or, or other, other, other kinds of insurance.
00:35:10.600I thought those were going to be the big pieces of news.
00:35:12.420And so we got this craziest of our autism of, you know, Tylenol.
00:35:16.000Is this, do you think this was coordinated or was just, just a bunch of mad people?
00:35:24.880I, I, I, I don't know, but I, but I, it's, it's, it strikes me, it strikes me that so many of the people that are,
00:35:31.260sort of chiming in from the medical on the medical side in, in panic over this are the same people who pushed lockdowns and mask mandates and,
00:35:39.500and like, you know, toddler masking and school closures and vaccine mandates and all the rest.
00:35:45.480I, I, I mean, and, you know, many of them have been Ukraine war experts and Gaza war experts and who knows what else.
00:35:53.780So it's, it's, it's, it's, it's striking that we have such a great expert class in this country.
00:35:57.940I keep coming back to, this is what I want the FDA to do.
00:36:02.740If, if, you know, National Institute of Health and the FDA, what I want them to do is make recommendations,
00:36:09.040follow the research and then say, Hey, we recommend this.
00:37:01.040Like why, why it's, I think people need to just stop and take a breath and say, look, what is actually the evidence?
00:37:09.340I mean, I, I hope I conveyed it in a nuanced way.
00:37:11.720I'm not, I'm not saying to you that I know for certain that this is, that this is a cause.
00:37:17.140There's a scientific debate going on, but I think that there's enough evidence in the scientific literature to warrant telling people, when you take it, here, you should know about this.
00:38:00.760I wrote an op-ed with Marty McCary and Mehmet Oz where we referenced this specific study because this is the, this is a part of the literature that's, that's more skeptical about the link, right?
00:38:12.240And as you said, Glenn, that if you just do a straightforward analysis of the 2.5 million moms, you find a, you find an increase in autism in the, the, the, the moms that were exposed to Tylenol.
00:38:24.660Now, the study wasn't good at measuring Tylenol use.
00:38:26.780I think only about 7% of the moms reported having, using Tylenol in the, in the, in the treatment arm.
00:38:33.4807% of the moms reported using Tylenol.
00:38:35.960We know for a fact that that's underestimated.
00:38:37.720They were looking at like, you know, electronic health records and other things.
00:38:41.060They didn't really get the over-the-counter use.
00:38:44.440So it's, it does have some methodological issues, but the big thing with a sibling, sibling studies are really interesting because you, you think to yourself, if I compare, you, you have a mom during birth number one, she used Tylenol.
00:38:56.520During birth number two, she didn't use Tylenol.
00:38:58.340And what if during birth number one, the, the, the, the baby turns out to be, have autism and birth number two didn't use Tylenol.
00:39:05.260It doesn't, that seems like strong evidence, right?
00:39:07.500Cause you have, you've adjusted for the same common family environment, the same similar genes.
00:39:15.320It's a very attractive design, but it has problems, right?
00:39:18.400So first of all, in order, you can't, you don't have two and a half million moms that have siblings like this.
00:39:24.500What you have is a much smaller sample of what I would call it, what's called discordant, um, siblings.
00:39:29.520So you have, uh, siblings, one who received Tylenol during the birth and one who didn't, right?
00:39:35.760That's a much smaller sample than the two and a half million.
00:39:37.780You're not actually looking at two and a half million.
00:39:39.100You're looking at as much as if you have a smaller sample, it's harder to pick up any effect, right?
00:39:43.600You're not going to be, you've got to find a specific effect, uh, just statistically.
00:39:47.740Second, the group of moms who want, use it in one pregnancy, doesn't use it in another are very different from the moms used in both pregnancies or use it in one, in, in, in, don't use it in either pregnancy or who use it or, you know, only have one, one kid.
00:40:02.200Um, very, very different from, from each other.
00:40:04.940I don't know that the results that you find among the, cause discordant, uh, uh, uh, siblings translates over to the other groups.
00:40:14.180Um, then third, this is probably most important.
00:40:16.720If you adjust a way for the genetic differences and family, family sort of shared family environment differences, you might be adjusting a way for the mechanism by which Tylenol actually causes autism, right?
00:40:34.940It's bringing it to like only a narrow set of differences between the siblings.
00:40:38.840Obviously there's a shared genetic environment and a shared, uh, shared, uh, uh, family environment.
00:40:43.420But what if that the mechanism by which Tylenol use or latent pregnancy causes autism leads through the thing that you control the way, you'll mask the true effect.
00:40:55.580Jay, I, I would love to, I'd love to continue to do this.
00:40:58.620I've got a network break I have to hit.
00:41:00.260Um, thank you so much for everything you're doing.
00:41:02.540Thank you for being a part of the program.