Make America ache again

THE EDITOR: There are three things you can always count on US President Donald Trump for.

Firstly, he will always stand for freedom and democracy. Secondly, he will always ditch his views on freedom and democracy once Vladimir Putin compliments the size of his hands. And thirdly, he will always be willing to support freedom and democracy again once freedom and democracy sign a deal giving the president exclusive access to their nation's rare earth minerals.

Of course, the fourth thing you can count on Trump for is him promoting insane conspiracy theories. Whether it’s saying Barack Obama wasn’t born in America, that former Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau was the secret son of Fidel Castro, or the idea that tariffs make countries rich, there isn’t a baseless belief that Trump won’t grab onto with all his might.

Last week, in grand fanfare, the president held a press conference at the White House where he made another baseless claim, namely that Tylenol – or paracetamol to the rest of the world – causes autism.

Yes, paracetamol, that humble painkiller taken by pregnant women, hungover men, and whoever is forced to read Dr Kirk Meighoo’s letters to the editor, apparently can enter an unborn foetus’s bloodstream and infect it with autism.

Who would have thought? Well, certainly not the entire medical field, which says there is absolutely no evidence to make such outlandish claims.

Trump was joined at his press conference by his Secretary for Human Health Services Robert F Kennedy Jr. Before becoming a member of Trump’s cabinet, Kennedy had a distinguished career as a lunatic from a famous family. He once claimed that covid19 was meant to “ethnically target” Caucasians and black people while sparing Jews and Chinese people.

Kennedy also thinks HIV doesn’t cause AIDS, and that pesticides in food turn people gay.

Basically, appointing Kennedy to head the Health and Human Services Department is the equivalent of Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar making Trevor Sayers minister of health. Or making Phillip Edward Alexander a senator. Oh, wait...

Anyway, naturally Trump didn’t/couldn’t produce any evidence to back up his claims, because after all everyone knows “evidence” is funded by George Soros and the failing left-wing media. But the White House website later linked to a Harvard study (which is actually dozens of separate studies) they say validates the president’s claims.

But, of course, for those who still engage in that ancient practice known as reading, that’s not what the Harvard research (entitled “Evaluation of the evidence on acetaminophen use and neurodevelopmental disorders using the Navigation Guide methodology”– by Diddier Prada, Beate Ritz, Ann Z Bauer, and Andrea A Baccarelli) found at all.

This research doesn’t say Tylenol causes autism anywhere. What it found was some studies showing a possible association, many showing none, and all of them stressing the evidence is shaky, full of confounding factors, and nowhere near proving causation.

In fact, the researchers themselves advised caution, more studies, and medical supervision. I suppose when you translate that in MAGA you get: “Tylenol causes autism!”

Trump further stressed that what he was saying had to be true because the Amish community had no autism even though autism rates were rising in the US. Here the president unknowingly answers his own question as to why autism rates are “rising.”

Autism is a neurological condition, and it exists on a spectrum. The reason rates have been rising is because researchers have gotten better at identifying it and hence treating it earlier. There is no evidence that autism doesn’t exist among the Amish. In fact, studies suggest Amish children have lower reported rates, which speaks more to a problem of inadequate reporting and diagnosis than to Tylenol conspiracies.

And that’s where the real danger lies. Because when Trump fantasises, gets dressed up as science and broadcasts with the full power of the White House seal, it doesn’t just stay in Washington – it trickles down, mutates, and metastasizes.

Already in TT we’ve got our own MAGA echo chambers happily parroting every Trump Truth Social post while dismissing all critics as suffering from “Trump derangement syndrome.”

Back in the Soviet Union, dissenters of the regime were locked away in psikhushkas – psychiatric hospitals – because naturally if you didn’t mindlessly agree with Comrade Stalin on everything you were clearly mentally unwell. That’s how dictatorships weaponise health.

Today, authoritarians don’t need a padded cell in Moscow to brainwash you; an X account and a MAGA hat do the job just fine.

DARRYN BOODAN

via e-mail