Bobby Brainworm continued his assault on autism and acetaminophen last week. At a cabinet meeting, Kennedy said studies had shown that people who were circumcised early were more likely to have autism. Many news outlets—including SNL’s Weekend Update—reported that he’d said circumcision causes autism, but even RFK Jr. does not believe the dick-brain connection is that strong. What he said was:
None of us would put it past Bobby to think that the foreskin holds magical, naturalistic powers (like cod liver oil), but this is actually just a continuation of his war on Tylenol. (When is Kenvue going to sue for libel?) It’s worth noting that this is a different anti-acetaminophen tactic than what he first rolled out in the whack-a-doodle press conference a few weeks ago. He started by saying that pregnant women shouldn’t take Tylenol because it would harm the developing fetus. Now he’s positing that it shouldn’t be given to babies after birth either. I wonder if the next suggestion is that giving it to women pre-conception deforms their eggs or that college boys taking it for their hangovers messes with sperm production. My first thought when I heard that Kennedy was launching an assault on circumcision was, “Great, blame the Jews. Again.” But at eight days after birth, ritual circumcision is actually later than the hospital-based surgery most babies get. Plus, as a friend reminded me, the pain-reliever of choice at a bris is not Tylenol but a Manischewitz-soaked pacifier. My second thought was, “Why is this guy so obsessed with autism?” It’s one thing to believe that vaccines cause autism. It’s not true, but it’s been in our cultural zeitgeist for decades. It’s understandable that some people would still believe it. (Not the Secretary of Health, mind you, but some people.) This new crusade against Tylenol feels different precisely because it’s new. He went looking for something to blame. That fact should be offensive to everyone whether they’re neurodiverse or not. If Kennedy wants to look for the source of public health “problems,” we can give him a list. We could start with gun violence and end with measles. Those are problems that have causes (bad gun laws and misinformation about vaccines) and solutions (better gun laws and accurate information about vaccines). Autism is different, and it doesn’t need this kind of attention. As usual, Kennedy’s grasp on the science is also tenuous at best. His circumcision-to-Tylenol-to-autism story draws from two studies done around ten years ago. The first compared a small sample of data from eight countries and concluded that autism was higher in places where circumcision was more common. The analysis, however, did not control for other factors that might be involved such as age of parent, genetics, and diagnostic practices. Helen Tager-Flusberg, a professor emeritus at Boston University and leading autism researcher, told Scientific American, “I’m ashamed that there are colleagues in my field who would actually go out and conduct a study that is so flimsy ….” There’s another huge gap in the research when it comes to making a connection between Tylenol and autism: the authors don’t know if any of the babies/kids in the study were given Tylenol. The same is true of the second study on Junior’s list. In both studies circumcision was used as a proxy for “baby was given acetaminophen in the first few days of life” on the assumption that they needed pain relief after the procedure, but we don’t know whether any of these babies were actually given the medication. Even Kennedy acknowledges that these studies aren’t conclusive saying, “none of this stuff is dispositive.” His choice of words should remind us that he’s a lawyer, not a doctor or scientist of any kind, but don’t worry, he has a plan: “… this is not proof. We are doing the studies to make the proof.” Umm, that’s not how science f**king works. HPV Vaccine Offers Herd ImmunityOur armchair degrees in epidemiology may have expired in the years since the pandemic, but most of us remember the concept of herd immunity. It’s the idea that if enough people are vaccinated against a particular disease, even people who don’t get the vaccine can benefit from its protection. Herd immunity is a vital part of immunization campaigns because it helps protect those people who are too young or too sick to get vaccinated. We’ve known for years that the HPV vaccine protects people who receive it from the high-risk types of the virus that are most likely to cause cancer. Now, new research shows that widespread vaccination provides herd immunity to others. The HPV vaccine was introduced in 2006. The first two formulations of the vaccine—the 2-valent and 4-valent versions—protected against two or four of the high-risk types of HPV. The current vaccine, which was introduced in 2014, protects against nine types of HPV. As you might have guessed, it is referred to as the 9-valent vaccine. Researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York wanted to determine how well the vaccine worked over time. They conducted six studies with young people in Cincinnati between 2006 and 2023. Participants ranged in age from 13 to 26 at the time of enrollment. The initial study was done just before the HPV vaccine became available. Over the 17-year study period, HPV vaccination rates rose from 0% to 82%. The researchers found that as vaccination coverage increased, the rates of HPV infection dropped dramatically among vaccinated participants:
These results are proof that the vaccines are working among those young people who received them, but the researchers went beyond that and looked at rates of high-risk types of HPV among unvaccinated people in the same age groups. Those were going down to:
There isn’t enough data for the 9-valent vaccine yet, but this is pretty clear evidence of herd immunity. Unfortunately, our HPV vaccination rates have stalled as anti-vax rhetoric has heated up. A CDC report found that 76.8% of teens were “up to date” on their HPV vaccination in 2023. This was almost exactly the same as the year before (76%). Before that, however, rates had increased every year since 2013. Public health experts worry that this could be signaling the start of a trend away from HPV vaccines, and these data are from a time before Bobby got a really tall soap box from which he could shout his lies. It’s likely only going to get worse. Basically, we could eliminate cervical cancer in our country, and the thing that is standing in our way is the absolute stupidity of our Secretary of Health. Let that sink in. No, A Baby Was Not Born Holding His Mom’s IUDThis happens every few years. A baby is born to a mom who has an IUD, someone in the delivery room thinks it would be funny to put the birth control device in the baby’s hand, the photo goes viral, and people on the internet start saying the kid came out holding the IUD. Pretty funny, but not how it f**king works. IUDs are small, T-shaped devices that are inserted into the uterus and prevent pregnancy for anywhere from three to ten years. IUDs are considered over 99% effective—the copper IUD has a 0.8% failure rate and hormonal IUDs have failure rates between 0.01 and 0.04%. But that’s not 0%. Sometimes people with IUDs get pregnant. Women who do get pregnant with an IUD face a higher risk of ectopic pregnancy—when a fertilized egg starts to grow somewhere other than in the uterus. They also face higher chances of pregnancy loss, pre-term birth, low birth weight, and bacterial infections. Research suggests some of these risks can be lowered by removing the IUD before delivery, but whether or not that can be done depends on the position of the device. In the current case, doctors determined that removing the IUD was more dangerous than leaving it in throughout the pregnancy. The mom, who delivered her baby in Brazil, had some complications including bleeding, but Matheus Gabriel was born healthy at the beginning of September. The picture of him holding his mother’s IUD, however, was taken in jest.
In the unlikely event of pregnancy with an IUD, the fetus doesn’t usually come into contact with the device during development or delivery. The fetus develops inside an amniotic sac that is full of amniotic fluid. The sac and fluid provide protection against bumps and regulate fetal body temperature. The sac also holds the umbilical cord and the placenta, which supply the fetus with nutrients and remove waste. The IUD would be outside this structure. I add all of this to what should just be a funny story because certain people (cough, cough, the Secretary of Health, cough, cough) do not seem to understand how fetal development works or even where it happens. In Kennedy’s cabinet room rant he said something even dumber than circumcision leads autism. He suggested that some people had such bad Trump Derangement Syndrome they were willing to put their own health and the health of their baby at risk just to spite the President. He said he’d seen a TikTok video made by an associate professor at Columbia Medical School who “…was eight months pregnant and she is saying ‘F trump’ and gobbling Tylenol with her baby in her placenta.” He got that all wrong. She doesn’t say “F Trump” and she only takes one Tylenol, but that’s obviously not the real problem with what he said. The baby isn’t in the placenta!
The placenta is a temporary organ that the body creates to help the fetus get nutrients and to remove waste. It’s usually disc-shaped and flat—there’s no room inside of it for an embryo let alone a full-term fetus. The placenta grows in the amniotic sac along with the fetus and the umbilical cord. The amniotic sac is inside the uterus. And none of this happens in the mommy’s tummy. When I was pregnant for the second time, I explained egg and sperm and uteri to my older daughter. She somehow walked away with the idea that “our baby” was in an egg in my uterus and would hatch and then come out of my vagina. I decided that was good enough because she was not quite four years old at the time. Kennedy, on the other hand, is a grown man who has by some fluke of the matrix become Secretary of Health. There’s no good enough in this case. Figure it out Bobby. Shop Sex On Wednesday!Just a reminder that we launched a merch store last week which means you can let your tee-shirt, hat, notebook, or tote bag scream THAT’S NOT HOW IT FUCKING WORKS for you.
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The Dick-Brain Connection
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