In yet another move to try and boost his brand among the right-wing voter base he hopes will send him to the U.S. Senate, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is once again misusing the power of his office to sue Johnson & Johnson and Kenvue based on the totally ridiculous claims by U.S. Secretary of Health Robert Kennedy Jr. that pregnant women taking Tylenol causes their children to be autistic.
Paxton, in an email from his office, claims he is suing the pharmaceutical companies “for deceptively marketing Tylenol to pregnant mothers despite knowing that early exposure to acetaminophen, Tylenol’s only active ingredient, leads to a significantly increased risk of autism and other disorders.”
“Big Pharma betrayed America by profiting off of pain and pushing pills regardless of the risks,” Paxton claims in his press release. “These corporations lied for decades, knowingly endangering millions to line their pockets.
“Additionally, seeing that the day of reckoning was coming, Johnson & Johnson attempted to escape responsibility by illegally offloading their liability onto a different company,” he added. “By holding Big Pharma accountable for poisoning our people, we will help Make America Healthy Again.”
Paxton’s press release claims, “For decades, Johnson & Johnson willfully ignored and attempted to silence the science that prenatal and early-childhood exposure to their acetaminophen products can cause Autism and Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (“ADHD”) in children.
“Despite being well aware of this fact, Tylenol was marketed as a completely safe pain medication for pregnant women, violating Texas’s consumer protection laws. The considerable body of evidence demonstrating these dangers was recently highlighted by the Trump administration,” the press release declares.
In fact, according to a Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health article featuring actual scientists (as opposed to the man with no medical background, an admitted history of heroin abuse and who has claimed a worm ate his brain), “The research so far — including one of the largest studies yet on the topic — suggests that Tylenol use during pregnancy does not cause autism.”
Paxton’s lawsuit also charges Johnson & Johnson with violating the Texas Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act by “fraudulently transferring liabilities arising from Tylenol to a separate company, Kenvue, in order to shield their assets against lawsuits arising from the harmful impact Tylenol had on children.”
The press release then goes on to brag that Paxton has “relentlessly fought against Big Pharma’s destruction of America’s health and safety” by suing Pfizer over the COVID-19 vaccine and taking action against Eli Lilly for bribing providers to prescribe its medications.”Are we “healthy again” yet, or are we just embarrassed yet again by right-wing politicians?
— Tammye Nash