When President Donald Trump, atop his bully pulpit on Monday, stumbled over the pronunciation of acetaminophen while making his entirely unfounded claim to American women, and, by extension the world, that his administration had absolutely decided without any evidence whatsoever that the drug, when taken during pregnancy, was linked to autism, further instructing that pregnant women should “tough it out” without pain relief or fever reduction, the headlines kept the story aloft as if batting an air-filled balloon between warring toddlers.
Is it safe?
Presented with this bald-faced lie, the media dug in with all the myriad facts it could muster. These include the known warnings that all drugs can have unwanted effects and that those effects have to be considered against the potential harm of the thing the drug is treating or trying to prevent.
What can pregnant women do for pain or fever?
They should ask their DOCTOR, not a word salad-spewing former game-show host and his snake-oil selling pals, none of whom seem at all concerned with actual public health.
The man tweets something out, and entire industries make his words law overnight.
There is no waiting … except for, maybe, a doctor’s office visit to obtain a prescription for a seasonal vaccine to protect you and your loved ones from preventable illnesses that the government, for no reason other than spite, might now require.
With all the lather, rinse, and repetition … you’d think our hands would be cleaner.
But no. It’s all about gumming up the works.
Where women have legitimate fears and concerns about their healthcare, we now have charlatans in charge … people without a pedigree that should never have been elevated to committee chairs. Instead of due diligence, they are selling raw milk, and treating infections with remedies from farm supply stores. They are acting as if all the answers reside in originalists' remedies.
Which makes me truly fearful for our kids … who have lived into adulthood because of vaccines and safer remedies for fever reduction – like Tylenol – that studies proved were not linked to Reye's syndrome.
Like the president just said, pregnant women can prevent autism if they just suffer a little more.
Maybe one day they will make Leeches and Blood Letting relevant again.
I worry that the state will turn the endurance of suffering from a matter of faith into a punishable offense if they even suspect suffering had been avoided.
I hope not.
But hope, set aside from reason, is something that has a harder time floating lately.
It shouldn’t be a surprise in a country awash in guns and that is sliding towards authoritarianism, that hope has a lead lining. Why else would our government elevate one political killing over all others? Weaponize it and call for revenge on his enemies?
In answer to this, more than 50 Democratic representatives signed onto legislation honoring a right-wing activist whose life’s work professed free speech for conservatives to repeat racist, misogynistic tropes, and creating a watch-list for liberal professors to be targeted for harassment.
It’s not enough to condemn the violence. Of course, it could be if we also got rid of the guns.
Strong-armed people are not free. And debate isn’t a remedy for a healthy democracy. Although the people doing the strong-arming might be thinking that democracy is the illness they most wish to eradicate.
Why else would we stay so quiet when they are screaming the ugliest things out loud?
Maybe it’s because we have debated ourselves into harm’s way.
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