Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing Johnson and Johnson, accusing the pharmaceutical company of failing to warn consumers about the risk of taking Tylenol while pregnant.

This lawsuit, the first of its kind from a state government, comes a month after President Donald Trump and U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. announced updated guidance discouraging pregnant women from taking acetaminophen, citing it as a possible cause of autism. The announcement set off a wave of controversy in the health care community, and confusion among pregnant women unsure how they should manage fever and pain during pregnancy.

  • Credibly_Human@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    Many have tried, and many have failed to sue them due to a lack of evidence.

    There has been no new evidence btw.

  • kljafgg9r0@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    So many supposed leftists triggered that a big pharma corporation is being sued. Pathetic.

    • 🍉 Albert 🍉@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      we can all agree that big corporate pharma sucks, but also that this lawsuit is bullshit.

      it isn’t really a lawsuit, just asking for a bribe.

    • justsomeguy@lemmy.world
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      8 days ago

      They don’t. It’s part flood the zone, part pandering to certain voters. Look what we do for you! A blue state wouldn’t fight for your health like this!

      Nothing will come of it but it’s a positive distraction from the extraction of wealth that is currently happening.

        • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          7 days ago

          It is a distraction from the hostile fascist takeover of our country. The Epstein shit is a distraction from that.

          • Capricorn_Geriatric@lemmy.world
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            7 days ago

            Fascism is a systemic issue. It’s a cancer that takes roots when democracy starts failing.

            Having the concrete and unsystemic problem of there being probable cause Trump did some very, very bad things looked into properly is a much smaller ask.

            However, even that’s an imposibility in today’s world.

            I’d love to have a magic cure for fascism. There is one, although it’s undoubtedly very unmagic: Painstakingly dealing with obvious lies and crimes, one at a time. Respecting the Constitution. Having people be truly equal. Especially in the eyes of the law.

            Without a thourough dose of said cure, fascism will hide away and get ready to rise back up.

            The Epstein shit is one step of a bajillion mile journey. It’s not the first and it’s not the last. But without it, there’s no journey to be had.

      • WizardofFrobozz@lemmy.ca
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        8 days ago

        As someone on the outside looking in, it is ABSOLUTELY INSANE that this still needs to be explained to people.

    • thesohoriots@lemmy.world
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      8 days ago

      People have tried in the past and each time it got thrown out because the judges ruled they were full of shit. As recently as 2023, even, from Reuters:

      Cote, in a 148-page ruling, found that none of the five expert witnesses proposed by the plaintiffs had offered a sound scientific methodology to support their opinion that Tylenol’s active ingredient, acetaminophen, could cause autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

      “Instead, the unstructured approach adopted by the plaintiffs’ experts permitted cherry-picking, allowed a results-driven analysis, and obscured the complexities, inconsistencies, and weaknesses in the underlying data,” she wrote.

        • thesohoriots@lemmy.world
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          7 days ago

          It was around in 2022, at least in this iteration, when they consolidated a bunch of cases. The mommy wellness blog machine kicked off hard. Retailers like Walmart were sued too, because people are fucking dumb as rocks.

    • HeartyOfGlass@piefed.social
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      8 days ago

      They’re trying to sue J&J, too. One of the largest corporations in the world. Curious to see where it’ll go. Just seems like all it’ll do is piss off his donors.

    • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
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      8 days ago

      Honestly they probably expect a settlement to avoid “political trouble.”

      This is how recent federal lawsuits ended.

    • danc4498@lemmy.world
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      8 days ago

      Exactly. Like Republicans in 2020 wouldn’t bring any election denial claims to court cause the had no actual evidence

      • regedit@lemmy.zip
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        7 days ago

        But they did bring them to courts. There were over 60 lawsuits and only successfully proved something like 20 fraudulent ballots, in one audit, across all of them. Nearly all of them were thrown out due to a lack of evidence. Pretty sure these are the things that got Rudy disbarred.

        • danc4498@lemmy.world
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          7 days ago

          There’s always fraudulent ballots, though, and from my understanding, they are always looked into. That stuff is unrelated to the conspiracy theory stuff his team of “lawyers” were pushing out. They would claim things in the media and then never bring them up in court.

          • regedit@lemmy.zip
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            7 days ago

            No repercussions for lying to the public, unfortunately. But grave consequences for lying to a judge, at least in the past. Who knows why…

    • Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world
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      8 days ago

      These folks never change their views after a court case disproves something. They just assume some sort of deep state is in bed with “big pharma” - even if acetaminophen is a low cost and not a big money maker.

    • AmidFuror@fedia.io
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      8 days ago

      You have a lot of faith in a jury system that has historically been terrible at evaluating scientific claims.

    • ameancow@lemmy.world
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      8 days ago

      We will never get the justice we want through procedure, legal argument and old-guard political players.

      We only get the world we want through unified efforts to restructure politics from the ground up. Fuck Texas, let them rot and wallow in dark-ages mythology. While they’re spinning their wheels trying to make shit like phrenology and miasma theory work with modern systems, we can make our own communities shining beacons of reason if we work hard enough together.

  • Wilco@lemmy.zip
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    8 days ago

    It is hard to believe this is not an onion article. “We just made this up and now we are suing you for not warning people about the shit we just made up”.

      • Wilco@lemmy.zip
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        7 days ago

        Yes, but no. Justice is expensive in the US. The legal system HATES pro se litigants (people that represent themselves), making it harder for them to get paperwork through the courts.

        Those who do have “big money” lawsuits will get represented by ambulance chasing law firms.

        People yell about Medicare for all, but the US really needs constitutionally guaranteed legal representation.

    • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
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      8 days ago

      I can’t wait for all these bullshit cases to get in front of judges. Some of them already have, and are getting tossed. The media should be covering it much heavier.

  • NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone
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    8 days ago

    I’m not a lawyer but shouldn’t J&J be suing the Federal Government for making utterly unsubstantiated claims in an official announcement?

    • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
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      8 days ago

      I think they’re waiting for the damages to really rack up. Then they can sue the taxpayer for billions and nobody can stop them.

      • GraniteM@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        We could put on a really big tinfoil hat and say that this is all a plan to funnel billions of taxpayer dollars to J&J by way of crafting an airtight lawsuit for them to win and get awarded an absolutely massive payout.

        • laranis@lemmy.zip
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          7 days ago

          Few years ago I would have agreed. Now, it is guaranteed this is some sort of grift. No conspiracy theory need apply.

        • SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca
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          7 days ago

          this is all a plan to funnel billions of taxpayer dollars to J&J by way of crafting an airtight lawsuit for them to win and get awarded an absolutely massive payout.

          Not too big of a hat. When J&J had cyanide laced Tylenol capsules come out of a production facility in Illinois in the 80s, not only did they lie to media about cyanide not being in the plant, the FBI repeated the lie and then Ronald Reagan gave a medal to the CEO to help convince Americans it was safe to take this drug, which is well known to cause liver damage.

          Cold Case: The Tylenol Murders, is on Netflix.

          At the time, FBI and Government told everyone the tainted drugs were from a lone nut who put cyanide in the bottles. After those deaths, all drugs have safety seals to this day.

          But a second poisoning came from caplets sealed at the factory and prescribed in a hospital. Only then was it revealed that cyanide was present in the plant, used to calibrate QC instruments. What is incredible is that within a few years, Tylenol sales were stronger than ever in the US. The rest of world curbed use of this drug because of liver toxicity.

  • abbiistabbii@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    8 days ago

    This is what happens when you put conspiracy theorists into office: You get them suing or attacking organisations for things that aren’t real.

    • BenjiRenji@feddit.org
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      8 days ago

      But they prefer the right over the left because of taxes and regulations. I wonder when companies will flip, because they cannot handle the business impact of bullshit decisions like random tariffs or lawsuits over made up controversies any longer.

      • abbiistabbii@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        7 days ago

        I don’t think they will “flip”. They might start endorsing Democrats but the Democrats as a whole are akin to the British Tory party (right wing and getting righter) despite it’s SocDem and Progressive elements. However, corporations are not a monolith (Siemens Gamesa, who makes windfarms, are going to have different goals than say, Saudi Aramco) and so now, companies like, say, Palatir, who use online data and surveillance data to hunt down “undesirables” will throw money at Trump while companies that rely on outside or worldwide trade may “filp” to the democrats, albeit more right wing candidates, or if they really are scared, might look for a candidate in the Libertarian Party.

  • MachineFab812@discuss.tchncs.de
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    8 days ago

    I hope they bankrupt the fucking state of Texas. Someone should sue him for wasting taxpayer money. Toss-up on whether I feel bad enough for progressive &/or sensible Texans to care how those two thoughts play-out.

  • Protoknuckles@lemmy.world
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    8 days ago

    OK! Good! FINALLY! Now that they’re pulling this shit, big companies have reason to fight back. I was wondering when Proctor and Gamble and Johnson and Johnson would start campaigning to get these psychos out of office, and this should do it.

    • chisel@piefed.social
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      8 days ago

      Um, the government has been filing frivolous lawsuits against some of the largest companies in the country for the past year. Companies then settle out of court and pay a multi-million dollar bribe settlement to encourage their mergers to go through. No sign of companies fighting back. If anything, they’re encouraging it by being massive pushovers.

    • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
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      8 days ago

      Don’t count on companies fighting back. Something tells me that, the moment a company actually fights the govt, they’ll magically remember that said companies are actually violating several state and federal regulations and laws

    • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      8 days ago

      Nah that admits they may have been at fault for something, much better to counter sue and make the people of Texas pay possibly billions of dollars in stupid lawsuits that they will have to look at their government and say what the fuck, we knew that was bogus

        • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          8 days ago

          I’m not sure, I’m sure every state is different too. May have to get around the sovereign immunity as well. It isn’t impossible, as their are usually clauses that bypass it but Texas may have very few

    • phx@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      Pharma. Regardless of who’s involved, being able to sue somebody based on made up bullshit is not a good precedent

      • Aspharr@lemmy.world
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        Yes, but when was the last time these guys cared about “precedent”? I agree in thinking Pharma wins, but only because money. One CEO visit to the Whitehouse and some brown nosing and Trump will start saying how they’re “good people”.

        We have always been at war with Eastasia.

      • BanMe@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        Generally the courts side with industry and money, but this time they’re being asked to choose between that and MAGA, the latter of which has been dominating in courts lately. I am not sure on this one. Kenvue isn’t that big, it’s not part of a behemoth like J&J anymore, I’m not sure that one company has the gravitas to avoid being run over.

  • laserm@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    This timeline is so fucked that J & J somehow managed to be the good guy for once…