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Happy Thursday everyone.

Let’s start with some comments from readers.

Polls, Comments, and Emails

Jimmy Kimmel and the First Amendment

I agree with you on this. I just didn’t want to get that deep in the weeds with it all. My issue is with what FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr said. What he said was true, but it had terrible optics, because most people didn’t understand the nuances. It sounded like Carr’s FCC would slap Kimmel down for what he said, which would have been a freedom of speech violation commensurate with all the ones the Biden administration pulled off during Covid. Thanks for clarifying for all. I should have done it myself.

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Criticism of my Stand on Vaccines

I wonder how his person knows I disregard data I don’t like in favor of data I do? I probably read (or at least skim) 10-15 studies per day on vaccines, especially the Covid mRNA shots. Most of the studies I come across indicate those vaccines cause myocarditis, turbo cancers, and excess deaths. After reading all these papers over the past several years, my sense is that the Covid mRNA shots are problematic and should be banned. But have you ever seen where I’ve written that?

The one thing holding me back is that off all the people I know or know about (almost all whom have taken multiple Covid jabs) not a single one has died or even been hospitalized, as far as I know.

The other reason I haven’t is that I’ve also read papers saying the opposite. But, one thing nice about the mRNA shots is that unlike all the childhood vaccines, the mRNA vaccines were actually tested against a true placebo. And there were more deaths and adverse events in the study group (those who got the real shots) than the placebo group.

I just saw a paper today on the increase in cancer in the US since the advent of the Covid vaccines. I need to read the paper carefully before I comment. And I just found it, so I don’t have time to really read it deeply because this is Arrow day.

Let’s now consider the portion of the above reader’s comment that it is “quite dangerous to state that measles is a benign disease, based on [my] childhood memories.”

I don’t know how old the commenter is, but I had the measles myself (very mild) as did all four of my siblings and every kid I knew. I’ve mentioned a time or two that I went to 12 different schools between first and sixth grade, so I had the opportunity to see a number of measles epidemics (about one every couple of years) from different parts of the country. None of them involved fatalities or hospitalizations. Measles was pretty benign for the vast majority of children. I’m sure there were some who had autoimmune disorders, cancer, and other diseases for whom measles wasn’t as benign.

I checked with the CDC records to see how many cases of measles there were in 1963, the year before the measles vaccine came into existence.

I knew I had seen the number of ~481,000 cases reported to the CDC in 1962, the year before the measles vaccine was made available, but I couldn’t remember where. My pig-headed nature along with some help from AI found it for me. I stuck it in my Dropbox. It is in this pdf CDC document on page 11. I have it circled. The number of measles cases reported to the CDC in 1962 was 481,530.

It was buried in a CDC document about measles, mumps and encephalitis. I’ve always said the CDC is the worst site in the world to search. AI has made it many times better, but it still sucks.

So, let’s lay out the true stats according to the CDC in 1962, the last year before the measles vaccine.

• Measles cases: 3-4 million

• 48,000 were hospitalized

• 481,530 cases were reported to the CDC

• 400-500 died

Now that you know what the true CDC stats are for a time when there was no vaccine, let’s take a look at what a fifteen-year veteran of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has to say about it. Henry I. Miller, M.D., M.S., who held a number of posts, including as the founding director of the Office of Biotechnology, says this in an article titled “Childhood Vaccines Are Much Safer Than the Diseases They Prevent.”

Now let’s compare his imaginary figures with what actually happened in 1962, when medical care was not nearly as advanced as it is today.

He says if 10,000 children got the measles, there would be 2,000 hospitalizations. In 1962, there were 3-4 million cases of measles, but only 48,000 hospitalizations. If Dr. Miller’s estimates were valid, there would have been something on the order of 300,000-400,000 hospitalizations. Based on the actual number of hospitalizations in 1962, were there 10,000 cases of measles today, there would be about 140 hospitalizations. If that. And, assuming the death rate were the same, 1.4 kids would have died.

As you can see, Dr. Miller way, way missed the mark. But, undeterred by reality (one wonders why he just didn’t look up the CDC stats that I did), Dr. Miller goes on to estimate the upside of the measles vaccine.

Makes it seem like a no brainer to get the vaccine, doesn’t it? I can’t quibble with his stats, because I don’t know the real stats. But Dr. Miller doesn’t either, because the measles vaccine was never tested against a true placebo, so no one knows what the short- or long-term adverse events might have been.

Which brings me to my favorite philosopher/economist Frédéric Bastiat, who came up with the idea expressed as That which is seen and that which his not seen. A most important concept.

Whenever we make a choice, the outcome of that choice is ‘the seen’. Which is what most people focus on. But there is an ‘unseen’, too, which is what happened because we made the choice we made that we never see. Could be good, or it could be awul.

Let’s apply Bastiat to the measles vaccine.

In 1962 we start giving the measles vaccine to as many kids as we can. Within a decade or so, there is almost no measles. That is the seen. And it looks pretty frigging good.

But we don’t know the unseen, because many effects of the vaccine may not appear until years later, and we won’t associate them with the vaccines.

Let me give you an example of one I’ve been thinking about for ages.

As I’ve mentioned many times, I wasn’t taught squat about vaccines in medical school other than they were good. But when MD and I went to medical school, the 1986 law indemnifying vaccine companies against any liability was years away from passage, so there weren’t a lot of vaccines to learn about.

But one thing we did discuss between the two of us was the idea that there might be some health synergism between common, not particularly harmful childhood diseases. It was kind of our offshoot of the Hygiene Hypothesis. It is well known that kids who grow up on farms or in less than spic and span houses have fewer allergies, upper respiratory infections, and even less asthma do than those who grow up in more pristine surroundings. The Hygiene Hypothesis posited this was caused by kids’ immune systems encountering many bugs of one kind or another (here I’m talking about infectious bugs: viruses, bacteria, and mold), to which they developed early immunity.

MD and I wondered why wouldn’t childhood infectious diseases do the same? We’ve all evolved with measles, mumps, and who knows what else over the centuries, so it isn’t a stretch to think there might be some synergy there. Having the measles might just toughen us up against some other disorder.

In 2015 a study came out of Japan looking at the rates of heart disease (which many people believe is caused by infection or inflammation.) As it turns out, based on data collected from 43,689 men and 60,147 women aged 40-79 years at baseline, those who had measles had significantly less heart disease later in life. And those who had both measles and mumps had even less heart disease than those who had just one.

This is still just an observational study. There could be all kinds of other correlations in there that cause the difference in heart disease, so we don’t know for sure.

You could look at the data in a lot of different ways. For example, you could say the ones who didn’t get mumps and measles in the first place, had more robust immune systems and were able to ward off the virus. But then did their strong immune systems crater in the years later.

This study from Japan is what I (and Bastiat) mean by what is not seen. I’m sure no one involved in the making of the vaccines for measles and mumps ever rubbed his or her chin and asked, I wonder it these diseases (which we’re trying to eliminate with vaccines) might somehow play a role in protecting against heart disease decades later.

Who knows what other correlations might exist had only they been looked for? Perhaps we’re doing ourselves a great disservice health-wise by taking the measles and mumps vaccines. We don’t know. There needs to be a whole lot more looking before we can just take ‘that which is seen’ to be the ultimate truth. (BTW, here is the Japanese study in my Dropbox)

I want to add one last section to this segment.

I love watching videos of uppity doctors getting shredded by non-doctors. One of the occupational hazards of getting into and enduring the medical training that goes into making you a doctor is being full of yourself. I shudder to think about some of the things I said early on in my career that I thought were so clever. Now when I think back about some of them, I wish I could have had my tongue torn out. But live and learn.

In keeping with the spirit of this correspondent’s poll response is one Jake Scott, M.D., from Stanford, who figured he knew more about vaccines than a mere civilian, so volunteered to sit in front of a couple of congressional hearings.

Here is what my Brave browser’s AI fed me about Dr. Scott’s professional achievements.

Fast forward to 0:40 to avoid the sort of weird intro set up. Then enjoy.

Here is the next video in which poor Dr. Scott gets reamed even worse, but more friendly. I really feel sorry for him. But it is he and those like him who think they know what’s going on, but, in reality, are oblivious. This video shows it in spades.

Running Out of Material

I get a comment like this at least one every two weeks or so.

If I were to write nothing but analysis of low-carb studies, I fear The Arrow would become a pretty boring place for a lot of people, including yours truly. I spend a lot of time throughout the week looking for issues that are interesting to me and, I hope, of interest to readers. I always try to include a low-carb/ ketogenic diet segment or two, but I don’t always get it in here because I run out of time and space.

If all everyone wants is low-carb info, let me know in the polls are comments, and I’ll provide them more often.

Yelling Fire In a Crowded Theater

This is a truncated comment, but I’ll indulge in the last request the reader makes. If I don’t now, I probably won’t ever.

I was a senior medical student slaving away on the wards at the med center. At the time, a new movie had come out titled Coming Home. It was a Viet Nam movie starring Bruce Dern, Jane Fonda, and John Voight. It was much in the news at the time, and a nurse I worked with (in whatever rotation I was on—I can’t even remember) mentioned that she really wanted to see it. I said if we get off early one night, let’s do it.

We finally did and went to a theater at the end of a strip mall where it was showing.

We were in our seats I guess somewhere in the middle of the movie when the theater caught on fire. It was weird, because the scene we were watching took place in a bar in Thailand where some of the stars of the show were taking R&R. There was an Asian guy in a bizarre cowboy hat playing a guitar and singing a country song. The bar, as with all bars, was filled with smoke.

I noticed in the projector beam for the film that there was smoke. For a brief moment, I thought, Wow, that’s weird. You can actually see the smoke in the bar in the movie in the projector beam.

Just about the time this was bubbling along in my brain, someone yells: “Fire, we’re on fire.”

Everyone whips around to look at the back of the theater and, sure enough, there is smoke boiling out of all the back entrances to the theater. I’m thinking some dipshit threw a cigarette into one of the trash cans along the floor outside near the concession stands, which could make for a lot of smoke but not a lot else.

Everyone in the theater was abandoning their seats and running for the back of the theater where all the smoke was coming from. The nurse I was with did the same thing, but I grabbed her arm and said, No, this way. We went toward the screen.

Having been a fireman, I knew that theaters had to have exits at the front and the back. In this case, they did have exits in the front, but they were covered by the massive movie screen curtains. I moved the curtains, and there were the exit doors, which I figured led to the outside.

We opened the door, which led not to outside but to some kind of big hallway that was filled with smoke and running people. We jumped into the crowd of escapees and ran through the smoke until we saw a light at the proverbial end of the tunnel. The end of the tunnel ended up being a loading dock. Once we were on the dock, I jumped down and helped her down.

By this time firetrucks were on their way. I still didn’t think it was much of a deal. I figured it was more smoke than fire. The two of us walked away from the building to stay out of the way and watch what was going on. As we got a bit farther from the building, I saw massive flames leaping from the top of the theater.

We ended up sitting in the parking lot watching the entire strip mall burn to the ground.

But maybe the entire event happened just in my imagination, although the Bride remembers it, too, though it was a year or so before we met. I googled the fire and found absolutely nothing about it whatsoever. It was a huge deal at the time, generating many pages of newspaper coverage. Yet online today, nada. Weird.

Tylenol and Autism

Before I went to medical school, I was accepted into a pharmacology PhD program. Pharmacology is the scientific study of drugs, not the dispensing of them, and is much different than pharmacy. One day, I was in a conference when acetaminophen (Tylenol) came up. One of the post docs in the department was studying it, and he laid out in gory detail what a horrible drug it was.

I was totally surprised having taken it myself many times without a thought. I just figured it was similar to aspirin, but without the GI issues.

When I read about it in my Goodman and Gilman pharmacology textbook, I was even more surprised. I couldn’t believe it could just be purchased over the counter by anyone. I was amazed that acetaminophen overdoses weren’t showing up everywhere, given how toxic the drug is.

After a year and a half or so of graduate school, I decided that I would rather be an MD than a PhD, so I was able to get credit for some of my pharmacology classes and crossed over into medical school. I’ve wondered many times since if I made the right decision for a host of reasons. Anyway, it is what it is.

The medical school used the same Goodman and Gilman pharmacology textbook as the graduate school did. They must have all read about the dangers of acetaminophen, yet all the physicians above me in the hierarchy were slinging Tylenol like it was candy.

I decided I was not going to take Tylenol myself, because there was no need. I could take aspirin if I needed mild pain or fever relief. It’s hard to believe now but ibuprofen (Motrin, Advil, Rufen, etc.) was not approved as an over-the-counter medicine until 1984.

To save time, I asked Perplexity to lay out the risks of acetaminophen (Tylenol).

As you can see, this is not an innocuous drug. It must be used carefully.

Narcotic drugs are often mixed with acetaminophen to increase the analgesic effect of both in an effort to keep the doses of either one limited. This has ended up causing more acetaminophen overdose problems than narcotics problems. Many people don’t understand a) the toxicity of acetaminophen, and b) how many medications contain acetaminophen. It wouldn’t be hard for someone to throw back a few oxycontin tabs (all containing acetaminophen) and a few Tylenol here and there for a headache, and then a bit of cough and cold syrup containing acetaminophen. And before you know it, you’re in liver failure.

I looked up the fatalities from overdosing on acetaminophen, and it turns out that only 500 or so people die each year in the US from liver failure as a consequence of the drug. I figured it would be way more than that.

Now having made my true feelings known about acetaminophen, I don’t think it is a major cause of autism. It could be contributory, but I don’t think it’s the primary cause.

Where I think it enters into the picture is when a baby is subject to a handful of vaccines and then runs a high fever. The recommendation is always to take Tylenol or alternate Tylenol and Motrin. If Tylenol plays a role, I think this is where it is.

I’ve seen this graphic kicking around the internet, and I suspect it is closer to what actually happens than just the Tylenol alone.

The issue I have with Tylenol alone is that the drug wasn’t even available until 1955, and then it was by prescription to adults only. It finally went over the counter to adults in 1960, but still wasn’t available to children.

In 1980 the published studies found an association between aspirin use for chicken pox and/or influenza-like symptoms and Reyes syndrome (a condition in which the brain and liver swell that can lead to liver failure and coma). Tylenol leapfrogged into widespread use in children when the surgeon general encouraged Tylenol’s use for fever in children because of aspirin’s association with Reyes Syndrome. In 1986, the FDA mandated warnings on aspirin bottles that Tylenol instead of aspirin should be used for fever in children.

Tylenol did not become a major drug for children until late in the 1980s. Which is about the same time congress gave the drug companies immunity against any lawsuits for vaccine injuries. By that time, there were enough vaccine injuries that the four drug companies making the few available vaccines were fearing bankruptcy, which is why they appealed to congress.

The relentless rise in autism began approximately coincident with the rise in Tylenol use as the preferred childhood anti-fever drug in the 1980s. But one would think that if Tylenol alone were the cause of the escalation in rates of autism, the curve of autism cases would have sort of jumped up when everybody switched to Tylenol circa 1982-1986 and kind of leveled off, maybe with a slow steady rise as population increased after that.

But what we see instead in the graph is a very pronounced, rapid, steady rising curve, more compatible with the addition over time of more and more and more vaccines coming onto the recommended schedule for kids.

There is a possibility that pregnant mothers could have taken Tylenol for pain and or fever and somehow caused autism in their offspring. In those early days prior to the big upswing in Tylenol recommendation, but there was so little autism that no one would have thought about the connection.

Since the whole-scale switch to Tylenol as an anti-febrile drug for kids in the 1980s, every kid in America has taken a hefty dose of the drug. If Tylenol were the main cause, then the autism curve would have shot up even faster than it actually did.

I don’t know if the folks at Tylenol noticed an uptick somehow in autism related to their product, or if they were just being careful. Here is a tweet of theirs from 2017.

The above is a screenshot from my Twitter account. My platform wouldn’t let me upload the Twitter link for some reason.

It would let me upload this one, though. There are crazy people out there, and this woman is one of them. TDS is a terrible disease. And I don’t think a couple of Tylenol will cure it.

Here is a chart showing the growth of autism in California, which is probably mirrored fairly closely in the rest of the country.

Last stat I heard was the autism rate in California was 1 kid in 23 live births. Why are people not going ape over this?

If you look at the chart above, it would be pretty easy to make a case that Tylenol use might possibly be a cause of autism; the rise in acetaminophen use that commenced with the Reyes’ Syndrome scare the led to a switch from aspirin to Tylenol in kids pretty well coincides with the rise in incidence of autism.

My vote is still on the vaccines or perhaps a synergy between vaccines and acetaminophen. I read an article about the Amish and autism. The rates for the Amish are 1 in 271 live births. But then I read that it is approved for the Amish to use Tylenol for fever and pain. Then I read that some of the Amish do accept vaccines. So it’s difficult to come to a judgement based on the Amish because the data isn’t purely ‘they don’t take vaccines’ as a group.

Dr. Joe Lapado, the surgeon general of Florida, removed all mandates for all vaccines in Florida. I’m sure another surgeon general or two will follow. And I’m just as sure that deep blue states such as California will double down on any mandates that haven’t already been mandated. Over time, we should be able to see the separation of the numbers of autistic kids if vaccines really do play a role. But only if parents in Florida refuse to get their kids vaccinated. Dr. Lapado didn’t ban the vaccines; he simply left it to the parents to choose. Over time, this may provide us with a reasonable placebo control group to compare to all the California kids getting jabbed.

I did not see the big announcement on Monday by the President, RFK, Makary, and the rest. I did see the mainstream media reports of it and the hysteria among the former vaccine aficionados in the government. It made me fear the worst, but I gutted up and watched it anyway when I had the time a couple of days later.

Here it is. I encourage you to watch it and compare what is said by the group making the presentation vs what your heard about it on mainstream media or what you read in the newspaper.

The video starts at 48:39. It’s blank before that.

See if the presentation sounds as crazy to you as it apparently did to those in the media. Will it send you to X/Twitter or Tik Tok to take Tylenol while you’re pregnant just to show it doesn’t cause autism?

People are insane.

Odds and Ends

• A dog helped an injured wild crow. Now they’re best friends.

• On the topic of dogs, some, known as “Gifted Word Learners,” have been shown to remember the names of a huge number of different objects.

• A physicist explains why the Moon is getting slightly farther away from the Earth each year.

• The semicolon, 'the most feared punctuation on Earth,' is in decline; does it matter? It does to me; it’s my favorite punctuation mark. They’ll have to peel it out of my cold dead hands.

• A chemical fingerprint taken of Stonehenge’s Altar Stone reveals that it isn’t from Wales, as was previously understood, but probably from Scotland instead.

• How 'evolution' could fix scientific publishing.

• Why are men always so much warmer than women?

• Au contraire, Boston Post, climate change is not causing New England’s ‘creepy’ bacteria and bugs.

• Learn why orcas are sinking boats—and how other killer whales are learning from them.

• Behold the ‘Grue Jay’! Introducing the new hybrid love child of the Blue and Green Jays.

• North America's best airports, ranked by travelers. Maybe my problem is that I’m flying out of the wrong airport. I don’t use a single one of the airports listed here.

• Yet again Japan sets record of nearly 100,000 people aged over 100. They must be doing something right. Now if we could only figure out what it is.

• Do Mitochondria Hold the Power to Heal? I would say assuredly so.

• After a years-long war over who is allowed to live in New York City, the rats have won—or at least dethroned the czar.

• Michelob Ultra has become king of the hill among beer brands in 2025. It has ousted Modelo Especial as America's best-selling beer. Glad to see people cutting carbs.

• Reports from regions show the deaths from Putin’s war outside Moscow are vastly larger than those from Moscow.

• Scientists have discovered a new, seven-meter long dinosaur from Argentina with powerful claws, feasting on an ancient crocodile bone.

• Some of our early ancestors may have been eaten by leopards. Somehow I don’t doubt it. Not a fun way to go, I’m sure.

• Rates of drug-resistant “nightmare bacteria” infections increased by nearly 70 percent between 2019 and 2023, which is why we shouldn’t toss back an antibiotic for each little sniffle. Tincture of time is often the best course.

Newsletter Recommendations

Video of the Week

Years ago, when our kids were young (they’re 47, 52, and 55 now) we took them on their first trip to New York City. The Bride and I had been several times before, but the kids had not. So we did the things the boys requested: climbed the Statue of Liberty (back when you could go all the way up into the crown), dined at the Hard Rock Cafe (at the request of our eldest, a high-schooler in desperate need of a t-shirt from the iconic establishment), toured the Natural History Museum, the Met, and the Frick (to the delight of our youngest son), and took in a Broadway show — Big River, the musical adaptation of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Our middle son still has not forgiven all of us that we missed touring the museum of the aircraft carrier, Intrepid. But he got there eventually.

I’ve always been a fan of Roger Miller (who wrote the music and lyrics for the Tony-Award-winning musical Big River) so I was perhaps the most eager of the bunch to see it. And it did not disappoint. The whole fam loved it, and we all still get a kick out of listening to the soundtrack. If somebody puts it on, we’re all singing along. There are so many fabulous songs in it, it’s hard to pick a favorite, but this rendition of Muddy Water, performed here as part of a 1985 Tony Awards Show by two of the original cast members (Daniel Jenkins as Huck and Ron Richardson as Jim, who won a Tony for Best Actor in a Musical for it). They were the actors we saw perform it in New York. Sadly, and at a great loss to the world of musical theater, Mr. Richardson died in 1995 at the age of just 43.

His voice is beyond tremendous; it completely filled up the Eugene O’Neill Theater where we saw Big River performed. Especially in this number, which is a scene when Huck and Jim have taken to the raft on the ‘Big Muddy’ (aka Mississippi River) to try to get downstream to Cairo, Illinois and thus get Jim to freedom. I could listen to it all day long. Enjoy.

Time for the poll, so you can grade my performance this week.

That’s about it for this week. Keep in good cheer, and I’ll be back next Thursday.

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This newsletter is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not, nor is it intended to be, a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment and should never be relied upon for specific medical advice.

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