Individual Economists

Left-Wing Media Doxxes And Attacks Black "Rogue" Lindsay Clancy Juror

Zero Hedge -

Left-Wing Media Doxxes And Attacks Black "Rogue" Lindsay Clancy Juror

Critics say they have never seen a more egregious example of political groups and the media attempting to expose and destroy a juror for not making the decision they wanted. 

During the Lindsay Clancy trial Judge William Sullivan sealed the identities of all 12 jurors until at least September 18th, citing safety concerns after the high-profile trial.   An incident in which a woman was arrested for allegedly attempting to film and intimidate the jury added weight to the decision.  Deranged feminist activists have been rallying for weeks hoping to manipulate the outcome of deliberations in favor of Clancy, a mother who brutally strangled her three small children and then claimed "postpartum psychosis" as a defense.  

The announcement of a mistrial due to one male juror triggered a rabid fervor among leftist wine moms, leading to immediate calls for the juror to be doxxed, harassed and potentially "punished" for his refusal to conform to the wishes of the rest of the jury.  Evidence suggests that a pro-Clancy group formed very early in the deliberations process, and this group pressured the few holdouts to give in.  Only one man remained.  

The problem for the political left?  The juror is black, and they were hoping for an "evil white man".  This revelation has caused liberal heads to explode because black people within woke culture generally rank higher on the DEI totem pole than white women.  However, as everyone knows, when a black person leaves the liberal plantation these activists can become some of the most racist people on the planet.  They would rather destroy a minority than let him "go rogue".  

New outlets and online headhunters have been scrambling to dig up dirt on the black juror in order to gain some kind of narrative leverage.  Media sources have somehow obtained the man's name, though they can't release it yet without violating the court order.  NBC published a hatchet job article outlining the jurors criminal history.  

Defense Attorney Kevin Reddington's wife is apparently leading the charge on social media to undermine the juror's credibility.  It's a bizarre decision given that the trial is already over, unless the goal is to intimidate future jurors in a future trial. 

The man's previous charges include a restraining order filed in 2021 by his wife, who claimed at least one incident of physical abuse.  It should be noted, though, that all criminal charges were dismissed.  NBC also dug up a $12,000 civil dispute the juror had with a landlord.  NBC has not attempted to dredge up dirt on any other juror in the Clancy trial, only the juror who refused to accept the insanity plea.

It's only a matter of time before the juror's full identity is revealed, opening the door to a barrage of harassment from activists and journalists.    

It shouldn't need to be explained, but the man's past is completely irrelevant to his duties on the jury.  He was approved by the defense and criminal histories of all candidates are examined during jury selection.  Perhaps Reddington assumed that the jury was stacked in Lindsay Clancy's favor and adding a black man to the list was the same as adding another sure vote.  This explains why the lawyer acted so aggressively to have the juror pressured or removed - His "rogue" decision" is viewed as a betrayal.     

This effort by political movements and establishment journalists to assassinate the character of a juror from a trial that has already ended represents a dangerous subversion of America's justice system.  If future juries cannot make decisions based on evidence without being worried that they'll come under attack after the trial is over, this would mean the death of the jury based system.  

Such a precedent would devolve into absolute chaos within the legal structure, and of course, vigilante justice to fill the void that follows. 

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/12/2026 - 11:05

No Secretary Bessent, We Aren't Magically Growing Our Way Out Of Debt

Zero Hedge -

No Secretary Bessent, We Aren't Magically Growing Our Way Out Of Debt

Authored by Vincent Cook via The Mises Institute,

As the official federal debt hit the $40 trillion mark and attracted a lot of negative publicity, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent tried to reassure CNBC's Sara Eisen in an August 20 interview that there is nothing to worry about:

Well, yes, I mean, look, Sara, there's nothing magic about the $40 trillion number. And we can grow our way out of that. So, but what we do want to signal is, I think that there's been a lot of misinformation in terms of what's going on with the deficit, what's going on with the deficit to GDP. We actually had a fiscal consolidation for the calendar year 2025. We had, we are at about 5.7 percent of GDP. And one of the things that's temporary here that's influencing the deficit has been these tariff refunds. And we won't have to do that again. . . . The other big item in the budget that we're seeing is the hit that we're taking from, to revenues for the immediate expensing of factories and of equipment and farm structures. And I think that, if people sit back and think, that's not government spending. That is actually an investment in the future and we're increasing the tax base. And that's how, that is what measures the wealth of a nation, is the ability to increase after-tax return on capital. So we're pulling back the, think of it as pulling back the slingshot here. We have a lot of potential energy that will turn into kinetic energy during this year, next year, as these factories come online.

While Republicans have long been chanting "voodoo economics" incantations (i.e., claiming that increased growth happens in spite of federal deficit surges caused by tax reductions, so tax revenues will eventually catch up to spending over the long run), Bessent's remark does represent a new wrinkle on this theme. Here Bessent focuses attention on the ratio of the official budget deficit to GDP, as if the official budget is the only relevant factor affecting the future growth of total public debt and as if a short-run increase in GDP is a strongly positive indicator of the economy's long-run ability to sustain increased taxes.

The most basic objection to Bessent's argument (and indeed to the older versions of "supply-side" voodoo as well) is that it doesn't make any fundamental difference in the physical quantity of capital goods if private savings are consumed by higher deficits instead of being consumed by higher taxes. Either way, the labor and natural resources that otherwise could have been devoted to increased net capital accumulation are instead diverted towards increased present consumption and/or increased governmental malinvestments. Giving a tax break to encourage greater investment without corresponding decreases in government spending is self-defeating, since increased deficits divert the additional savings away from private businesses towards the government and its clients and minions.

We can see through the Republican smoke and mirrors to visualize the relationship between deficits and net saving with a graph of historical data. Figure 1 shows these amounts as fractions of net national product (NNP, a measure of what was actually earned by Americans at home and abroad) over the past seventy-five years, with the green line representing net saving and the green line representing federal surpluses and deficits.

Figure 1: Net saving, federal surpluses/deficits as fractions of net national product, 1950-2025

Source: BEA and OMB via FRED®

During the first twenty-four years, net saving varied between ten percent to fifteen percent of NNP, while the federal budget was close to being balanced. However, net saving peaked in 1965, and has since declined to very nearly zero percent in the 2020s. This sixty-year decline in net saving coincides with the emergence of steadily worsening federal deficits, which started becoming particularly acute in the 1980s and early 1990s at around 5 percent of NNP (roughly comparable to the New Deal deficits of the 1930s). During Clinton's two terms things turned around and the federal budget climbed all the way back to a small surplus, coinciding with a partial recovery of net saving.

Since the Clinton era the deficit situation has severely deteriorated, punctuated by sharp spikes during the 2008 financial crisis and during the 2020 covid lockdowns. It is in this fiscal morass that net saving has almost vanished. While Bessent can truthfully boast that net saving in 2025 was a little bit better than in 2024, keeping up this rate of improvement for three more years won't even get net saving back to the level achieved under the first Trump administration in 2019.

Chronic deficits have canceled whatever successes Republicans have had otherwise in reducing tax rates on investors. Their failure since the Eisenhower administration to keep spending under control, in conjunction with the equally reckless fiscal policies of the Democrats, has had a catastrophic impact on America's ability to keep increasing its stock of capital goods out of its own private thrift. While soaring deficits didn't cause the entire decline of net saving over the past sixty years, they did account for roughly half of it.

The official debt figure as such isn't even accurate as a measure of the problem, let alone magical, as $40 trillion gravely understates total federal obligations. This official figure does not include the net present value of the unfunded liabilities of the Social Security, Medicare, and federal employee trust funds, which the trustees (including Secretary Bessent) estimate will put the federal government a further $80 trillion in the hole in the absence of any growth-killing tax increases or political career-killing benefit cuts. The total liabilities of the federal government add up to at least $120 trillion; just servicing such an almost incomprehensible burden requires extremely powerful magic indeed, since no politician even dares acknowledge that two of the trust funds are set to go broke in the early 2030s, let alone come up with a plan to balance all the trust fund budgets.

So what are we to make of Bessent's contention that everything is fine because GDP is growing faster than deficits are? The deficit/GDP ratio referenced by Bessent (figure 2) did decrease from 6.2 percent in 2024 to 5.8 percent in 2025, but such a tiny improvement is barely noticeable when viewed over a seventy-five year perspective.

Figure 2: Federal surpluses/deficits as a fraction of GDP, 1950-2025

Source: BEA via FRED®

The deficit-GDP ratio in figure 2 looks very similar to the red line of figure 1, the main difference being that GDP is somewhat larger than NNP because it includes capital depreciation expenses (which makes "gross" metrics bigger than "net" metrics), offset slightly by the overseas earnings of Americans (which makes "national" metrics smaller than "domestic" metrics). GDP has grown slightly faster than NNP over this period, but it is NNP that is the better proxy of the income tax base, since depreciation expenses are not taxable while overseas income is taxable.

Admittedly Bessent overstating growth slightly by his preference for GDP over NNP is a minor issue, but it highlights a more fundamental methodological problem in his thinking. He starts by cherry-picking a popular metric to compare to the deficit metric and then extrapolates long-term trends from a single year's changes in each metric. What he fails to do is to apply sound economic theories deduced from the incontrovertible fact of human purposefulness to the historical statistics, a priori theories which are necessary both for selecting the most relevant comparative metric and for correctly inferring what possible combinations of causal factors might account for observed changes. Moreover, extrapolating a sustained trend reversal from a single, small year-over-year improvement makes absolutely no sense; a credible time-series analysis of these data can only show a worsening budget trend.

The GDP growth illusion conjured up and widely touted by Trump, and Vance, as well as by Bessent depends heavily on wicked black magic of the monetary variety. The accelerating creation of fiat dollars out of thin air by the Federal Reserve and the creation of fractional reserve dollar deposits and other dollar-denominated substitutes out of thin air by the banking system - that is, accelerating inflation and faster inflation-caused price increases - are what temporarily boost GDP, what permanently increase trust fund obligations via statutory cost-of-living adjustments, and what fuel wasteful boom-bust cycles characterized during the bust phase by burgeoning deficits, severe declines of net saving due to intensified government interventions, and the writing off of massive quantities of malinvested capital.

This sort of monetary hocus-pocus never makes tax revenues catch up with soaring expenditures over the long run; inflation can "solve" the federal liabilities problem only by utterly destroying the purchasing power of the dollar and thereby making all dollar-denominated obligations worthless. Whatever one may think about the efficacy of the central bank's monetary wizardry and the Treasury's fiscal sorcery, none of their spell-casting, witchery's brews, or prestidigitations are equivalent to private restraint of present consumption by Americans making more labor and natural resource inputs available for growing the physical quantities of sustainably-productive factories, equipment, and farm structures in America. The green line in figure 1 demonstrates that such growth has virtually halted; over the decades Republicans and Democrats alike have put a bipartisan hex on growth.

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/12/2026 - 10:30

"Riyadh In Difficult Position": Saudis Shutter Critical East-West Pipeline After Drone Attacks

Zero Hedge -

"Riyadh In Difficult Position": Saudis Shutter Critical East-West Pipeline After Drone Attacks

Saudi Arabia temporarily shut its 7 million-barrel-a-day East-West pipeline following multiple drone attacks, exposing a massive vulnerability in a critical export route used to bypass the Strait of Hormuz during more than six months of US-Iran conflict.

The closure puts new pressure on Saudi oil exports as the pipeline designed to bypass the Hormuz chokepoint becomes a target. The Energy Ministry described the shutdown as precautionary while emergency crews secured the pipeline and assessed its safety.

Here's the ministry's statement:

An official source at the Ministry of Energy stated that the East-West Pipeline in the Riyadh and Madinah regions was subjected to multiple attacks on the morning of Thursday, 10 September 2026. The pipeline was shut down as a precautionary measure. The attacks resulted in a number of injuries, and medical care was provided to those affected.

The source said emergency and specialised technical teams responded immediately following the attacks, taking the necessary measures to secure the pipeline and assess its safety in line with approved safety procedures and emergency response plans, in coordination with the relevant authorities. Any further developments will be announced in due course.

The shutdown deepens an already severe export squeeze on the kingdom. Saudi oil shipments fell to about 3 million barrels a day in August, the lowest level on record since early 2017.

Iran-backed Houthis seized the strategic island of Mayun in the Bab al-Mandeb Strait last week, tightening pressure on the kingdom's Red Sea export hub. With Hormuz already disrupted, ongoing threats to both maritime chokepoints are narrowing the kingdom's options for moving crude to global markets. 

"Riyadh is in a difficult position," said Rapidan Energy Group analyst Fernando Ferreira. "As the US maintains the blockade and succeeds in escorting more tankers out of the region, Iran will pivot toward increased attacks on Gulf energy facilities."

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/12/2026 - 09:55

UK Government Reserves Two-Thirds Of Elite Jobs By Race; Leaked Doc Exposes

Zero Hedge -

UK Government Reserves Two-Thirds Of Elite Jobs By Race; Leaked Doc Exposes

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,

Sixty-six per cent of the slots are ringfenced for staff who are ethnic minority, disabled, or from a lower socio-economic background. Everyone else - including the white working-class kids the same government claims to champion - can take whatever is left. They've essentially built a public-sector caste system.

The Cabinet Office's defence is the same tired formula used across the British state. The scheme, it says, complies with the "positive action" provisions of the Equality Act. In plain English: race, disability status and class background are now official sorting criteria for who gets accelerated towards the top of the machine that writes the country's laws.

Reform UK's home affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf put the objection in one line: "Jobs and opportunities should be awarded on merit, not handed out according to someone's ethnicity."

"Positive action" is the legal fig leaf. Positive discrimination is illegal in Britain. Positive action is the workaround: employers may favour a candidate from an under-represented group if they are "as qualified" as the other person. In practice, the ringfence comes first. Two-thirds of the places are already spoken for before a single application is scored on competence.

The Civil Service already runs dedicated fast-tracks for favoured identities. META - the Minority Ethnic Talent Association - sits on top of the Future Leaders Scheme. DELTA does the same for disabled staff. Mentoring, mock interviews, senior sponsorship and extra visibility are reserved for those groups. The leaked 66 per cent figure is simply that architecture made explicit: most of the taxpayer-funded pipeline is not open competition. It is a reserved lane.

Official numbers make the "under-representation" story look thinner by the year. Civil Service Statistics 2026 put ethnic minority representation at a record 19.2 per cent, against 19.6 per cent of the economically active working-age population.

Declared disability among civil servants is now 18.4 per cent - above the national working-age average. The gap that remains is concentrated at the Senior Civil Service, where ethnic minority staff sit at 10.6 per cent. The official answer is not to test harder for the best people. It is to fence off two-thirds of the development scheme and call it justice.

This is not an isolated HR experiment. Britain's domestic intelligence service has already told white students, including poor ones, not to bother applying.

For the 2026/27 academic year, MI5's Summer Intelligence Internship is confined to people "from a Black, Asian, mixed heritage or ethnic minority background and from a socially or economically disadvantaged background."

The agency's own careers page states: "We're confining the applications for this internship to those within this demographic due to a current underrepresentation in our workforce." White British applicants - even those from the most deprived postcodes - cannot submit a form. A narrow "White other" box exists for Romany Gypsy, Scottish Travellers or Irish Travellers. Ordinary white Britons are out.

Shadow home secretary Chris Philp called it "flagrant racism from MI5 & GCHQ." He wrote: "White applicants for summer 2027 internships - including from disadvantaged backgrounds - can't apply. The scheme must be scrapped." And: "Applications should be merit-based and colour blind. Working class white boys are among the most disadvantaged - yet are ignored."

Security minister Dan Jarvis has defended the internships as "a lawful measure (as set out in the Equality Act 2010) used to encourage people from under-represented demographics to consider national security careers." The same statute, the same incantation. The people who will one day hold files on the rest of the country are being pre-sorted by ethnicity before they sit a single test.

The National Audit Office ran the same play. Its six-week paid public-sector accounting internship in Newcastle accepted only applicants who were female, of black heritage, or from lower socio-economic backgrounds. Middle-class white men were barred. Yusuf called that "blatant discrimination."

The same pattern reached frontline policing in April 2025. West Yorkshire Police, one of the largest forces in the country, told white British candidates to wait while "under-represented groups" were waved through the door.

The force's recruitment page stated: "We are currently accepting applications for the two police constable entry programmes (uniform and detective) from people from our under-represented groups... If you are not from one of these groups, please keep checking this page for future recruitment opportunities."

A whistleblower report to senior officers, seen by The Telegraph, said the effect was blunt: "the pipeline for anyone white British is strangled, whilst anyone not white British is ushered through." Over a 15-month stretch, ethnic minority candidates were given 446 days to apply. White British applicants were given 99. In one round they had 48 hours.

West Yorkshire denied it was a ban. It said early applications from minorities were "positive action" and that those files were held until the scheme opened to everyone. The force still employs a small army of DEI officers. Chief Constable John Robins has argued that the law itself should be changed to permit open positive discrimination.

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch called the episode "social engineering." She said she believes in "meritocracy, not race-based quotas," and warned that such policies risk "the perpetuation of harmful stereotypes that ethnic minorities cannot succeed unless a well-meaning Leftie is holding the door open." Police, she added, exist "to prevent crime and catch criminals, not social engineering."

Once the recruitment gate is racialised, the training follows. Thames Valley Police put officers through "equity training" covering "white privilege," "micro-aggressions" and the difference between being "non-racist versus anti-racist."

The course landed a month after an employment tribunal found the same force had positively discriminated against white officers by handing an unadvertised inspector post to an Asian sergeant.

An independent review ordered by the police and crime commissioner noted that white privilege "can often be seen as demonising white people and therefore building barriers to the learning." The training went ahead anyway.

Police Scotland's anti-racism package lists the same canon: white privilege, white fragility, micro-aggressions, allyship. The National Police Chiefs' Council Race Action Plan treats "unconscious bias" as a fact about everyone and proceeds from the premise that many people still believe policing is institutionally racist.

Officers are taught to see their own skin as a problem before they are taught to see a suspect. That is not operational training. It is political catechism, paid for by the public those officers are supposed to protect.

The legal profession also has its own reserved lane. The Bar Council partnered with the 10,000 Interns Foundation on a paid six-week scheme that excluded white applicants. Sophie Corcoran, a commentator who had been exploring a legal career, applied and was shut out.

She said she was "shocked to discover that the scheme is restricted to applicants of a particular racial background." She has since issued proceedings. "This case is not simply about my own experience," she said. "I am pursuing it because I believe that no person in Britain should be denied opportunities because of the colour of their skin. I believe strongly that equality before the law must apply to everyone."

The Bar Council's answer is, again, the Equality Act. It has called the scheme "lawful positive action under sections 158 and 159 of the Equality Act based on evidence of under-representation in relation to access to the profession," filed a defence, and said it will "vigorously contest" the claim. The 2026 intake went ahead.

Rupert Lowe, then an independent MP, had already described the programme as "anti-white racism."

He further urged, "What message does this send to a generation of talented, hard-working young people who happen to be white - that their ambitions are less worthy? That they must be excluded to balance some imagined historical scale?"

The body that speaks for barristers is defending a racial filter on entry to the profession that exists to interpret the law equally.

The same logic has already eaten the Treasury. In 2020 the department that runs the public finances quietly scrapped the numerical reasoning test on its policy adviser graduate scheme.

Internal papers obtained by The Spectator explained why. "The Numerical Reasoning Test (NRT) was removed due to evidence of the test having adverse impact on candidate diversity."

Board minutes were more direct: "We want more diverse ethnicity at assessment centre." Two tests were treated as "an additional 'hurdle'" and "another opportunity for candidates to be sifted out of the process."

The verbal reasoning test later went the same way. In its place came a "Civil Service Strengths" questionnaire, including items such as "I find it frustrating when others don't understand my ideas." Dr Zubir Ahmed's verdict on the numeracy decision was short: "I'm sorry, but this is insane and helps no one."

A state that deletes the maths test from the Treasury application so that the ethnicity numbers look better is a state that has stopped caring whether the people who will spend your money can count.

Every one of these schemes points back to the same statute. The Equality Act 2010, passed by Labour and left standing by the Conservatives, created the "positive action" gateway.

Ministers, permanent secretaries and police chiefs now treat that gateway as a mandate. The Civil Service Code itself tells officials they must support "equality and diversity." Once that is written into the operating system, every talent board, internship and constable intake becomes an exercise in demographic engineering.

Labour has pushed the same logic from the other direction. In 2025 Pat McFadden announced that the main Civil Service undergraduate internship would be restricted to students from "lower socio-economic backgrounds," judged by what their parents did when they were 14.

"We need to get more working class young people into the civil service so it harnesses the broadest range of talent and truly reflects the country," he said. Class ringfences and race ringfences now sit side by side. The one group that is never the intended beneficiary is the ordinary white applicant who is neither poor enough nor minority enough to clear the new hurdles.

Across the Atlantic, the second Trump administration has spent two years ripping DEI out of the federal government and the universities. Whitehall has spent those same years thickening the paperwork. America First meant colour-blind hiring. Britain First, in the hands of the Blob, has meant the opposite.

Edginton's leak does not reveal a rogue HR officer. It reveals the settled doctrine of the British governing class. A taxpayer-funded talent programme with 66 per cent of places reserved is not "inclusion." It is a quota with better branding.

MI5 internships that refuse white applications, police portals that tell white Britons to check back later, classrooms that instruct officers in their privilege, and a Bar scheme that locks white graduates out of paid chambers experience are not separate scandals. They are one policy, applied wherever the state still controls the gate.

A country that sorts its future mandarins, spies, constables and barristers by ancestry should stop calling itself a meritocracy. It should at least have the honesty to admit what the leaked paper already says: two-thirds of the ladder is reserved, and the people who built the state are no longer first in line to run it.

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/12/2026 - 09:20

President Xi Urges BRICS To Stand On "Right Side Of History", Calls For Gulf Peace

Zero Hedge -

President Xi Urges BRICS To Stand On "Right Side Of History", Calls For Gulf Peace

At the 18th BRICS Summit earlier today, held at the Bharat Mandapam convention center in New Delhi, India, Chinese President Xi Jinping urged member nations to help end the war in the Middle East, positioning the bloc as a force for global stability.

Speaking Saturday at the BRICS summit, Xi said members should stand on the "right side of history" and take a leading role in promoting peace, according to China's state-run Xinhua news agency.

Xi said the conflict in the Gulf region undermined the international community's shared interests and pledged Beijing's cooperation in ending hostilities. Those shared interests include importing cheap Iranian crude and other products to Asia. 

"BRICS countries should firmly stand on the right side of history," Xi said.

Xi's comments show that Beijing is turning BRICS's economic weight into geopolitical influence and positioning the bloc as a diplomatic power broker. However, the remarks stopped just short of a concrete ceasefire plan.

The Trump administration, including the president himself, has framed BRICS as "anti-American" and threatened steep tariffs over efforts to challenge the dollar.

Trump has made several comments about BRICS, including threatening tariffs against member nations if the bloc creates a rival currency. He has also threatened additional tariffs on countries aligning with BRICS' "Anti-American policies."

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/12/2026 - 08:45

Tylenol Use In Pregnancy May Reduce Daughters' Fertility, Study Finds

Zero Hedge -

Tylenol Use In Pregnancy May Reduce Daughters' Fertility, Study Finds

Authored by Rachel Roberts via The Epoch Times,

Female reproductive organ development could be impacted by a mother taking Tylenol - also known as acetaminophen or paracetamol - during pregnancy, according to researchers in Denmark.

Tylenol and acetaminophen tablets in a CVS store, in this file photo. Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP via Getty Images

On average, infant girls exposed to the pain relief drug in the womb had smaller ovaries; fewer ovarian follicles, which are the structures that contain immature eggs; smaller wombs; and lower levels of reproductive hormones, according to the findings of the study published Wednesday in Human Reproduction Open.

Long-term follow-up will be required to determine whether the differences observed in infants have implications for fertility later in life and a woman's age at menopause, study leader Margit Bistrup Fischer of Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen said in a statement accompanying the study.

Animal studies have previously suggested that fetal exposure to Tylenol, the most commonly used drug in pregnancy, might affect ovarian egg reserve and later reproductive function, but this is the first time that research has reported similar findings in humans.

Women 'Should Not Be Alarmed'

Women who have used Tylenol, the brand name for the generic drug acetaminophen, widely known as paracetamol outside of North America, during pregnancy should not be alarmed, Fischer said.

"Animal studies have demonstrated that impaired formation of ovarian follicles can lead to reduced fertility and earlier reproductive aging. Whether the differences observed in our study have implications for fertility and age at menopause in humans remains unknown and will require long-term follow-up of the girls in our cohort.

"Women who have used paracetamol during pregnancy should not be alarmed by our findings. Our study examined associations at the population level and cannot predict outcomes for any individual woman or child," she said.

The researchers studied 302 3-month-old girls whose mothers' use of Tylenol had been tracked during pregnancy. Of these babies, 92 were first exposed to the drug in the womb before 17 weeks of pregnancy, 67 were exposed after 17 weeks, and 143 were born to mothers who had not used the drug while pregnant.

The women all took relatively low amounts, with none exceeding the recommended daily maximum dose of 4,000 milligrams. Most took it to help with headaches or musculoskeletal pain.

A girl's ovarian reserves are established while she is a developing baby in the womb, although other factors may determine the age she goes through puberty and menopause.

The 3-month-old girls in the study who were exposed to Tylenol in utero had ovaries that were 40 percent smaller, wombs that were on average 13 percent smaller, and 23 percent fewer ovarian follicles, the researchers found.

Babies exposed early in pregnancy - before 17 weeks - also had lower levels of Anti-Müllerian hormone, an indicator of the number and quality of eggs in the ovaries.

Smaller Wombs and Ovaries

The researchers also followed a separate group of 1,210 girls from infancy to adolescence whose mothers had reported Tylenol use during pregnancy. Fetal exposure in this group was associated with smaller uteruses at puberty and smaller ovaries during adolescence.

The study cannot predict outcomes for any individual female, Fischer said, explaining that many women who used Tylenol during pregnancy had daughters whose ovarian measurements were similar to those of daughters born to women who did not use the drug.

Current guidelines from health authorities recommend Tylenol as safe for treating pain and fever during pregnancy. Untreated high fever or severe pain can themselves pose risks to both mother and baby, Fischer said.

Dr. Christian De Geyter, a reproductive medicine specialist at the University Hospital of Basel, Switzerland, said in an accompanying commentary that the findings of the study fit well with data from animal research, and that their importance "cannot be stressed enough."

Follow-up of girls in the study should extend into menopause, he said, adding that recommendations on the drug's use during pregnancy should be reconsidered.

Franziska Denk, professor of neuroscience at King's College London, said the study was "good quality research," although he thought the sample size was too small for the 13 different variables being examined.

"Right now, I think it is too early to recommend a change in behavior - as correctly indicated by the authors in the press release," he said.

'Several Notable Weaknesses'

Stephen Burgess, professor of biostatistics at the University of Cambridge, said the study had "several notable weaknesses."

"Mothers who took paracetamol during pregnancy are likely to differ substantially from those that did not - this is known as confounding. Confounding makes it difficult to know whether differences between outcomes are attributable to paracetamol itself or to other characteristics of the mothers or their pregnancies," he said.

He said that it could not be determined that the drug was the cause of the differences found by the researchers.

"It may be that these findings are driven by infection or fever - women take paracetamol due to mild sickness, and this sickness is the cause of differences in early-life ovarian volume. It may be that impaired fetal development and its causes are what lead to increased paracetamol usage, not that increased paracetamol usage leads to impaired fetal development."

Burgess added that even if there were negative consequences of taking paracetamol during pregnancy, there were "likely future negative consequences attributable to taking away one of the only remaining available and widely tolerated medications from pregnant women."

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announces that acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, may be associated with autism, at the White House on Sept. 22, 2025. With Kennedy are President Donald Trump and acting Assistant Secretary for Health Dr. Dorothy Fink. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images US Officials Linked Drug to Autism

President Donald Trump's administration has said that evidence suggests the use of Tylenol during pregnancy could be linked to autism, although the claim was dismissed by major health organizations.

Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. and Trump spoke about the use of Tylenol during pregnancy in September 2025, with the government subsequently advocating caution over prenatal exposure. The department's current fact sheet says exposure to the drug during pregnancy is an unresolved area of concern, while acknowledging that causality has not been established.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) continues to monitor and evaluate the drug's use in pregnancy, but states that it has not found clear evidence that Tylenol's use at recommended safe levels causes adverse pregnancy, birth, neurobehavioral, or developmental outcomes.

The FDA and HHS did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the Danish study.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement that the clinical significance of the study's findings remain "uncertain or unknown," and that current guidelines for women should not change because of it.

"The oldest participants evaluated were adolescents, and the study cannot determine whether the observed differences are associated with future reproductive outcomes such as fertility, ovulatory function, reproductive lifespan, or other measures of reproductive health," it said, adding that the observational study had various limitations.

"These findings should be viewed as a potential area for further investigation and do not indicate that current clinical recommendations should change. Consistent with ACOG's existing guidance, acetaminophen remains one of the only safe medications that can be used during pregnancy when indicated, and patients should consult their obstetric care professional before making any changes to medication use."

Ongoing Lawsuit

The Danish findings come as Tylenol manufacturers face an ongoing lawsuit in the United States over alleged risks associated with prenatal exposure.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued Kenvue, which now owns the Tylenol brand after Johnson & Johnson spun off its consumer health business into a new company in 2023. The suit alleged that the company engaged in deceptive advertising by failing to disclose evidence concerning a possible link between prenatal Tylenol exposure and autism.

While a judge dismissed most of the claims, one consumer-protection claim against Kenvue Brands LLC has been allowed to proceed, with the company's attempt to have it dismissed rejected in February.

In an emailed statement to Reuters, Kenvue advised pregnant or breastfeeding women to check with a health professional before using acetaminophen, which the company says is the most studied and safest pain reliever during pregnancy.

It noted that the study has methodology limitations and does not support a causal relationship between the drug and postnatal reproductive development.

Kenvue shares fell more than 3 percent Wednesday following the study's publication.

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/12/2026 - 08:10

Pages