Consider the Source

With pretty much no evidence whatsoever Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. decide that autism is caused by Tylenol (AKA: acetaminophen) and Prof. Trump—the same genius who thought injecting bleach might kill the COVID-19 virus—warned pregnant women not to take it.

Now here’s what the people who have actually gone to the trouble to get medical degrees had to say in response and we’ll start with the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (and ignore this ad suggesting you subscribe, even though I wouldn’t mind it):

“There is no clear evidence that proves a direct relationship between the prudent use of acetaminophen during pregnancy and fetal development issues.”

Next up, Alycia Hallady—Chief Science Officer, Autism Science Foundation—and here’s her response to Trump and RFK Jr. announcing Tylenol causes autism:

“The evidence does not say that. The scientific studies that have been conducted so far do not support the idea that Tylenol causes autism. In fact, there were two very, very large studies that were conducted that use what is known as a sibling control, which controls or eliminates any sort of or most of the variability because of genetic background, and they did not see an association.”

Mady Hornig—a physician/scientist who has studied pregnancy-related risk factors for autism for 25 years—said this about the Trump/RFK Jr. Tylenol claim:

“It’s astonishing misinformation.”

Hornig went on to say that moderate and high fevers during pregnancy had been linked to an elevated risk of autism and women might take acetaminophen to fight the fever, but the fever was the problem, not the acetaminophen. So to the layman (and most of us aren’t getting laid often enough to deserve the label) it’s like Trump and RFK Lite saw someone with a cast on their leg and decided casts cause broken bones because everyone with a broken bone seems to have one.

And Now To Commence the Cartooning!

So Donald and RFK Jr. cook up a half-assed theory about autism which is immediately refuted by people with medical degrees, so now I’m thinking of other discredited half-assed medical theories to use in a cartoon, like an “imbalance of bodily humors” causing disease which was a popular theory back when the world’s greatest minds still thought the Earth was flat and the sun went around it and Johnny Manziel was a good draft pick.

I started in on that cartoon, but halfway through decided to add the theory that masturbation will make you go blind, which I can personally disprove because I only wound up needing glasses.

In your face, medical community!

(Considering the activity I’m describing, maybe that last line was ill-advised.)

Anyway…

So once I came up with the “masturbation causes blindness” example I stopped drawing the Four Humors cartoon (and The Four Humors sounds like a comedy tour that would star Jeff Foxworthy and Larry the Cable Guy and if I could think of two more comedians right now, you’d be reading their names, but I’m still mainlining my first cup of coffee) and started drawing the Blind Trump cartoon that you just looked at.

But I’d already done some reading about the Four Humors and don’t want to waste that research (however minimal) so I’ll now share some of it with you.

The Four Humors

According to the Ancient Greeks and Romans (and certain members of the Trump Administration) the four bodily humors are:

1. Black bile

2. Yellow bile

3. Phlegm

4. Blood

If the four humors were “in balance” you were healthy, but if they got “out of balance” you were sick and the four humors directly corresponded to the four seasons and the four personality types, which seems like a whole bunch of bullshit because I once dated a girl who had about 27 personalities and she demonstrated nine of them on our way to a movie. After which I called a First-Date Audible, got off the freeway, made a U-turn and dropped Sybil off back at her place and wished her luck in her no-doubt interesting future.

Piece of advice even though you probably won’t follow it:

When you see something coming don’t waste time because continuing to date a girl who turns into a werewolf every full moon and talks to invisible friends is going to end badly, so end it before you have to also convince her to give your records back and to stop phoning at 3AM and then hanging up and if at all possible she also shouldn’t cook your pet rabbit and that’s two movie references in the last two paragraphs and here’s Glenn Close acting batshit crazy in Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind:

Actually, the movie was Fatal Attraction and while we’re semi-sorta on the subject the scariest movie I ever saw was not about vampires or space aliens or Certified Public Accountants because I hadn’t encountered too many of those; it was about a crazy woman and back in my single days I knew quite a few of them.

Now here’s Jessica Walters in the World’s Scariest Movie, Play Misty for Me:

If you watched that last video you got to see Clint Eastwood wander around in the dark wearing a pair of saggy tighty-whiteys and thank God someone invented boxer briefs because up until then us guys had to choose between those ultra-sexy tighty-whiteys and boxer shorts, which had enough material to make a sail or a drive-in movie screen and they’d bunch up and you’d get to walk around all day with a wad of cotton between your butt cheeks. The third choice was “going commando” which women seem to find a lot less sexy than us guys think they will.

BTW: Just in case you weren’t aware of the underwear choices, the above picture is a guy who hasn’t discovered beer yet wearing a pair of boxer briefs and when they came out on the market every dude with a lick of sense switched over to them, an event which is now known in your history books as the “Boxer Rebellion.”

That’s an artist’s rendition of a Target store after they put boxer briefs on sale and quickly ran out due to their popularity and the disgruntled shoppers were informed all they had left were 3-packs of tighty-whiteys.

(And you thought this essay wasn’t going to be informative.)

Speaking of informative…

Just looked it up and thank God or the imaginary deity of your choice that neither Glenn nor Jessica were known as “method actors” because if they were somebody somewhere had to get stitches.

Returning to our main theme…

According to a bunch of people who believed in the Four Humors, humans who:

1. Joked and laughed a lot had too much red blood.

2. Were bitter and short-tempered had too much yellow bile.

3. Were lazy, fearful and sickly had too much black bile.

4. Who were low-spirited, forgetful and had white hair were under-employed political cartoonists.

So basically, we believed and continue to believe a whole bunch of crazy shit and when we don’t know something for sure, instead of admitting it and saying “we don’t know for sure” we make up wild theories to explain everything, but enough about Christianity, it’s time to move on to that notable knucklehead, RFK Jr.

With the help of vaccines, we eradicated measles in the year 2000, but with the help of crackpots like RFK Jr. and the people who like to get their medical information from guys without medical degrees and former Playboy Playmates, measles are back.

In 2025 we’ve already had the most measles cases reported since measles were eradicated and the most measles cases in the last three decades and that’s because vaccination rates are down and RFK Jr. has something to do with that.

So near as I can tell, RFK Jr. is way more dangerous to the health of children than Tylenol or vaccines and that thought inspired the cartoon you just looked at.

And speaking of cartoon inspiration; Donald Trump’s policy of filling his administration with a bunch of people who don’t know what the fuck they’re doing, as long as those people kiss his ass, led to the creation of today’s final cartoon because getting things right doesn’t seem as important as getting attention and then moving on to the next headline-grabbing issue like deciding which late night talk shows can stay on the air or indicting the former director of the FBI or adding a drive-through window to the Oval Office and you know it’s only a matter of time on that last one.

Today’s Lesson

When you’re looking for advice in a particular area you might want to ask someone with expertise in that particular area so if you need medical advice ask a doctor or nurse and if you need legal advice ask a lawyer and if you want to know what goofy shit has been in the news lately ask a political cartoonist.

I won’t let you down.

http://kingfeatures.com/comics/editorial-cartoons-a-z/