The Panican Ledger

B ehold the Republic’s latest miracle: a renaissance of remedies that cure everything except ignorance. The week brought panaceas by press conference, committees remade in the image of their hecklers, and a federal steward whose ledger smells faintly of liniment.

The Tylenol Jeremiad

Once more the carnival barker points at the medicine cabinet and cries there, there lies the villain! Today’s suspect is acetaminophen in pregnancy— yesterday it was vaccines—tomorrow it will be moonbeams and miasmas. The evidence, such as it is, remains a rickety ladder of correlations: studies with recall bias, dosing fog, and confounders enough to populate a small frontier town.

The Claim: Tylenol causes autism.
The Reality: Associations are inconsistent and encumbered by confounders; causation is unproven and loudly presumed.
The Grift: Panic sells “alternatives,” panels get stacked, and the public square swaps peer review for a bullhorn.

“Correlation, dressed in lace, calls herself Causation and expects a dowry.”

Editor’s note: Consult clinicians; do not take medical counsel from a press conference with a merch table.

Act II: The Alchemy of Folates

Enter folinic acid—leucovorin—trumpeted by courtiers as a curative banner for autism itself. In the ledger’s fine print, however, one finds a narrow indication for rare folate disorders that may mimic autistic traits. Between a precise therapy and a universal “cure” yawns a chasm across which only marketing can leap.

“From indication to proclamation: a coach and several horses.”

Act III: The Committee Recast

Having failed to defeat vaccines with data, the zealots pursue victory by venue: reseat the review boards, season them with professional skeptics, and declare the stew bipartisan. Thus are recommendations thinned to homeopathy—dilute, dilute, until only the aroma remains.

Act IV: The Shopkeeper at the Treasury Window

Onto the stage strides Dr. Mehmet Oz, sanctified not by peer review but by prime time, now presiding over the nation’s public insurance purse. One needn’t allege a single illicit coin to see the farce: the supplementeer appointed comptroller of science. When the bazaar encircles the hospital, receipts begin to masquerade as evidence.

Act V: The Megaphone & The Medicine Wagon

And through it all, the President rings the bell: numbers inflated to operatic tragedy, anecdotes anointed as gospel, the square of certainty hammered onto the round peg of reality. The show must go on; the script is revised nightly; the audience pays at the door.

Tylenol Jeremiad: a fright without foundation sturdy enough to carry policy.
Leucovorin Leap: a narrow therapy stretched on the rack of hype.
Stacked Committees: when referees join the hooligans’ club.
Oz at CMS: the cashier counting coins beside the examining table.

Finale: The Toll

Panic is a splendid salesman. It buys audiences, sells supplements, and mortgages the future. The cost is measured in missed vaccinations, preventable illness, and a public square where every whisper outsings a library. This is not public health; it is commerce in the costume of cure.

The Quacks Walk Among Us