Episode 272 — AVOID THIS Popular Drug To Protect Development
Guest: Dr. William Parker • Date: September 6, 2025
Episode Overview
A medicine trusted by parents for decades is not nearly as safe as most believe. Dr. William Parker reveals the compelling evidence that this popular drug, when combined with stress in a child’s system, can have devastating developmental consequences.
About Dr. William Parker
William Parker earned a PhD in Chemistry in 1992 and studied biochemistry, microbiology, and immunology at Duke University for almost 30 years before starting WPLab, a private, non-profit research and education corporation, in 2021. Best known for the discovery of the function of the human appendix (a safe-house for bacteria), Dr. Parker has spent almost a decade studying the impact of acetaminophen combined with oxidative stress on neurodevelopment. He has published more than 150 peer-reviewed papers, including work inPLoS One, the European Journal of Pediatrics, Minerva Pediatrics,andClinical and Experimental Pediatrics. WPLab scientists have concluded that many, if not most, cases of autism are a chemically induced injury caused by exposure of susceptible babies and children to acetaminophen.
You’ll Discover
The Hidden Link First Exposed in 2008 (4:51)
How Acetaminophen + Oxidative Stress = Trouble For Susceptible Kids (15:29)
The Timeline That Matches The Rise of Autism (23:26)
The Flawed Assumptions in Many Scientific Studies (26:50)
Practical Next Steps Parents Can Take (45:53)
The Actual MECHANISM That Harms Brain Cells (51:07)
Referenced In This Episode
Learn more about Dr. Parker’s work: PreventAutism.org and www.wplaboratory.org
Full Transcript
Len Arcuri (00:02.402)
Hello and welcome to Autism Parenting Secrets. This week, we're talking about a medicine that almost every parent has used. Doctors have recommended it for decades for fevers, ear infections, even after vaccines. It's considered safe, but compelling evidence shows it's not nearly as safe as we've been told, and especially for babies and young children under stress. My guest today is Dr. William Parker.
He earned his PhD in chemistry in 1992 and spent nearly 30 years at Duke University studying biochemistry, microbiology, and immunology. He's best known for discovering the function of the human appendix as a safe house for bacteria. And for the last decade, he's focused on acetaminophen combined with oxidative stress, how that impacts brain development. He's published more than 150 peer-reviewed papers
and his work points to this drug playing a major role in the rise of autism. So this is a conversation that parents do need to hear and it's not about fear, it's about clarity and better choices. The secret this week is avoid this popular drug to protect development. I am so excited that you're here Dr. Parker, welcome.
William Parker (01:25.118)
Thank you very much, Lynn. It is a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.
Len Arcuri (01:31.166)
Absolutely. Well, there's no foremost authority that I'm aware of on this topic. As we talked a little bit before recording, you know, this is an issue that my wife and I did hear about when our journey started, when our son was diagnosed in 2008. So it's not as if, you know, it's a brand new issue. is there have been there's been science, there's been papers. This has kind of been known to some degree for a while.
And I'm still surprised now, almost two decades later, that this isn't even remotely on parents' radars, at least to the extent that I would have assumed it would have been. So I'll hand off to you to, for a parent who maybe is listening and hearing this for the first time, it may seem ridiculous or implausible, but can you really bottom line why this particular over-the-counter drug so popular,
What is it that parents need to know about why this is something that they need to perhaps play defense against, avoid, or just to understand why this is potentially an issue for their child?
William Parker (02:42.836)
Well, excellent. So let's just talk, let's talk about this drug. So we're talking about acetaminophen, also known a brand name Tylenol. In Europe, it's called paracetamol or, and then there's bread. That's the official chemical name they use there. And then it depends on where you're at. If you it's Calpol, for example, in UK, it's tachyporena in Italy. just depends on where you are. And you know, in Italy, nobody even knows what it
paracetamol is, but they'll know what tachyparin is. it's really difficult for some parents to get this information. And what we've concluded is that insusceptible children is super important. Most children do not get autism, even though they are exposed to acetaminophen, but insusceptible children, and we know exactly why they are susceptible. We've known the susceptibility issues were worked out back in 1980s.
and just nobody connected the dots. But the bottom line is insusceptible children exposed to this drug, you can and unfortunately frequently induce autism spectrum disorder, or let's just call it autism. So that's the bottom line. the history of this, well, of course, the actual history goes back to about 1886 when acetaminophen for practical intents and purposes was introduced in the market, drugs weren't that
commonly used back then. And it was when we switched from aspirin to acetaminophen about 1983 that things really took off and then directed consumer advertising in the nineties. And now everybody's got it in their cabinet and then susceptibility is probably also increasing. So bottom line is, and we can go into the evidence. The first evidence actually directly implicated acetaminophen with autism was published in 2008. So before that, nobody even had an inkling.
Len Arcuri (04:37.704)
So that study that I saw back in 2008, that was the first study that really had come out. Okay, so that's interesting timing.
William Parker (04:45.202)
Yeah, that was the now let me let me be clear about that though. That was the first study that came out and said, wow, okay, we took a bunch of parents who thought likely thought that vaccines were associated with their child's autism and what they found the guy that did it, Steven Schultz. I know him well. He was a dentist. He had a kid with autism. He saw the same thing in his kid. MMR vaccine regression to autism. He quit his dentistry practice, got his PhD. He's got his story posted free on Amazon.
When it got his PhD at the University of California looking at could it have been something to go with a vaccine because there were a couple of really cool studies out of Europe showing if you just Completely don't vaccinate your kid you can still get autism that was extremely clear at that time So he thought okay, maybe it was the acetaminophen and what he found was a 20-fold Increased risk of regressive autism with the acetaminophen use 20-fold
So that means that accounts for 95 % of the regressive autism in his study. that would, and then the tragic thing that, there's a couple of tragic things that happened after that. And one of them is nobody really stood back and looked at the big picture. Does this make any sense? Because if you, somebody, and there was one person named Peter Good that did, but he didn't publish his work in a major journal and he didn't keep working on it.
which basically got buried, but if somebody would stood back and really looked at the big picture, say, wow, there is a lot of evidence that this drug is really bad. So for example, there was already a study from the 1980s showing that children with autism could not metabolize acetaminophen safely. Now any toxicologist that looks at that, mean, acetaminophen has been extremely well studied. And what happens is if you can't process it safely, it gets shunted.
to a toxic metabolite. It essentially acts the same as mercury. It just attacks the nearest protein that's hanging around and then it goes through a series of things, cause mitochondrial dysfunction, it causes calcium signaling problems, all this biochemical and cellular biology stuff that is really bad. And then in the end, what we know now in studies in laboratory animals, it just causes brain cells, neurons in the cells.
William Parker (07:07.146)
Neurons in the brain to die. So that is it's just but again, it all depends on susceptibility and a lot of that's genetic A lot of that is your environment The kid is really sick talking about regressive autism births and at birth it's the you know And we'll go into this a little bit You just look at acetaminophen in the cord blood. So as soon as you clamp the umbilical cord the baby It's a brand new baby just
went from fetus to baby and it's on its own metabolizing whatever drug is left. So if you look at that study, it's a beautiful study showing that you can basically account for almost half of autism, right at half, just by looking at how much acetaminophen is present at the time of birth. it's, you just divide women into three groups based on how much acetaminophen was present in the cord blood and the
third at the top has 3.6 times more autism than third at the bottom. It's just a man, the group in the middle is at 2.2. But the bottom line is that is just from, you know, I have a toxicologist and a pharmacologist on my team. They're industry professionals. They've got 30 years combined experience, actually maybe 40 years combined experience. And, you know, as soon as you clamp that umbilical cord, that is the worst time to get exposed to that drug. So,
What we think so we're we're absolutely Absolutely, sir. We're certain with no reasonable doubt that this is what's going on Then when we can talk about when it gets induced and we can certainly talk about the evidence We got 30 different lines of evidence. Most of its independent from each other there's no other alternative explanations that are viable for various reasons and Including, you know, there's just increased awareness and
changing practices and diagnosis. So the bottom line is, probably got it, and now I'm gonna say probably, because once you get into the details, we're not as certain, right? But delving down one layer deeper, what we think is it's a good, our best, it's not just a guess, it's a working, it's a very educated guess, we would call it a working model, is that about 20 % probably gets induced.
William Parker (09:29.386)
during pregnancy, about 20 % of autism. And it looks, the data look pretty impressive. They'll probably ADHD and boost at that time by the same drug. looks like they're on the same spectrum. There's a lot of reasons for thinking that even though we don't publish a lot of work on that. the bottom line is 20 % during pregnancy, about half in the peripartum period, right? So the obstetricians, what they give the mothers, which doesn't do any good, are during circumcision, right? There's a two,
fold increased risk and infantile autism associated with circumcision, which is when you use acetaminophen, even though it doesn't do any good. So the 50 % happens at a time period where acetaminophen is doing no good whatsoever. But it's just given because people think it's so safe. And then you're probably looking at around 30 % that is just classic regressive autism. This is a lot of the parents who have observed that they're
regression coincided with the vaccination. of course, Steven Schultz looked at that and found that, in fact, it was the acetaminophen that was given with the, cause that's all the parents were told. And you you said it's not about fear, but it's also not about blame. You know, it's, this is not about blame because everybody, the pediatricians, the parents were told this is a safe drug. it's basically 20, 50, 30, if you look at pregnancy, peripartum, and the sort of the child, infancy childhood period.
Len Arcuri (10:43.542)
Okay.
William Parker (10:53.93)
So the problem with the literature, the scientific literature, which is, course, that's the world where I live in, is a lot of it only deals with one small period. So if you're looking at pregnancy, you're only looking at 20 % of the total. And if you don't track acetaminophen use real well, or if it's extremely popular, you're just not going to see the signal. And it's the same thing when you're looking at, you're looking at, say, use from
six months to three years, you're maybe only looking at 30 % of the autism. So you're looking at a small fraction. And it's really hard to look at that peripartum period where it's the riskiest. Keeping in mind that no matter when you induce autism, it has the same characteristic features of autism. mean, autism is, you know, the social awareness, the repetitive behaviors, the aversion to new stimuli. You got all that.
stuff and it's consistent no matter when it's induced, which is consistent with a drug reaction. Basically, fetal alcohol spectrum disorder is two peas in a pod with autism spectrum disorder. Both are induced by an analgesic that is also an antipyretic or it blocks fever, right? And it blocks pain and that's alcohol and acetaminophen, right? And both are encountered early during development and both have a spectrum of
Len Arcuri (12:07.746)
Yep.
William Parker (12:16.362)
problems that their use causes. So again, we can go into how we know that and there's dozens of scientists. I don't know if it's hundreds, but dozens of scientists have contributed to this information. And we can also talk about why everybody doesn't already know about this.
Len Arcuri (12:34.924)
Well, I think both of those would be great to dive into, but before we do, just maybe to kind of provide a little bit more of a level set in context. So you mentioned the word susceptible. So let's just make that super clear what that means. Cause I know when I hear that, I know my son who's now 18, clearly he was susceptible. He had a compromised immune system.
He had a dysregulated nervous system and there was a toxicity, which we now know and from a variety of sources. So I didn't realize it at the time as a parent, but my son was definitely susceptible and had a compromised system. I wish I would have known, but I wasn't aware of that. So if parents are listening now saying, okay, if the equation is acetaminophen plus a child who's susceptible equals some huge issues.
Can you go through that checklist again of how you would define susceptible? Because I know there's also a genetic component to this, your functional genomics. Some kids are just wired with being more challenged in certain pathways and they're set up in some ways that toxins of all kind are going to be harder for them to deal with. So I know that's a piece, but can you just expand a little bit for a parent to know, how do I know if my child is susceptible?
William Parker (13:56.084)
Okay, sure. the drug is sort of, it's very similar to codeine, which is something that gets metabolized to morphine. So it's safe for most kids, but it will kill some kids. what they, and because a lot of it, as you said, is genetic, they just said, okay, don't use it for short on under 12. Just don't do it because we're not gonna do genetic screening on all these kids before we give them this drug. So that's number one thing to keep in mind is that it is to some extent genetic and the genetics are...
Len Arcuri (14:17.742)
Right.
William Parker (14:25.428)
fuzzy, right? There's hundreds of genes associated with autism, but most of them are involved in immune processes. And the susceptibility, we can really define that as quote unquote, oxidative stress. I don't know. Okay. Your listeners may know a lot about that, but that's, know, all the things you were saying, immune compromise or challenge, they've got infections, that's all causes oxidative stress. And the biochemical pathways that acetaminophen goes through are extremely well defined. And if you add oxidative stress,
It shunts it over into a toxic metabolic pathway. And it also sort of takes away the escape route from that pathway. know, in a molecule called glutathione gets depleted and something called phase two metabolism isn't working. you know, a lot of the genetics of that are involved in susceptibility. It's all, it's so well.
perfectly correlated. We know what acetaminophen does and we know what has happened with autism and it just matches with like a glove. The glove fits perfectly and there's so many gloves that fit this one that tell us that acetaminophen is doing it. That's actually one of them is understanding the susceptibility picture. We can go deeper in the weeds if you want to on those enzymes. It's up to you.
Len Arcuri (15:40.354)
No, I think that was great in terms of just, okay, what does susceptibility mean? Oxidative stress, know our listeners most are going to be familiar with that. You could run labs that will give you an indication of whether oxidative stress is going on in your child's body. My son, 18, who's made huge improvements, he still has a lot of oxidative stress. He's still a susceptible young man now. I just wanted to just make that clear, what does susceptible mean?
And then you got to where I really want to hover next is that for parents like myself and my wife, Cass, we definitely were aware of this issue because like most parents, when we vaccinated, we were told give Tylenol before and give it afterwards. So my son vaccines were definitely a piece of what happened with him. And after the MMR vaccine is when he went off a cliff, you know, after he turned one.
And so Tylenol specifically was what's recommended. And at a certain point we shifted and started using, you know, Advil or nothing, right? You know, there's many, many other safe options other than acetaminophen. But at the time, the way it was described to me as to why this was an issue was only the fact that acetaminophen, if you gave it before an immunization,
that it would lower and deplete glutathione. And basically when you then gave the, the vaccine, your body's natural defenses were kind of, were kind of hampered and couldn't deal with it the way that people expect that you're expected to. And then even after the vaccine, then you're giving it again and you're really just kind of, you know, kind of lowering the gates of defense, if you will, by depleting glutathione. That's how that was the simple version of why Tylenol might be problematic.
Now, what your research is showing is that while that may be true, it's more, there's, you know, now more about how the specific toxicity that's generated because the body can't deal with it. Right. So can you just expand like the way I characterize it? that how, have you heard that from other parents that they just think, okay, Tylenol just lowers glutathione and that's a really important thing to have. Therefore you don't want to do that.
William Parker (18:03.082)
So most parents, as you I think alluded to earlier, are not entirely aware or not aware at all that acetaminophen is a problem. When you talk to physicians, they don't know it's a problem. I won't say the problem because it's not technically correct to say acetaminophen causes autism because it requires something else. Acetaminophen alone does not, but for practical intents and purposes.
If you take away the vaccines, you'll still have autism. If you take away the acetaminophen, you will not. And that's why, for example, the big correlations with circumcision and autism, just the problems that you see with the cord blood association with autism, which is huge, right? You need a susceptible child. And when they're first born, they're more susceptible, probably at...
12 or 18 months, they probably need something additional to give them more susceptibility and anything that an infection or any kind of immune challenge is going to create more susceptibility. So it's sort of almost the opposite of the way that you were initially told, you were told sort of acetaminophen makes them susceptible to an injury by something else. Whereas in reality, there's something else that's in so many of those. mean, even, know, jaundice,
or Down syndrome, all these things that are associated with oxidative stress are going to make acetaminophen, they're going to make people susceptible to acetaminophen-mediated injury.
Len Arcuri (19:34.83)
Okay. Well, no, thank you for clarifying that. Cause again, my own understanding is obviously rapidly changing as I learn more about, know, thanks to this work that you and people like you are doing. But yeah, with us, with the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, that's the one where after that vaccine, know, measles, mumps and rubella set up shop in my son's body because his body didn't react to it the way it was intended to develop that immunity and push them all out of the system.
And that's why I had this understanding that hey, perhaps the towel lowered the glutathione and he couldn't deal with those three live viruses as it's intended. So again, that was my rudimentary understanding. But again, what you shared earlier is that you now see exactly how ultimately this results in brain damage from that lethal combination that you mentioned.
William Parker (20:29.896)
Right, and so it's important to understand that people do have adverse reactions to a vaccine. That happens. But autism and the hallmarks of autism, especially the social awareness and those other behaviors, they are characterized with acetaminophen. So a lot of people, for example, don't know if you give an adult acetaminophen, you can measure it attenuates social awareness. So there's something, and this has been several studies, people are shocked by this, but you can find these easily on the web with a search.
Len Arcuri (20:35.8)
Sure.
William Parker (20:59.158)
Somehow acetaminophen targets social centers of the brain, even in adults. Of course, in adults, it's temporary, but we know so much about this drug, and that's one line of evidence that I just gave you. the acetaminophen is specific for autism, and autism, poisoning looks different depending on the drug. Mercury poisoning looks different than lead poisoning, and so the autism spectrum
looks like it's consistent with the toxicity of a single compound because it has these common features, whether it's severe or less severe.
Len Arcuri (21:39.862)
Okay. Yep. Yep. That makes sense. And as long as we're talking about toxicity, particularly if parents are thinking that vaccines are a part of the equation, it's usually the suspects are metals, right? Metals, whether it be aluminum, mercury, whatever the case may be. And it's that that might be resulting in brain injury. So I think what you're saying based on the studies and stratifying the data is that while that might
be something that is relevant for some people. There's a much stronger case that it's not the metals perhaps in the vaccines as much as it is acetaminophen as being the unique common element in what's really behind the epidemic.
William Parker (22:27.016)
Right. So if you look at, if you track things over time, what, so correlation association, correlations don't equal causation, right? But without associations or correlations, you can't have causation. You know, if the person wasn't anywhere near the area, then he or she didn't commit the crime, right? So if, first of all, when the parents observed the MMR vaccine associated, the MMR vaccine doesn't have metals. That's number one. Number two, the mercury doesn't match the timestamp for the autism pandemic. That can't be it.
Len Arcuri (22:38.786)
it could be.
And if you have any questions, please feel free
William Parker (22:56.98)
The aluminum does match the timestamp, but again, then you have to ignore parents like you who said, it was the MMR. then you have to say, well, okay, how do you explain that core blood study or the acetaminophen study with the circumcision, right? That looking at autism or why didn't, know, my mother worked in a town called Boxside, Arkansas, where that's what they did was mine aluminum all the time.
Len Arcuri (23:22.169)
outside of the office.
William Parker (23:26.878)
but that was not, aluminum processing doesn't seem to be associated with anything related to autism. So the bottom line is, if you look at all the evidence, right, then it all keeps pointing towards, if you look at the metals, you can weed out by timestamps everything except aluminum, but then you look at the other evidence, you can weed out aluminum, and you got this consistent pattern of everything pointing out at CEDEMF.
And part of the problem in medicine is that people look at one kind of study and they say, well, you know, it could be this or could be this or it's deaf. And some of them say it's not a sediment. But if you look at the study, they're making horrible assumptions that it's either a sediment or things that cause susceptibility. And when you when you see a paper and they'll get a lot of press, the sediment have been saved. That is invariably every single time. And we publish papers on this, but the people still keep making mistakes. There was just a paper that came out of.
Harvard and Mount Sinai, same mistakes. It's a rudimentary error in statistics that you cannot treat susceptibility as an either or. Was it susceptibility or was it the acetaminophen? Well, then it's gonna make the acetaminophen look safe when it's not. And what those studies are really telling you is that if you don't have any susceptibility, you're not gonna get autism when you're exposed to acetaminophen. That's all they're saying, but they're misinterpreted.
You know, and I'm talking to the NIH right now and Secretary Kennedy's group trying to sort this out. But so many people believe that study or those studies become, they come out of Drexel University or Harvard and they have a lot of clout behind them, but it's a rudimentary mistake. just, the problem is the people doing the study are epidemiologists and they go talk to the statisticians, but they need a toxicologist on the team to say, no, no, no, this is not, this is not a
quote unquote confounding factor. It's not A or B, it's A plus B. And then the statisticians would tell them, well, you should run this really differently. And in fact, probably you don't have the data to do it because so many people, almost everybody who's susceptible is getting exposed to acetaminophen. And that's part of the problem, Lynn, is that when you become susceptible, when your immune system is compromised and you're having trouble, that's when you get more acetaminophen. So it's sort of a...
William Parker (25:51.548)
A feedback, a horrible feedback loop where more susceptibility, and you see this with a lot of parents who've got a sick child that regresses, is that the only drug they have, and this is really tragic, again, not the parents' fault, but the only drug they have, and all this advertising is telling them it's great, is that give them this drug, and the kids like it, it tastes sweet. I was told by the, as the pediatric pharmacist, that most kids who are routinely sick have a favorite flavor of liquid acetaminophen already.
So they have to have them all lined up because especially kids with autism don't like new things, they want their flavor.
Len Arcuri (26:29.006)
Yeah, no, I'm just taking everything that you're saying in because it's such a bold assertion, right? That this might be what's happening. And again, it's weird how many things, if you look at, okay, well, what's driving this epidemic? And you look at, okay, the late 80s were the inflection point, early 90s, what changed then, right? Yes, the vaccine schedule changed dramatically. Yes.
glyphosate became much more of an issue. Yes, electromagnetic fields, exposures and all that way up. there's like all these things that happened around that time. And now you're mentioning also early eighties with Tylenol kind of coming in, acetaminamin coming in and kind of replacing aspirin. So if you're looking at all these contributing factors and there is no one smoking gun.
and tell me if I'm accurate, but what you're saying is you look at all, you look, if you do the science correctly and you look at all these different factors, basically it's, beyond compelling the contributions that are being driven by something again, that parents even now still feel is totally safe. And I was like so meticulous with documenting everything that was going on with my son, every, everything he ate, everything we did, interventions, doctor's visits.
not for a second that I think a tracking Tylenol usage. That was just like, okay, that's a given. So like, I don't even have the data other than I do remember, you know, clearly at these wellness visits that Tylenol was part of it. So, is that fair? Like the way I characterize it. Yeah, there's a lot of factors. We live in a much more toxic environment. There's a lot of things that happened in the late 80s, early 90s. But from your vantage point, there's nothing as clear as the impact of acetaminophen.
William Parker (28:17.276)
Right, so Peter Good and Bill Shaw are two other guys that have been working on this and their view is that things such as glyphosate, things that change a lot of antibiotic use, they enhance susceptibility. And I am not an expert on those. They are more knowledgeable about how other things interact with the acetaminophen pathway. But they write papers on that and it makes sense that susceptibility has gone up for some reason or another.
So that does make a lot of sense. But the way you summarized it, extremely good. we don't, know, classic science is you've got a complex problem and you, you know, I'm most renowned for figuring out what the human vermiform appendix does. It's a safe house for beneficial bacteria. Figured that out back in the day. And it was a complex problem. know, Leonardo da Vinci had tried to figure that out and fail.
So the way we figured it out is you've got to put a lot of pieces of the puzzle together and it leaves you with one conclusion. And then finally, was last year, finally somebody did an incisive test on that and found that primates with an appendix, they have 2.5 times less severe diarrhea than primates that have the appendix is protected. So the ones with an appendix have 2.5 times less than the ones without. So I mean, that's a really complex thing that a lot
considerations come into and that's how mean that's how Aristotle figured out the world isn't flat right is he looked at a lot of different observations and put it all together and said I'm pretty sure it's round and which is cool so that's normally you can't do a systematic review and come up with a really cool answer to a really complex question it just doesn't science doesn't normally hasn't normally work that way especially when the systematic reviews are just say only looking at
Acetaminophen used during pregnancy and then you publish a big paper and it says it's safe. Okay, what were the underlying assumptions? didn't, you know, the evidence from laboratory animals is great. You you look at the first time and this is going to be shocking to most people, but the first time anybody even checked a neonatal laboratory animal was about 2014. So remember we've been using this drug in kids since the, not a lot, but since the late 1800s. And certainly as you said, the
William Parker (30:38.73)
the use really started going up in 1983 and then shot to the roof in the 1990s. So why was it only in 2014? But what happened was he showed that two doses, and one dose didn't work, but two doses at a dose of 30, 30 milligram per kilogram, which is less than some babies are getting because they get a suppository of 40 milligram per kilogram. And the doctors will say, well, know, the bioavailability, they're told the bioavailability is not that great.
But the answer is the bioavailability, and that's a bit of jargon, but how much drug actually goes into the baby is highly variable with those suppositories. it's that, that people think it's so safe, they don't really worry about it. But the bottom line is you got a laboratory animal, give it two doses that are less than some kids are getting, and permanent disability, unable to learn how to run a maze to find food. And this is what mice do for a living.
So that was 2014 and they say, why didn't that alert everybody? Why didn't the Schultz study that we talked about early in 2008 alert everybody? the key is everybody was focused and you still see them today. I said, one just came out of Harvard and Mount Sinai. You still see these studies, which are only focused on one little time period. So they're going to miss most of it anyway. So the signal is going to be small. And then they adjust for these.
quote unquote confounding factors, which are not confounding factors, it's just susceptibility. So that's where everything went wrong. So we can talk about other kinds of evidence if you want, if we can go on to that, or we can cover some issues that we've already covered.
Len Arcuri (32:20.25)
Well, you know, I think I want us to get real kind of the sense of the big picture. and then yet let's now dive into more of the details. And at the end, I definitely would like to get your thoughts on. Okay. So assuming this is true, what can a parent do right now? If this is something that happened in the past and if, cause my coaching, especially when I work one-on-one with parents, it's really about helping them to unearth what are the key root causes.
of what's going on with their child and then taking some actions that address that root cause. So this one, if it's a root cause of something that's relevant, which now I know for my son, this is a much bigger root cause than perhaps I had initially thought. The obvious question is, okay, well, what can parents do now? So let's save that for the end. I'd love to get your thoughts, but otherwise let's go deeper. But I just want to ask you one quick question, which you may not want to answer, which is with the studies,
that are being done incorrectly with the papers and all that. mean, if you had to guess how much of it is just incompetence in terms of people just incorrectly running a study or how much is it intentional where it's just, this is not something that a research person wants to, you know, take credit for kind of revealing this because there could be a lot of negative implications from a career standpoint. So, if you had to guess why is this something that's not getting more
more and more studies and more people being on more people's radar.
William Parker (33:54.782)
Well, I think it's important. So as you know, I'm at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill now, and I was at Duke University for almost, well, to be precise, 27 years, 11 months before I retired. the way these studies are run is that, you know, the physician, a lot of times a physician who's running a lab or some clinical research, just say, this is interesting question, we should look at it. And the easy way to look at it is to
look at a database, sort through the data, and you can get one of your trainees, one of the residents, to work on this. And usually at these big medical centers, the statisticians are basically on staff. So you work with a statistician, you publish this stuff. So if you don't have a toxicologist, then you're just, I've read that first paper in 2013, which makes the wrong assumption, which got propagated from then on out.
I mean, I could be wrong, but I'm absolutely convinced that they just didn't understand enough to inform the statistician correctly. I'm absolutely convinced that. The first time I talked to a statistician, said, look, these are the parameters. This is what's going on, and we're going to run it this way. And she said to me, and she's a full professor in statistics, she said, that's never going to work. And I said, that's right, but we need to show that. And so, and then we did, and we published the papers using these simulations to show.
that number one, if drug use is high, And then you've you've got, susceptibility is low. It's not everybody has susceptibility. If you run the calculations the way they run them, it's going to look like it's the susceptibility's fault. And that's just not, it's, it's wrong and it's a mistake, but I can't imagine, you know, why would a doctor think in his head, Hey man, let's just.
Let's just mess everybody up and cause 3 % of our kids to get sick. That doesn't make any sense. That makes no sense.
Len Arcuri (35:52.206)
Right. Right. Yeah. No, I, I appreciate that. And yes, I mean, this is just like with the vaccination schedule. there's a lot of people who don't want problems to be known because it's kind of, know, nobody wants to go back and say, I recommended something that actually caused harm. So there's the, there is a sense of like a number of parties or, or, or people would rather this not be known. So I know, I know that's
part of it's got to be playing into it in some way, right? Not that we have to dive into that, but I am just curious, like at a high level, like, this just, people are missing it and we just need to do better studies or is it really more intentional where this is just something that's not getting the attention for other competing interests. So yeah.
William Parker (36:38.698)
So, touched on it there. So, if you prescribe this a thousand times, there's gonna be, you're gonna be emotionally compromised. There's no question about it. And we've submitted our stuff to major journals and we get, I think one time we tallied up 14 demonstrably invalid reasons for rejecting our paper.
Every single one of them, we could say, this is wrong and here's the literature. This is wrong and here's the literature. Or it was just invalid to start with, for example, well, you can't publish this. This is not what everybody thinks. And that's which is just a formal way of saying we have a consensus bias. It's not that people are trying to do evil things, but people are people. So if you're emotionally compromised, you have these profound conflicts of interest, you can get something that you've probably heard of called cognitive dissonance.
Right? So that's, you know, that's the way it is because humans are human. And we see, we do see a lot of that and it's, it is, it is, can be. We, you know, as scientists, the goal is to not think about the, you know, not think about the impact, just focus strategy, strategy, science, science, you know, just when we see beautiful data, we rejoice, we have a big party.
Len Arcuri (37:34.766)
Yep, I think that.
William Parker (37:59.268)
We don't think about, know, this is what this beautiful day is telling us is so many children are being hurt. We don't think about that. We just have the big party because we have beautiful data and then we're going to keep going. That's how we that's how we do this.
Len Arcuri (38:10.53)
Right, right. That makes sense. All right. No, I appreciate you going on that. Perhaps that tangent with me. So now let's go back. now that this has been clearly kind of established what the key message is, what you're seeing with the data, by all means, go deeper just in terms of explaining a little bit more really what's driving you being so like, I'm guessing if you rewound five years, 10 years,
You knew there was something here worth studying, but it seems like it's ratcheted up tremendously for you. The level is.
William Parker (38:47.752)
Yes. Yeah, let's talk. We can talk a little bit about the history of it. So I was working on autism in 2007 because I'm, I was a renowned expert in, and I was the first one to find something called biofilms in the human gut, you know, which are these little cotton. That was me. I was the first guy. I yeah. I figured out what the human appendix does. That's part of how we figured that out. Right. So
Len Arcuri (39:04.088)
That was you? Yeah. Fantastic.
William Parker (39:12.49)
Yeah, that was that was me and my friend Randy Bollinger. So really cool. And again, it was a complex question and you put a lot of information together and it makes sense. so, you you ruled out everything else. This is the one you go with. So I was working on it before the Schultz study in 2008. Well, when the Schultz study came out in 2008, I became aware of it pretty soon. 2008, 2009. But it wasn't my field. Right. I but I knew enough by 2010 to tell my brother, hey, man,
I don't think this is good. You need to stop giving it to your daughter. I think he will allow me to tell this. I'm sure he will. That he had one that had already regressed. He stopped giving the second one acetaminophen and she stopped regressing and recovered. it's like, okay, that's cool, but it's still not my field, right? So the problem was then by 2013, nobody was publishing on this.
And by 2014, by 2013, they had made that mistake. And it's just a rudimentary, it's two mistakes combined. You're only looking at a narrow window, number one, and you're correcting for factors, treating them as confounding when they're not. it's soup, and we've got even the publisher, when we publish the paper, there's a cool video that if anybody wants to dig deep, they can find a detailed explanation of sometimes confounding factors are really important.
And sometimes that's a huge mistake. so bottom line was by 2015, I was working with some renowned people that, and they let me put in a paper, some comments about acetaminophen. And I was shocked that they got in. I was really new at this. And so by 2017, we wrote our first paper on the topic that was a full blown paper. It did not necessarily help my career.
But that's okay, that's all right. If do the right thing, things will work out. At least in this case, they certainly did. So we just basically adopted it. And that's when I brought on toxicologists, pharmacologists on the team, started a nonprofit, retired from Duke. And I got a wonderful, amazing former student at University of North Carolina, Kate Reisner, and allows me to work with her as a visiting scholar. it's moved on from.
William Parker (41:36.138)
there. So that's how we kind of got into it. There's, I mean, there's so much evidence when you get into it. And when you really start looking, there's an incredible amount of evidence. Did I talk about veterinarians and cats yet? Did I talk about domestic cats? No. So this is every veterinarian knows. And I apologize because I talk about, I've had several interviews today about this, including with some people with health and human services. So I just don't want to repeat myself. I'll look to see now. The bottom line is,
Len Arcuri (42:03.522)
Yeah, no, go.
William Parker (42:05.512)
that every veterinary knows you cannot give a domestic cat a sedum endorphin. It's very toxic to them. And if you do, it actually ironically won't kill their liver. And we can go back and talk about that later. But the bottom line, it'll kill them some other way, but it's not good. But it turns out the reason you can't do that, which has been known for decades, is because they're a certain enzyme. They're not, they're mostly missing. It's not very functional enzymes that do something called glucuronidation. So you may have heard of that one. That's the one that babies are missing.
So bottom line is that we're giving something to a baby that we know not to give to a domestic cat and the baby has the same problem as a domestic cat. And then back to the liver thing, when we first decided Acetaminophen was safe, back in the 60s and 70s for babies, we only tested and there were 52 studies. We tracked every single one of them down.
52-students, and it was eight months of work and there are a lot of students that were very bored working on this and thanks to people, amazing work, of the 52 studies they only tested for liver function. Nobody ever looked at neurological function even though this drug affects the brain, right? It shuts down fevers. That's the hypothalamus. That's a part of the brain. It alters lipid metabolism. It's not like an opioid that just binds to something to make you feel good. This drug actually changes the biochemistry of the brain.
and nobody checked for long-term effects on neurodevelopment following drug exposure until, like I said, until Steven Schultz found the association in 2008. And then Henrik Weiber saw this amazing effect in laboratory animals in 2014. But by then this mistake had already entered the literature and sort of became pervasive. Well, it's really hurting our lab animals and they have the same metabolism as humans do, but
It looks pretty safe in humans based on the study that got published. we're not going to worry about it. Like I said, nobody did this on purpose. I am convinced that I can't imagine that I can't see how it could possibly have been intentional knowing everything that I know about how this played out.
Len Arcuri (44:16.824)
Right. And not that it really matters, right? Because basically whether intentional, unintentional, the key is, okay, what can we do now? Like, so what can we do now? Which is where your research is so key in terms of, okay, now that we know certain things that we didn't know before, how can we, you know, complete the research, make actual useful recommendations for people going forward? So I know that's kind of where, know the train you're riding, where you're...
hoping it goes to actual changes in policy and how we do things. So we can talk a little bit about that, but otherwise, again, I'd go back to, know parents are listening, they're like, okay, what can I do? Is this something that if this was kind of a key thing for my child and it ultimately injured the brain, what can I do now in terms of if I understand that this is a potential root cause, what actions can I take other than obviously not giving Tylenol anymore, right? You don't want to...
continue to do damage if something is toxic. But what would you say to parents who are like, okay, if this is relevant, what actions can I take now that might help my child?
William Parker (45:27.442)
Yeah, so one of the things and this is you're going to find this not very helpful, but one of things that we found in Steve Shultz, actually, the fellow we talked about before did this in mice and we've looked at it in rats and our studies and people looked at humans. Once you get injured by that drug, actually get there's some kind of adaptation. You probably get less sensitive to it. So there's sort of a built in defensive mechanism there. That doesn't mean I would suggest using it all the time on somebody that's been injured by it, but it looks like that the body does a
adapt to that and become insensitive. After, know, it's sort of like when you get a bone break and it heals up, it's not, it'll never be the same way it was, but it's, you know, it's, it's tougher than it was before. So in terms of, you know, what we, what we say is tell other people because the information needs to get spread. And if the health and human services announces this, then that'll be lower on our priority because then everybody's going to be aware of it. And it'll be a more thing of saying, Hey, here's the evidence.
all these 30 lines evidence and they all point in the same direction and it's not just changing diagnostic criteria. It's not this thing or that thing. This is the thing. spread the word. Number one. Number two is if you're, if you have somebody who hasn't been injured, right, you need to make a plan for if, because you know, that's the key thing for emergency planning. When your kid is really in pain from teething or something, or they've got a scratch or they've just been circumcised or you really
What are you gonna do? Are you gonna make an emotional decision, which you're gonna regret? So if you make a plan ahead of time, that can be super, super helpful. But we don't have, it's a whole different field of science. And I mentioned earlier, well, it wasn't my field. It took, it takes 10,000, 20,000 hours and hard work to really become a scientific expert in something to be able to publish in the peer-reviewed literature.
So I don't have that when it comes to brain injury. That is not my field. What we hope is gonna happen is a lot of people who that is their field, they've got their 20,000 hours under their belt and they've trained students, then those people will take off with this and really hopefully, prayerfully do some amazing stuff.
Len Arcuri (47:46.04)
Great. I appreciate that. Might be a good time just to talk about the simple swap, right? So if a parent is understanding this and then does want to give something for pain relief, right, or a fever, there's obviously many other options out there other than acetaminophen, like let's say Advil or Motrin. Can you talk a little bit about what would be safer particularly for an infant?
William Parker (48:13.992)
Right, so yeah, so of course, yeah, I'm not a medical doctor and I'm not an expert on pain relief, but I'm an expert on what a sedum infant does to neurodevelopment. But the part of the problem is if you look from, if you look during pregnancy up to six months of age, there's really not any traditional medical options. Now I've heard a lot of functional medicine doctors say, you know, this works and this works and this works. But I think for us, it's let's say you're in your third trimester and then
The pregnant mother has a migraine headache. That's tough, right? So I think for us, the main thing is inform people ahead of time. And, you know, obviously the ideal thing was figure out how to manage that headache without a seed of menopin before you get pregnant. So we really are focused more on, because it's not our field, is focused more on the prevention end of it. And you probably know much more than I do about, you know, the kinds of things that are really helpful.
in terms of managing the ongoing issues.
Len Arcuri (49:16.12)
Okay. Yep. fair enough. Fair enough. I think, and I apologize, we're going in a few different directions. There's so many avenues I'd like to explore further with you, but I'm also mindful of time. would you mind just honing in a little bit more in terms of the mechanism again? So with this combination, how does it damage cells, brains? Like how does it ultimately injure the brain? Can you just go a little bit deeper on that mechanism? Cause I think, I think people...
Parents may understand something, again, going back to the metals issue, metals impacting the brain makes sense. But in terms of Tylenol, what is that mechanism? then again, the way I think about it is, okay, if metals are an issue, there's ways of helping the body get rid of metals. How do you help a body get rid of the acetaminophen residue, if you will? And I don't think there is any, right? It's just damaged brain cells.
William Parker (50:16.872)
Yeah, you're right. So I'm going to use just a tiny bit of jargon, but what happens is the acetamin if it gets in the body and if you've got susceptibility, there's an enzyme called cytochrome P4502E1 and that's mostly the enzyme. There's some others. It's present in the brain and the fetus and in the newborn and that enzyme will create what's called a toxic metabolite. So it's what's your, it's just like alcohol.
The alcohol, it's the same enzyme actually. It creates a toxic metabolite called an aldehyde. In this case, it's called a quinonamine. And the quinonamine is created from acetaminophen. And that thing, the quinonamine acts essentially like mercury. It will bind to the closest protein it can find. It sticks on it. It creates something called an adduct and it just kills it. And then that usually it causes mitochondrial...
the energy house of the cell, the mitochondria, causes dysfunction with that. And then there's problems with something called calcium signaling. And you just basically get cortical neuron death. So that's how it works. And we know that a child's ability to clean up damage is called an autophagy system. That's genetically the changes in that are polymorphisms. Differences in that are also associated with autism. So it's not just the...
Susceptibility is a lot of things, right? It's how much of that quinonamine do you form? And then how much can you clean up the mess after the damage is done? That's all part of the picture. So it does, but again, mercury poisoning is different than lead poisoning is different than acetaminophen poisoning. They look different. So, then like I said, autism is got, it's got a very characteristic footprint on it that looks like it's a damage from a single compound. And as I said, we've
you have identified that com.
Len Arcuri (52:12.024)
Well, truly incredible, really is incredible news and it's unbelievably disheartening yet also at the same time exciting if this is becoming known because again, then corrective actions can be taken if there's a willingness. So I'm wishing you, wishing you great.
William Parker (52:28.33)
Yeah, yeah, and I believe that I believe there is a will of
Len Arcuri (52:33.196)
Yeah, things have shifted where I think there's a lot of reason for optimism, you know, what can be done going forward. So I definitely wish you great success in continuing with your research and working with HHS. Is there anything else that we haven't covered that you just think would be useful for our parents to know, whether it's, you know, more detail or any other big messages that you think are coming out of the research that you're doing?
William Parker (52:57.834)
Yeah, yeah, I do need to run to my next meeting, but it's the same when we figured out what the human appendix does. Okay, it's got a function. It's a safe house for beneficial bacteria. And we want to follow that with well, if you get appendicitis, make sure you go to the doctor. So the same thing if your kid has a very severe headache, that's just not normal or a fever that's not normal, you need to go to the doctor because it could be something very serious. That's life threatening that needs to be checked out. So that's the final take home message there.
Len Arcuri (53:26.51)
All right, well, Dr. Parker, I greatly appreciate you taking the time to share this with our audience. Might be hard for some parents to hear, but again, knowledge and greater understanding here actually is something that gives reason to hope to be able to make positive changes going forward. So I'm super personally grateful for your work and for taking the time to share your message.
William Parker (53:47.164)
Alright, thanks very much, Lynn. Have a wonderful day.
Len Arcuri (53:50.626)
You too.
