BREAKING: Ken Paxton Sues Tylenol for Harming Babies — But When Will the FDA Pay?

When I saw the news that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing the makers of Tylenol for allegedly hiding links between their product and autism, my first thought wasn’t “Good, get ‘em.” It was “Here we go again.”

Because yes, if a company knowingly marketed a drug to pregnant women while burying evidence of potential harm, that’s unconscionable. They should pay, and pay big. But it’s maddening that the only people who ever seem to pay are the drug companies themselves, never the government bureaucrats who empowered them in the first place.

Tylenol’s legitimacy didn’t appear out of thin air. It came from the gold stamp of approval from our own government — the FDA and CDC. For decades, women were told by doctors (who were told by regulators) that Tylenol was the only safe pain reliever in pregnancy. Every expectant mother heard it: avoid ibuprofen, stick to acetaminophen. Millions of women trusted that advice, not because they loved Big Pharma, but because they trusted the American institutions that told them to.

And yet here we are. Another drug scandal. Another lawsuit. Another “How could this happen?” moment.

It’s the same pattern we saw with OxyContin. Yes, the Sacklers pushed it hard, but who enabled them? Who approved the marketing language? Who allowed the addiction crisis to explode while looking the other way? The FDA waved it through. The CDC took years to respond. And when it all came crashing down, who paid the price? Not the regulators. Not the public health “experts.” Just the company.

That’s the part that infuriates me.

We have entire agencies, funded by billions of taxpayer dollars, that exist for the sole purpose of evaluating the safety of drugs. They are supposed to be independent watchdogs, not cheerleaders for pharmaceutical corporations. They are supposed to safeguard the public from corporate greed, not rubber-stamp it.

But they don’t.

And when they fail, the system’s response isn’t to hold them accountable, it’s to let them investigate themselves, shrug, and move on while the lawsuits pile up against the companies. Fine, sue the companies. Make them pay. But if we never hold the bureaucrats to the same standard, what’s the point of the “D” in FDA? What’s the point of all those layers of review, regulation, and oversight if the outcome is always the same?

If Tylenol knew about risks and marketed the drug to pregnant women anyway, then they deserve every bit of scrutiny coming their way. But let’s be honest: this isn’t just a story about one bad actor. It’s about an entire system that allowed it, endorsed it, and profited from it, who will now pretend to be shocked.

Until the day the FDA and CDC face real consequences for their failures, not just press releases and “updated guidelines”, or this cycle will never end. The companies will change names. The drugs will change labels. But the enablers in government will stay right where they are.

And that’s the real sickness.