Medicines containing acetaminophen are among the most widely used painkillers and fever reducers in the country. They are used by people of all ages and have been marketed as safe for pregnant women and infants.
Good morning everyone and welcome to today’s beasley island webinar does acetaminophen cause autism and adhd my name is david byrne and it’s my pleasure to introduce our two speakers for this very important litigation topic today my partner roger smith along with mary cam raven will address the scientific links between acetaminophen exposure and autism and adhd
Roger and mary campbell also discussed the growing litigation involving these acetaminophen products while we’re waiting on the last of our registrants to join us let’s take a few moments and meet our two speakers first my friend and partner roger smith is a long time leader in beastly allen’s mass tort section since joining the firm in 2001 roger has dedicated
All of his time to complex litigation involving pharmaceutical products and medical devices among other things roger served on the teams that negotiated the 4.85 billion dollar vioxx settlement as well as the 2.4 billion dollar actos global settlement he’s also served as lead attorney in numerous cases that resulted in multi-million dollar settlements for our
Clients who had claims ranging from and related to resolute serzone ephedra ppa herbal supplements gadolinium yaz yasmine and fleet phospho soda of course over the past two decades roger has also served on numerous nbl committees subcommittees and an mdl plaintiff steering committee roger is a remarkable legal and scientific scholar and we are so delighted to
Have him on our team my colleague mary cam raven is also an attorney in beastly island’s mass tort section over the past several years mary cam has actively worked on high viscosity bone cement cases as well as claims involving defective dietary supplements and weight loss drugs such as bell beak mary cam graduated to loud from huntington college and received
Her juris doctor from samford university mary cam is a tireless advocate for our clients and i am so delighted to have her join us today now before i turn the program over to our two speakers i need to go over just a few housekeeping notes first today’s webinar has been approved by the alabama and georgia state bars for one hour of cle credit in order for you
To receive full credit for attending you’ve got to stay on for the duration of the program a link to today’s presentation was included in the zoom confirmation email you should have received when you register but by the end of this week the end of this week you’ll receive another email with a certificate of attendance and an updated presentation and video link
You can email your completed evaluation form to webinars at beasley island.com keep in mind this webinar is being recorded for those alabama and georgia attorneys who are participating by phone today it’s very important that you email your name phone number and state bar id number to webinars beasley island.com to ensure that you receive full cle credit also
Be sure to check out the events page of our website beasley island.com slash events we’re going to be adding more webinars throughout the year and for anyone needing ethics credit we’re offering an ethics webinar in november i also want to encourage each of you to go ahead and register for our follow-up camp lejeune webinar which is scheduled for next week on
Tuesday september 27 at 11 a.m central noon eastern finally if you have questions during today’s webinar i want to encourage you to use the question and answer feature located at the bottom of your screen we’re going to set aside time at the end of today’s program to try and tackle all of the questions submitted by our viewers through that q a function so with
That roger mary cam let’s get started hey thank you david for that fantastic introduction uh good morning everyone or maybe it’s good afternoon um we have about 300 people attending today which is fantastic we appreciate all of you for calling in and listening we do have a lot to cover which means that i’m going to be addressing a lot of points pretty quickly
I’m going to apologize in advance for that because it is a lot to cover when we started looking into a potential case linking acetaminophen and autism one of the things that struck me was the sheer magnitude of the increase in diagnosis of autism and adhd over the past 30 or 40 years let me give you some numbers several decades ago one in one thousand children
Were diagnosed with autism in the united states in 2009 one in 100 children were diagnosed with autism in the united states between 1991 and 2001 the rate of autistic children in public schools increased by 1700 and there was a actually a 2017 article in scientific american that stated that it was 1 in 68 children um in the us that have autism and many believe
That the numbers that are being circulated now are conservative but these this these statistics are astounding scientists are calling it an epidemic so it begs the question are doctors more aware now um of autism and adhd which is actually leading to more diagnoses are there better diagnostic tools there was actually a study back in 2009 that answered that the
Study showed that only a quarter of the increase in autism and adhd diagnoses could be attributed to better diagnostic testing and physician awareness so what else is it is it an environmental factor causing the epidemic during the presentation today our hope is that we will be able to show you the growing body of evidence that links autism and adhd to prenatal
Exposure to acetaminophen and despite this body of evidence evidence which has been accumulating for a long time there is absolutely no warning on acetaminophen containing products which would alert a pregnant woman woman to the risks of prenatal acetaminophen exposure what if the manufacturers had a statement in their product warnings that said acetaminophen use
During pregnancy can alter fetal development and cause autism adhd and other conditions don’t you think woman women would heed that warning it really doesn’t take a lot of words to do the right thing here so the question we have is can we unlock the mystery behind autism scientists believe that autism is the result of multiple factors and that includes certain
Environmental agents having a negative impact on genes and gene products now there are a bunch of environmental factors that have been associated with increased rates of autism there are certain pesticides certain chemicals heavy metals other pollutants but one of the puzzling aspects of autism in the u.s is the marked increase in the incidence of autism that
Began in the 1980s was there some type of toxic avalanche of chemicals or heavy metals or pollutants in the u.s in the in the early 80s that has continued today i don’t think so in fact i think that the increased knowledge about many of these potential exposures has led to a marked reduction in the potential for exposure we don’t use lead gas anymore we don’t
Use ddt acetaminophen use however did increase in the early 80s but it is it possible that acetaminophen acetaminophen can induce disturbances in genes is there evidence that acetaminophen can cause damage to the developing brain
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Does Acetaminophen Cause Autism & ADHD? – Webinar By Beasley Allen
