Recently filed court documents show the makers of Tylenol planned to enlist the White House and lawmakers to block the Food and Drug Administration from imposing tough new safety restrictions on acetaminophen, the iconic painkiller’s chief ingredient. An executive with McNeil Consumer Healthcare – which counts Tylenol as its flagship product – told the board of…
The thing with Tylenol (=acetaminophen, =paracetamol) is that the median lethal dose (LD50) and the therapeutic dose are much closer than for most over-the-counter drugs.
The maximum recommended dose in 24 hours is 3 grams or 4 grams, depending on which country’s regulators you believe. The LD50 is 12 grams. That’s a factor of 3 or 4.
That’s *lethal* dose. Liver damage starts long before that.
So if, as an untrained consumer, you take 6 extra-strength Tylenol (500 mg each, 3000 mg or 3 grams total) and your headache still bugs you so you take a bunch more … well, you just poisoned yourself.
That’s why this stuff needs way more regulation than it’s getting, and why fighting against that regulation makes those execs accessories to murder.
And just for kicks, compare that to those hugely dangerous drugs, birth control pills, whose LD50 is tens of thousands higher dose than the therapeutic one.