Robert F. Kennedy Junior He often criticized vaccines on a common element: Aluminum, who suggested that he is responsible for a series of children’s diseases, including Food allergies,, unite and depression.
“You are wondering why a whole generation of children suffer from allergies to things,” Mr. Kennedy said during a press conference. 2021 interview. “This is because we cause allergies, and pump it full of aluminum.”
For many vaccine scientists, aluminum is a strange goal. It is one of the most studied components in vaccines, and perhaps in modern medicine.
“There is a huge amount of information collected,” said Dr. Andrew Rasin, a pediatrician and chief medical official in the Monteviuri health system. “If something is related to insecurity, it is likely that we have seen it somewhere, but it does not appear.”
Aluminum salts, which are a more soluble form of metal, are added to vaccines such as the TDAP dose to enhance the body’s immune response. The component was repeatedly evaluated as part of the vaccines in clinical trials and was given Billions of doses For several decades.
However, while Mr. Kennedy is preparing for listening sessions to confirm his appointment as Minister of Health and Human Services, many experts fear that this preparation will face a new audit, and may even be a justification to limit access to many children’s vaccines, such as hepatitis B .
Harun Siri, a lawyer and The ally close to Mr. Kennedy, I represented customers in Providing a petition to the federal organizers To stop distributing more than ten vaccines temporarily until its makers provide more information about the amount of aluminum in the installations.
Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Siri did not respond to the comment requests.
The assets of aluminum addition in the vaccines can be returned to nearly a century. On stable on the outskirts of Paris, a young veterinarian discovered a strange discovery: mixing tabioca with the screws used by his horses made it more effective.
Doctor Gaston Ramon noted that horses that were slightly infected at the injection site had a much stronger immunity against the screws. He assumed that adding something to its shots causes inflammation – its components It was later called the auxiliary materialsDerived from the Latin root “for help” – helped make a stronger immune response.
After testing many candidate materials, including bread crumbs, oil jelly, and rubber plateau, he found success using a tabioca injection, which produced slight swelling and much more counter -antibodies.
Tabioca has never been used as an assistant. But in 1932, a few years after the publication of Dr. Ramon’s studies, the United States began to enter aluminum salts into its products. Vaccines against diphtheriaAs they were I found to summon A similar but more reliable effect.
Today, aluminum aids are found in 27 routine vaccinesAnd nearly half of those recommended for children under the age of five.
This additional immunity reinforcement is not needed in all types of vaccines. Doses that contain a weak shape of the virus, such as the measles vaccine and German measles, or created using MRNA technology, such as Pfizer vaccines and the Coveyd-19 models, generate strong and sufficient immune responses on its own.
But in vaccines that contain only small parts of the pathogen, which are not very interesting from the immune system, the auxiliary materials help stimulate a stronger response,, Let the vaccines be given in lower doses.
Scientists believe that aluminum salts work in two ways. First, aluminum is associated with the basic component of the vaccine and causes it in a slower bloodstream, giving immune cells more time to build the response.
It is also believed that aluminum works more directly, which enhances the activity of some immune cells, although this mechanism as well Incomprehensible.
Despite aluminum salts It is not the only auxiliary material In the market, vaccine makers are often preferred by a long record of safety data.
Each time a new vaccine uses an aluminum auxiliary material is developed, it is subject to lengthy clinical trials to assess its safety, and the side effects are continuously monitored after approval. One of the first experiments that included an aluminum auxiliary material Posted in 1934.
Subsequent experiments revealed some minor side effects, such as redness and body pain, and in rare cases, painful nodules at the injection site. But there is little reliable evidence that aluminum in vaccines causes serious and long -term side effects, as suggested by Mr. Kennedy.
People who are routinely exposed to large quantities of aluminum – such as workers who inhale aluminum dust, or dialysis patients who receive aluminum -richly drugs – may be exposed to complications in the respiratory system, bones and nervousness.
Dr. Michael Modi, director of the Duke Institute for Human vaccines, said that the amount of aluminum in children’s vaccines is considered trivial compared to what people are routinely exposed to through the environment and food.
He said: “We are constantly exposed to aluminum.” “If you inhale the dust from the outside, then you come into contact with aluminum.”
In the first six months of children’s lives, vaccines are severely damaged 4.4 mg From aluminum. On the contrary, one slice of American cheese can contain As much as 50 milligrams From aluminum.
When scientists compared aluminum levels in the blood and hair of children who have been given vaccines containing aluminum in exchange for those who did not get it, they found There is no big difference.
Some scientists believe that one of the possible side effects needs additional research.
In 2022, after a Federal funded study I found a simple relationship between exposure to aluminum resulting from vaccines and asthma, the centers of control over diseases indicated that the link is justified.More investigation(The agency said it would not change the recommendations of vaccines, “based on one study.”
Mr. Kennedy, who was then head of the Children’s Health Defense Organization, is a non -profit organization that frequently criticizes vaccines, The study was held as a guide The vaccinations were causing an “asthma epidemic”.
However, the authors of the paper were keen to refer to the shortcomings of the results they reached, most notably that the effect was small and that the study was based on the observation, which means that it could not prove the cause and the result.
And they warned in the paper that their results “do not constitute strong evidence of skepticism about aluminum safety in vaccines.”
Independent experts also male The authors did not collect data on many major risk factors, such as whether the participants had been subjected to cigarette smoke or had a family history of asthma – and either of them could explain the difference they noted.
In response to the study, a group of researchers from the Statins Cyum Institute, the Danish Public Health Agency, conducted a similar analysis of a national data collection of more than 450,000 children.
Their initial results did not show a relationship between aluminum materials and asthma Tell the advisory committee for immunization practices affiliated with the Center for Disease Control In 2023.
However, a spokeswoman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that the agency “discuss additional studies” to investigate potential risks.
But so that accurate research can confirm this result, the relationship between aluminum and asthma remains weak at best, said Dr. Stanley Blutkin, who played a pivotal role in helping to create a German measles vaccine.
He said: “You cannot change the conclusions from any one research paper.” “You have to look at public literature.”
Anders Hafid, who led the Danish study, said he welcomes more research on the safety of auxiliary materials, but added that these studies may never be sufficient to persuade the skeptics that aluminum does not cause long -term side effects.
He said, “You cannot prove negativity.” “There will always be the goal column moving and say: Well, you did not look at this and did not look at this way.”
