Questioning Offit. Part 17. Aluminum

Previous parts:
Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: DTP
Part 3: Encephalopathy
Part 4: Dravet syndrome
Part 5: SIDS
Part 6: West syndrome
Part 7: Hib
Part 8: Hepatitis B
Part 9: Pneumococcus and rotavirus
Part 10: HPV
Part 11: Lawsuits
Part 12: Wakefield
Part 13: MMR and autism
Part 14: Mercury and autism
Part 15: Chickenpox
Part 16: Antigens

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
—Aldous Huxley

Chapter 10 (continued)

Offit:

Because it’s unavoidable, everyone has aluminum circulating in the body, even babies, who have 1-5 nanograms (billionths of a gram) per milliliter of blood. Researchers have studied the quantity of aluminum in blood before and after receipt of aluminum-containing vaccines. No difference. The quantity of aluminum in vaccines is so small and the body eliminates it so quickly (about half of the injected aluminum is completely eliminated in one day) that it is undetectable following vaccination.

When Offit writes that half of the injected aluminum is completely eliminated from the body in one day, he is, to put it mildly, conflating concepts. That elimination rate applies to intravenous administration, whereas vaccines are administered intramuscularly. Moreover, even these pharmacokinetic data on intravenous aluminum administration were obtained from experiments on rats and one adult volunteer, not on infants.

There is only one pharmacokinetic study of intramuscular administration of aluminum adjuvants. It was published in 1997 and conducted on just two rabbits. One month after intramuscular administration, 94% of the aluminum hydroxide still remained in the animals’ bodies. And the fact that aluminum is not detected in the blood after vaccination does not in itself mean it has been eliminated from the body, especially since it’s also not detected in urine. The same rabbit study indicates that aluminum is not found in blood and urine because it distributes throughout various organs.

The second article is a 1997 randomized study in which premature infants were divided into two groups. One group received standard intravenous nutrition, and the other received intravenous nutrition without aluminum. The authors concluded that prolonged intravenous administration of solutions containing aluminum is associated with impaired neurological development. In other words, Offit cites a study entitled “Aluminum neurotoxicity in preterm infants” which demonstrates aluminum toxicity as an argument in favor of its safety.

The third study measured aluminum content in various food products. The fourth measured aluminum content in infant formulas. Both of these studies emphasize aluminum’s toxicity and the need to minimize its presence in food, and especially in infant formulas.

Another new disease associated with dialysis was ‘dialysis osteomalacia.’ Phosphate plays a key role in bone growth and mineralization, whereas aluminum suppresses its absorption by the body. Aluminum in dialysis solutions led to bone softening. By the way, the aforementioned FDA article (Keith, 2002) indicates that the use of antacids also leads to bone softening and fractures.

The article also suggests that aluminum is linked to diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and Down syndrome. Regarding the latter, the author notes that since oocytes are very large cells that do not divide, they may be particularly susceptible to aluminum accumulation, and thus lead to genetic disorders in the fetus. Aluminum may also contribute to autoimmune diseases, sarcoidosis, type 2 diabetes, and muscular dystrophy.

The author raises the question of how aluminum alone, long considered a virtually harmless element, could be associated with such a wide spectrum of diseases. He answers that aluminum is on one hand very small, and on the other hand has a very high charge density and very slow metabolism. The effects of aluminum exposure in humans may manifest decades later. In animal experiments, duration of exposure cannot be adequately replaced by a high daily dose. Furthermore, aluminum is virtually impossible to study using epidemiological methods, since the entire population is exposed, and clinical effects develop over years and decades. This makes both prospective and retrospective studies either impossible or extremely difficult, which may explain why these associations remained unnoticed for so long.

The sixth article also asserts that aluminum has no biological function and that its toxic effects were established only relatively recently. The only thing it adds to the previous article is that children with congenital kidney diseases who received aluminum-based phosphate-binding medications also developed encephalopathy.

The seventh study is an FDA publication stating that the maximum aluminum content in vaccines used in the U.S. is 0.85 mg per dose. This amount was chosen empirically not based on safety data, but based on data showing that this amount of aluminum increases the antigenicity and effectiveness of vaccines.

The authors note that there are different opinions regarding the use of aluminum adjuvants in vaccines. In particular, the UK Department of Health recommended vaccines without aluminum as early as 1957, unlike their American counterparts.

When discussing aluminum safety, the authors do not cite any studies. They merely limit themselves to asserting that sixty years of experience using aluminum in vaccines confirms its safety. At the same time, they acknowledge the existence of reports of systemic aluminum accumulation associated with neurological disorders and bone diseases. Nevertheless, the authors reassure the reader that aluminum consumption from vaccines is significantly less than its consumption from food or from medications such as antacids.

The authors also indicate that aluminum increases the effectiveness of the first vaccine dose but does not affect the effectiveness of subsequent doses. However, producing separate vaccines for the initial dose with aluminum and for subsequent booster doses without aluminum is considered impractical from the pharmaceutical companies’ standpoint. Furthermore, there are vaccines whose effectiveness does not depend on the presence of aluminum, such as pertussis vaccines.

I emphasize that all the articles listed above are cited by Paul Offit as proof of aluminum safety, although not one of these studies demonstrates this safety.

Meanwhile, there are studies in which aluminum in vaccines is associated with various neurological and autoimmune diseases. These studies are analyzed in detail in another article.

In this chapter I will focus on just one disease—asthma.

Asthma

Asthma, like many other diseases we’ve already discussed, has been known since ancient times, but for centuries it was quite rare. However, in the mid-20th century, its prevalence began to rise rapidly, and the causes of this increase remain unclear to this day. For example, among Finnish military conscripts, after a stable period from 1926 to 1961, the prevalence of asthma increased 12-fold between 1966 and 2003.

A 2023 review article with the revealing title ‘Why has epidemiology not (yet) succeeded in identifying the origin of the asthma epidemic?‘ attempts to answer this question. The authors note that in the 1980s, many developed countries recorded a significant increase in asthma prevalence, which led to the term ‘asthma epidemic.’ During that period, there was hope that epidemiology would be able to identify the causes of this phenomenon and propose effective prevention strategies. However, three decades later, according to the authors, these expectations have not been fulfilled.

The most studied attempt to explain the sudden asthma epidemic became the so-called hygiene hypothesis. According to it, exposure to certain bacteria and parasites in early childhood protects against allergic diseases, whereas insufficient contact with microorganisms disrupts the development of immune tolerance. However, despite decades of research, no specific type of infection has confirmed this hypothesis.

After the classical hygiene hypothesis failed to provide answers, researchers began formulating more complex versions of it. For example, the ‘high turnover hypothesis‘ suggested that allergies are prevented not by a specific type of microorganism, but by high dynamics of change among various species and strains of bacteria. The ‘biodiversity hypothesis‘ linked the rise in inflammatory diseases, including asthma, to decreased biodiversity and changes in the composition of gut and skin microbiota. However, as the review authors note with regret, none of these hypotheses has received convincing confirmation either.

Since the hygiene hypothesis and its modifications proved untenable, a new concept was proposed called the ‘westernization hypothesis.’ According to it, there is some as-yet-unidentified factor present in Western civilization that contributes to the epidemic of chronic diseases, including asthma. The authors lament, however, that most studies appealing to westernization are descriptive and vague in nature and do not contain a clear definition of what exactly is meant by westernization and which specific elements of it may be responsible for the rise in chronic diseases.

Are there any clues at all that might indicate which specific factor of Western civilization could contribute to epidemics of chronic diseases, including asthma? For example, I’ve already mentioned that according to a 2005 Korean study, injections of aluminum hydroxide together with ovalbumin are the simplest way to induce asthma in mice. Ovalbumin, incidentally, is contained in flu vaccines. In a 2014 study, injections of aluminum hydroxide with ovalbumin were used to induce allergic rhinitis in mice. In a 2015 study, aluminum hydroxide with ovalbumin was used to stimulate food allergies in mice. Aluminum hydroxide has been used to induce allergies not only in mice, but also in dogs and sheep.

The Western world brings with it mass vaccination, and many vaccines contain aluminum. Could aluminum in vaccines contribute to the development of asthma? The studies mentioned above were conducted on animals, but might there also be studies on children?

In 2023, a CDC study was published based on the closed Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) database. The authors concluded that each additional milligram of aluminum received from vaccines is associated with a 26% increase in asthma risk. The lead author of this study was our acquaintance Frank DeStefano, who, as we remember, can always be relied upon to prove what needs to be proven. And he really tried. For instance, children who were diagnosed with asthma before two years of age were excluded from the analysis. Also excluded were children who received vaccines not typically recommended before 24 months, children with immunodeficiency, and children who “did not use the vaccination center for preventive care”—that is, all unvaccinated children. And yet, despite all these maneuvers, even Frank DeStefano could not reduce the effect of aluminum on asthma risk to statistically insignificant levels. Incidentally, this was Frank DeStefano’s last study in his position as director of the Immunization Safety Office at the CDC, after which he retired.

This is, of course, far from the only study linking vaccination and asthma. For example, according to a 2005 study, completely unvaccinated children had asthma 11 times less frequently compared to fully vaccinated children. I’ve also already mentioned a 2008 Canadian study in which delaying the first DTP dose by just two months was associated with a twofold reduction in asthma risk.

In a 2008 Swedish study, introducing vaccine pertussis toxoid into infants’ blood led to the activation of 66 genes associated with asthma. Additionally, the unpublished Zervos study showed that children vaccinated with at least one vaccine had asthma four times more often than completely unvaccinated children.

All these studies, however, remain unnoticed. Epidemiologists and other scientists who have been unsuccessfully searching for decades for the causes of the asthma epidemic and other chronic diseases prefer not to notice this ‘elephant in the room.’ They understand perfectly well that if they notice it, their careers will come to an end. Therefore, they prefer to look for the cause of asthma ‘under the streetlight’—in deliberately safe and politically neutral directions. And even if they perhaps understand that they won’t find it there, this approach allows them to publish meaningless articles in prestigious journals and successfully advance up the academic career ladder.

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