Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He has often trained his criticism of vaccines on a common ingredient: aluminum, which has suggesting that it is responsible for a series of childhood diseases, including food allergies, autism and depression.
“You’re wondering why a whole generation of children is allergic to things,” Mr Kennedy said during an interview in 2021. “It’s because we cause allergies, drawing on full aluminum.”
For many vaccine scientists, aluminum is a curious goal. They are one of the most studied ingredients in vaccines, and perhaps in modern medicine.
“There is a huge amount of information gathered,” said Dr. Andrew Racine, a pediatrician and leading physician at Montefiore Health System. “If there was something that was going on about the lack of security, we would probably have seen it somewhere and it just doesn’t seem.”
Aluminum salts, a more soluble form of metal, are added to vaccines such as the TDAP vaccine to enhance the body’s immune response. The ingredient has repeatedly been evaluated as part of the vaccines in clinical trials and has been administered in billions of doses for several decades.
Even so, as Mr Kennedy prepares for confirmation hearing as Secretary of Health and Human Services, many experts feature that waiting will face new control and can even serve as an excuse to limit access to many child vaccines such as Vaccines for hepatitis B. and pneumococcal disease.
Aaron Siri, a lawyer and close ally of Mr Kennedy, has represented clients by asking federal regulators to stop distributing more than twelve vaccines until manufacturers provide more information on the amount of aluminum in the preparations.
Mr Kennedy and Mr Siri did not respond to requests for commentary.
The origin of the added aluminum to the vaccines can be detected almost a century back. In a stall on the outskirts of Paris, a young veterinarian had made a strange discovery: the mixing of tapiochas in his horses’ diphtheria vaccines made them more effective.
The doctor, Gaston Ramon, had noticed that the horses that developed a small injection site had much stronger immunity to diphtheria. He believed that the addition of something to his shots that caused inflammation – constituents he later called an auxiliary, coming from the Latin root “to help” – helped to cause a stronger immune response.
After trying out several candidates – including bread crumbs, petroleum jelly and rubber latex – he found a success with a tapioca injection, which produced light swelling and much more antibodies.
Tapioca never caught as auxiliary. But in 1932, a few years after the publication of Dr. Ramon’s studies, the United States began to include aluminum salts in immune effects against diphtheria, as they found themselves citing a similar but more reliable result.
Today, aluminum immunosupports are found in 27 routine vaccines and almost half of those recommended for children under 5 years.
This additional enhancement of immunity is not needed in all types of vaccines. Vaccines containing a weakened form of virus, such as the mumps of mumps and red, or created with MRNA technology, such as Pfizer and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines, create quite strong immunological responses.
But in vaccines containing only small fragments of the pathogen, which would attract a little attention to the immune system, the immunosupports help to stimulate a stronger response; allowing vaccines to be administered in fewer doses.
Scientists believe that aluminum salts work in two ways. First, aluminum is associated with the basic ingredient of the vaccine and forces it to diffuse into the bloodstream more slowly, giving the immune cells more time to build a response.
Aluminum is also considered more directly, enhancing the activity of certain immune cells, although this mechanism is not fully understood.
Although aluminum salts are not the only add -ons on the market, vaccine manufacturers often prefer them due to long history of security data.
Each time a new vaccine is developed that uses an aluminum immuno -treatment, long -term clinical trials to evaluate its safety and adverse reactions are constantly monitored after approval. One of the first trials including an aluminum additive was published in 1934.
Subsequent tests have revealed some minor side effects, such as redness, body aches and, in rare cases, painful nodules at the injection site. But there is little credible evidence that aluminum in vaccines causes serious, long -term side effects, as suggested by Mr Kennedy.
People who are regularly exposed to large quantities of aluminum – such as workers who breathe aluminum dust or patients undergoing dialysis who receive systematic aluminum -rich drugs – may develop respiratory, bone and neurological complications.
The amount of aluminum in baby vaccines, however, is insignificant compared to what people usually expose through the environment and food, said Dr. Tony Mudy, director of Duke Civics Vaccine Center.
“We are exposed to aluminum constantly,” he said. “If you inhale dust from the outside, you come into contact with aluminum.”
In the first six months of baby life, vaccines are exposed to about 4.4 milligrams of aluminum. A slice of American cheese, on the other hand, can contain up to 50 milligrams of aluminum.
When scientists compared the levels of aluminum in the blood and the hair of the baby who had received aluminum vaccines against those who had not received, they found no significant difference.
Some scientists believe that a possible side effect needs additional research.
In 2022, after a study with federal funding found a small correlation between the aluminum exposure from vaccines and asthma, the CDC noted that the connection justified “further research”. (The Agency said it would not change the recommendations for vaccines ‘based on a single study’.)
Mr Kennedy, who was then president of Children’s Health Defense, a non -profit organization that often criticizes the vaccines, presented the study as proof that immunities caused an “asthma epidemic”.
But the authors of the work were careful to point out the limitations of their findings, especially that the result was small and that the study was observer, which means that it could not prove cause-results.
In the document, they warned that their results “are not strong evidence of aluminum safety in vaccines”.
Independent experts also noted that the authors did not collect data on several key risk factors, such as whether the participants had been exposed to cigarette smoke or had a family asthma history – each of which could explain the difference they observed.
In response to the study, a group of researchers from the Statens Serum Institut, the Danish Public Health Service, conducted a similar analysis in a national database of more than 450,000 children.
Their preliminary effects did not show a correlation between immuno -treatment aluminum and asthma, they told the CDC Advisory Committee on immunization practices in 2023.
However, a CDC spokesman said the organization is “discussing additional studies” to investigate the potential risk.
But until the finding is confirmed, the rigorous research is confirmed, the relationship between aluminum and asthma is at best weak, said Dr. Stanley Plotkin, who played a decisive role in creating the red -fighting vaccine.
“You can’t change conclusions from any documents,” he said. “You have to look at the overall literature.”
Anders Hviid, who led the study in Denmark, said he welcomes more research on auxiliary safety, but added that these studies may never be enough to convince the skeptics that aluminum does not cause long -term side effects.
“You can’t prove negative,” he said. “There will always be this beam that will move, saying,” Well, you didn’t look at it and you didn’t look at it in this way. “
