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Yes, some vaccines contain aluminum. It’s a good thing.

Yes, some vaccines contain aluminum. It’s a good thing.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Has often based his criticism of vaccines on a common ingredient: aluminum, which in his view is responsible for a variety of teething troubles, including food allergies, autism and depression.

“One wonders why a whole generation of children is allergic to things,” said Mr. Kennedy during an interview in 2021. “This is because we trigger allergies and pump them out with aluminum.”

For many vaccine researchers, aluminum is a strange target. It is one of the best examined ingredients in vaccines and maybe also in modern medicine.

“Huge amounts of information are collected,” said Dr. Andrew Racine, pediatrician and chief physician of the Montefiore Health System. “If we had noticed something about lack of security, we would most likely have seen it somewhere, and it just doesn’t appear.”

Aluminum salts, a more soluble shape of the metal, are added to vaccines such as TDAP vaccination to strengthen the body’s immune response. In clinical studies, the ingredient was repeatedly evaluated as part of vaccines and administered in billions of doses over several decades.

However, while Kennedy is preparing for the hearings for confirmation as a minister of health and social affairs, many experts fear that the willingness will be put to the test again and may even be justified as a justification for the limitation of access to several children’s vaccines, such as vaccinations against hepatitis B , could serve and pneumococcal disease.

Aaron Siri, a lawyer and narrow ally of Mr. Kennedy, represented clients at the petition to the federal supervisory authorities to suspend the distribution of more than a dozen vaccines until the manufacturers have provided further information about the amount of aluminum in the formulations.

Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Siri did not respond to inquiries about comments.

The origins of the added aluminum in vaccines can be traced back almost a century. In a stable on the outskirts of Paris, a young veterinarian had made a strange discovery: mixing tapioka into the diphtheria vaccines of his horses made them more effective.

The doctor Gaston Ramon had found that the horses where a slight infection occurred at the injection site had a much greater immunity against diphtheria. He suspected that adding something to his vaccinations that caused inflammation – ingredients that he later called Adjuvanzien, derived from the Latin root – contributed to this to trigger a stronger immune response.

After testing several candidates – including breadcrumbs, vaseline and rubber luclatex – he had success with an injection mixed with tapioka, which caused a slight swelling and much more antibodies.

Tapioka never prevailed as adjuvan. But in 1932, a few years after Dr. Ramon’s studies, the United States began to include aluminum salts in diphtheria vaccinations, since it was found that they have caused a similar but more reliable effect.

Nowadays, aluminum adjuvanzia are contained in 27 routine vaccines and in almost half of the vaccinations recommended for children under 5 years.

This additional strengthening of immunity is not required for all types of vaccines. Vaccinations that contain a weakened form of a virus, such as vaccination against measles, mumps and rubella, or with mRNA technology, such as the vaccines Pfizer and Moderna Covid-19, create sufficiently strong immune reactions on their own.

But in vaccines that contain only small fragments of the pathogen that would hardly be considered by the immune system, adjuvantia help to trigger a stronger reaction,, This enables vaccines in lower doses.

Scientists believe that aluminum salts work in two ways. First, aluminum binds to the core component of the vaccine and ensures that it slower into the bloodstream, which means that the immune cells have more time to build up a reaction.

It is also assumed that aluminum has a more direct effect and increases the activity of certain immune cells, although this mechanism is not fully clarified.

Although aluminum salts are not the only adjuvants on the market, vaccine manufacturers frequently prefer you due to a long track record for safety data.

Every time a new vaccine is developed that uses an aluminum adjuvan, he is subjected to lengthy clinical studies to evaluate its security, and side effects are continuously monitored after admission. One of the earliest attempts with an aluminum adjuvan was released in 1934.

Later studies showed some minor side effects such as redness, body pain and in rare cases painful nodules at the injection site. However, there is hardly any credible evidence that aluminum in vaccines causes serious, long -term side effects, as Mr. Kennedy has proposed.

In people who are regularly exposed to large amounts of aluminum- such as workers who inhale aluminum dust, or dialysis patients who regularly receive aluminum-rich medication- respiratory, bone and neurological complications can occur.

However, the amount of aluminum in vaccines for children is insignificant compared to what is routinely exposed to people about the environment and food, said Dr. Michael Moody, director of the Duke Human Vaccine Institute.

“We are constantly exposed to aluminum,” he said. “Anyone who breathes dust from outside come into contact with aluminum.”

In the first six months of life, babies are exposed to around 4.4 milligrams of aluminum due to vaccinations. A slice of American cheese, on the other hand, can contain up to 50 milligrams of aluminum.

When scientists compared the aluminum values ​​in the blood and in the hair of babies who had been given aluminum -containing vaccines and those who had not received any vaccines, they found no significant difference.

Some scientists believe that a possible side effect requires further research.

After a study financed by the Federal Government found a minor connection between aluminum exposure by vaccines and asthma in 2022, the CDC found that this connection justifies “further investigations”. (The agency said that it would not change the vaccination recommendations “based on a single study”.)

Mr. Kennedy, who was then chairman of Children’s Health Defense, a non-profit organization that is often critical of vaccinations, described the study as evidence that vaccinations caused an “asthma epidemic”.

But the authors of the paper carefully pointed out the limits of their results, especially that the effect was low and that the study was an observation study, which means that it cannot demonstrate any cause-effect documents.

In the paper, they warned that their results “have no strong proof of questioning aluminum security in vaccines”.

Independent experts also found that the authors did not collect any data on several important risk factors, such as whether the participants were exposed to cigarette smoke or had asthma in the family – both could explain the observed difference.

In response to the study, a group of researchers at the Serum Institute, the Danish health authority, carried out a similar analysis at a national data set of more than 450,000 children.

Their preliminary results showed no connection between aluminum adjuvanzia and asthma, they informed the advisory committee for immunization practices of the CDC in 2023.

Nevertheless, a CDC spokeswoman said the authority discussed “additional studies” to examine the potential risk.

But until thorough research can confirm the finding, the connection between aluminum and asthma is at best poor, said Dr. Stanley Plotkin, who played a crucial role in the development of the rubella vaccine.

“You can’t change the conclusions of a single paper,” he said. “You have to look at the overall literature.”

Anders Hviid, who headed the Danish study, said that he greeted more research on the security of adjuvantia, but added that these studies may never be sufficient to convince skeptics that aluminum does not cause long -term side effects.

“You can’t prove anything negative,” he said. “There will always be this goal post, who says: ‘Well, you didn’t see that and you didn’t see that in this way.'”

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