4 Things the New York Times Got Wrong About Aluminum in Vaccines

A New York Times article published Jan. 24 online claimed that aluminum used in childhood vaccines is necessary, well-tested and safe.

by Brenda Baletti, Ph.D.

Editor’s note: This article is part of a series of articles by The Defender responding to the latest media coverage of vaccines.

A New York Times article published Jan. 24 online claimed that aluminum used in childhood vaccines is necessary, well-tested and safe.

Aluminum in vaccines is “a good thing” the headline said and “vaccine scientists” find it “strange” that people — like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — raise questions about it because there is no indication in aluminum’s nearly 100 years of use in vaccines that there are any problems.

President-elect of the American Academy of Pediatrics Dr. Andrew Racine — who is not a “vaccine scientist” — told the Times, “If there was something jumping out about a lack of safety, we would most likely have seen it someplace, and it just doesn’t appear.”

The article is one of several published recently by media outlets including the Daily Tribune, The Conversation and FactCheck.org, defending the use of aluminum in drugs designed for infants.

The Defender spoke with several top researchers on aluminum toxicity and aluminum adjuvants. They said aluminum adjuvants in vaccines are poorly understood by the pharmaceutical industry and have not been appropriately safety tested against a placebo.

They also said there is evidence that the toxic chemical can wreak havoc on the immune system.

The media’s claims ignore decades of research and extensive evidence that aluminum ought to be completely eliminated as a vaccine ingredient, they said.

Chris Exley, Ph.D., one of the world’s leading experts on the health effects of aluminum exposure, said the article “reads like a last-ditch effort by the Times on behalf of the vaccine industry to prevent the inevitable moratorium on the continued use of aluminium adjuvants in vaccines.”

Guillemette Crépeaux, Ph.D., associate professor in physiology and pharmacology, Alfort National Veterinary School, France said, “All experts on aluminum and aluminum-based adjuvants agree: These compounds are not safe. The scientific literature is very clear on this matter.”

Many of the vaccine industry’s claims about aluminum are at stake in the historic Merck trial that began last week for fraud, negligence and concealing the likelihood and severity of adverse effects associated with its Gardasil HPV vaccine.

4 things the Times didn’t tell readers about aluminum in vaccines

1. Long-term use of aluminum adjuvants doesn’t mean they’re safe.

The Times repeated a claim made by vaccine makers and government regulatory agencies that the long-term use of aluminum adjuvants shows that they are safe.

However, Exley, author of “Imagine You Are an Aluminum Atom: Discussions with Mr. Aluminum,” wrote on Substack that even though aluminum adjuvants have been used for a long time, vaccine manufacturers still haven’t shown any detailed understanding of how aluminum adjuvants work.

Instead, they perpetuate “a number of myths” about the mechanism of action, Exley wrote.

The Times explained how adjuvants work using terms like “scientists believe,” but conceded that how adjuvants enhance the activity of immune cells is “not fully understood.”

Researchers have also reported that the mechanisms of adjuvant toxicity are even less well understood than the mechanisms by which adjuvants enhance vaccine immunogenicity.

Exley explained that adjuvants are used because antigens — like vaccines and bacteria — used in vaccines are often not sufficient to cause an immune response that would later protect someone from the target illness. Adding aluminum to the antigen provides a cheap and easy way to provoke an immune response to a weakened form of a virus.

The adjuvant is added to provoke inflammation, Crépeaux explained. “By definition, the role of an adjuvant is to be toxic.”

Epidemiologist and internal medical specialist Dr. Rokuro Hama, who heads the Japan Institute of Pharmacovigilance, said the adjuvants work by damaging tissue to stimulate inflammation — one of the reasons adjuvants are linked to autoimmune disorders.

As the stimulated white blood cells, or macrophages, try to fight the toxic aluminum, “they do what they know: migrate throughout the body.” This means the aluminum can reach multiple organs and systems, Hama said.

Multiple studies have shown that aluminum is toxic at the injection site and beyond, Exley said. And several studies link aluminum adjuvants to autoimmune conditions.

The Times said that some limited evidence from a questionable study shows a link between aluminum and asthma, but there is no evidence for any other concerns.

Exley said the reference to asthma was “a red herring” used by pharma to create the perception that the industry is addressing the public’s concerns about toxicity and to distract from the extensive data on toxicity.

Exley said he has “spent 40 years at the bench studying aluminium and it is my unwavering opinion that aluminium adjuvants in vaccines are behind serious childhood illness including autism.”

2. Aluminum as an adjuvant has not been adequately safety tested.

The Times said that each time a new vaccine using an aluminum adjuvant is developed, it undergoes “a lengthy clinical trial to evaluate its safety, and side effects are continuously monitored after approval.”

However, the experts said that no infant vaccine containing an aluminum adjuvant has been safety tested against a true placebo such as saline. Instead, the vaccines are tested against placebos that also contain an aluminum adjuvant or against other vaccines that contain one.

“This deception is the original ‘dirty trick’ used by vaccine manufacturers to mask the toxicity of aluminium adjuvants in vaccines,” Exley wrote.

In an expert report written for the ongoing lawsuit against Merck for adverse effects from its Gardasil vaccine, aluminum adjuvant expert Lucija Tomljenovic, Ph.D., wrote that statements like Racine’s claiming absence of evidence is evidence of absence is “a logical fallacy.”

Citing work by vaccine developer and immunology expert Dr. Nikolai Petrovsky, Tomljenovic said the absence is better explained by the fact that there are almost no high-quality randomized controlled trials or epidemiological studies investigating aluminum adjuvant safety.

This is especially striking, given that there are thousands of studies published on aluminum’s potency and efficacy as an adjuvant, the report noted.

Petrovsky also said that since aluminum was first introduced as an adjuvant in vaccines, “the regulatory bar has been raised significantly.” It is likely that if aluminum hadn’t been in use all these years and presented to regulatory bodies for approval today, “it would be refused registration on the basis of safety concerns.”

3. The quantity of aluminum in vaccines is neither small nor insignificant.

The Times article repeated a common claim that babies are exposed to only a small amount of aluminum through vaccines in the first six months of life, especially compared to aluminum from other sources.

The article stated that aluminum from vaccines totals 4.4 milligrams, which it compared to “one slice of American cheese,” which can contain up to 50 milligrams of aluminum.

Experts interviewed by The Defender found this claim particularly outrageous. “Comparing injected aluminum with oral aluminum is completely absurd,” Hama said. Crépeaux called the comparison “stupid.”

First, she said, the compounds are different. Adjuvants — substances not found in food — are especially toxic due to their particulate form. Next, the route by which aluminum enters the body matters. Intramuscular injection allows the body to absorb 100% of the injected aluminum, and babies are exposed repeatedly every month or so through vaccines.

Lluís Luján, DVM, Ph.D., said that ingested or inhaled aluminum follows different metabolic routes and is mostly excreted. Injected aluminum remains in the tissue for months or years, which can lead to lifelong inflammatory reactions in animals and humans who are injected.

“It is a known neurotoxin,” he said, noting that in many species aluminum causes an acute inflammatory response upon injection, followed by a chronic one.

As more aluminum-containing vaccines are injected into the same person, “the effects can be cumulative.”

Twenty-seven childhood vaccines approved in the U.S. include an aluminum adjuvant, according to the Times. The amount of aluminum infants are exposed to in a single dose of a vaccine, let alone in all of those vaccines over many months, is not small.

Because safety studies are lacking and efficacy studies are abundant, the amount of aluminum adjuvant permitted in vaccines is selected based on efficacy, not safety, according to Tomljenovic and confirmed in publications by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) own scientists.

Additional research by Exley and colleagues has shown that the aluminum content of vaccines within batches varied significantly and “bears little or no resemblance” to the amount of aluminum listed on the drugs by the makers.

Regulators like the FDA and the European Medicines Agency admit that they don’t independently verify the aluminum content of vaccines.

4. Aluminum adjuvants make vaccines more profitable.

Experts say the mainstream media and vaccine makers’ defense of aluminum adjuvants is tied to pharma’s bottom line.

“Aluminium adjuvants are dirt cheap,” Exley wrote on Substack. “They add absolutely nothing to the cost of a vaccine.” He said that producing more antigens — an alternative way to elicit an immune response — is far more expensive.

Luján said:

“In my opinion, the dispute on aluminum is merely a dispute of economic interests. At the end of all of this, the key point is money: The cost of adding aluminum to a vaccine is almost nothing. From an industrial point of view, who in their right mind would disregard so many advantages? Any other new adjuvant would represent a huge investment and maybe the revenues would not compensate.”

“Yes, some vaccines contain aluminum. That’s a good thing … for the industry,” Luján said, adding what he said were the unspoken words in the Times headline.

Related stories in The Defender

• Merck Used Highly Potent Aluminum in Gardasil HPV Vaccine Trials Without Informing Participants

• Aluminum Content of Pediatric Vaccines ‘Absurdly High,’ New Book Says

• Aluminum Adjuvants Used in Some COVID Vaccines May Increase Risk of Serious Respiratory Disease

• 5 Scientific Findings Explain Link Between Vaccines and Autism — Why Do Health Agencies Ignore Them?