Definitely Aluminium Poisoning (Part Two)

A stroke of the chin and a firm diagnosis

In part one I suggested that exposure to aluminium through aluminium adjuvants in vaccines might lead to what I described as a general malaise. What exactly do I mean in using this somewhat ambiguous term. I am referring to a continuum of poor health ranging from an overall feeling of fatigue and lethargy right through to a debilitating state in which an individual is practically bedridden. There is no obvious focus to the condition unlike, for example, a vaccine-induced brain encephalopathy in an infant, see Part One.

This (Part Two) vaccine-induced malaise is probably more common in adolescents and adults as perhaps best exemplified by the serious adverse reactions to the HPV vaccine. So how do we attribute such a state to aluminium exposure through vaccination. First we need to appreciate the nature of aluminium as a toxicant.

(i) The toxic form of aluminium is its free metal cation, Al³⁺, all other forms of aluminium including particulate aluminium adjuvants are simply vehicles for the delivery of Al³⁺.

(ii) Vaccination involving an aluminium adjuvant is an acute exposure to aluminium. This means that dissolution of particulate aluminium adjuvant at the vaccine injection site results in a concentration of Al³⁺ that is acutely toxic to cells at the site.

(iii) Acute toxicity elicits two quite different biological effects. The obvious one being inflammation and this response is why aluminium salts are effective adjuvants enabling a potential immune response. However, perhaps less well understood is that Al³⁺ also acts as an antigen. When the concentration of Al³⁺ is sufficiently high the body responds by producing antibodies against it. I have written about this recently in my book and in a number of published papers. What this means in the practical terms of human exposure to aluminium is that following vaccination including an aluminium adjuvant, for example as an infant, the body retains a memory of this event.

The critical point is that it requires a sufficiently high concentration of Al³⁺ somewhere in the body to activate the memory of the previous exposure to aluminium. Actually a vaccination involving an aluminium adjuvant is probably the only time that such a high concentration of Al³⁺ is achieved in the body.

In general we all accumulate aluminium in the body through everyday exposure over years and decades. We call this the body burden of aluminium. We accumulate and retain aluminium throughout the body without in the main experiencing high concentrations of Al³⁺ , without therefore asking the body to produce antibodies against the aluminium body burden.

However, imagine the scenario of an adolescent female steadily accumulating aluminium throughout her body tissues as she ages. She may actually be one of the individuals identified as a super absorber of dietary aluminium (perhaps 1 in 10 individuals) in which case her body burden of aluminium may be higher than other females in her cohort. She receives a series of vaccines against HPV. Vaccines that not only include an aluminium adjuvant but include an aluminium adjuvant that is more toxic at the vaccine injection site than most if not all other aluminium-adjuvanted vaccines. See my recent post on this subject.

The HPV vaccine is more toxic at the vaccine injection site because its novel aluminium adjuvant is more acidic and this acidity promotes its dissolution resulting in a high concentration of Al³⁺ at the injection site. High enough not only to promote aluminium’s activity as an adjuvant but sufficiently high to reawaken aluminium’s activity as an antigen. The body produces antibodies against Al³⁺ and these antibodies set off around the body in search of any stores of aluminium. Each time an aluminium antibody binds Al³⁺ it promotes the dissolution of other forms of aluminium to replace the bound Al³⁺. A cascade of events is initiated whereby previously relatively benign stores of aluminium become biologically reactive and hence toxic. This aluminium toxicity will occur wherever aluminium was previously stored in the body. This could include longer term stores such as bone as well as long-lived cells including heart cells and neurones. This is a mechanism for a vaccine that includes an aluminium adjuvant resulting in a serious general malaise in susceptible individuals. The question of why the HPV vaccine is responsible for serious adverse events in so many people is not so much the amount of aluminium injected but the fact that the form of aluminium in this vaccine is formulated by its manufacturer to produce a sufficiently high concentration of Al³⁺ at the injection site to elicit the required immune response to impotent injected HPV antigens. However, a consequence of the formulation (presumably unwanted) is to do the same (raise an immune response) against aluminium present throughout the body.

The injection of aluminium adjuvants and perhaps Merck’s aluminium adjuvant in particular represent those rare exposures to aluminium in everyday living where the body is reminded of its previous exposures to this insidious metal. This is why we must stop using them with immediate effect.

A quick welcome to new readers of Dr’s Newsletter. Thank you for joining us. Please do not read this post and indeed future posts in isolation. Take the time if inclined to read my previous posts and to obtain as thorough an understanding of human exposure to aluminium as possible. If you are prepared to do your homework then I can write these posts knowing that I do not need to repeat myself in what I write about. While I write Dr’s Newsletter for myself, to help to keep me sane, and I am happy to share it with anyone with an interest I am always extremely grateful to those of you who take out paid subscriptions. It is reassuring to know that my words are important to so many of you.