May I take you back to the eighties (1980s) and early nineties when as a young, aspiring and wholly naïve scientist I attended and occasionally participated in scientific meetings where the subject of aluminium and life was treated seriously. Yes, no quackery there, the great and the good of world science had and shared opinions on the toxicity of aluminium and especially with respect to Man. These meetings were also attended by representatives of the aluminium industry, individuals with affiliations to the International Aluminium Institute and the Aluminium Federation. On occasion one such individual would give a presentation entitled something like, ‘Why Aluminium is Good for You’. I suspect that Paul Offit attended at least one of these presentations. I digress, my point is that the aluminium industry was not running scared at this time and felt sufficiently confident to defend their product in open and transparent fora. Indeed the aluminium industry actually funded a number of so-called scientific meetings on ‘Aluminium and Health’ and these were gladly attended by a number of scientists of repute. Buying the opinion of scientists is almost certainly as old as science itself so do not be too alarmed at that which goes on around us today.
Something changed in the mid-nineties. I would like to think that one of my papers was a catalyst for this sea change though I am sure that it was actually something deep within the psyche of the aluminium industry that brought about the change. The aluminium industry realised that scientific investigation and discussion relating to aluminium and human health was not having the desired effect and rather than demonstrating the benign nature of the Aluminium Age, open, unbiased science was
beginning to unravel the tyranny of the Aluminium Age. We launched the ‘Keele Meetings on Aluminium’ in 1995 and thirty groups from the UK alone participated in Keele01. The final Keele Meeting on Aluminium, Keele13, was in 2019. Information on all of these meetings was available through my Keele website before Keele management closed it down in 2021. I am digressing again.
In a nutshell, the aluminium industry made the decision to shut down all discussion relating to aluminium and human health and, importantly, to infiltrate all areas of science funding to prevent further and future research in the field. In my opinion, they made the right decision. They had begun to grasp, ‘the trouble with aluminium’. They now understood the insidious harm caused by aluminium. I like to think that my research and my publications helped in forming their realisation that Pandora’s box was well and truly open and that this could only mean catastrophe for their industry. They have understood that aluminium is not like any other human poison. Unlike cyanide, for example, a phial of aluminium will not cause almost immediate death. Unlike lead, mercury and heavy metals, exposure to aluminium does not lead to protective regulation within the body. Aluminium hides and accumulates silently within the body and especially in those cells, organs and tissues where mitosis (cell division) is slow or, as in neurones, non-existent. Just like me the aluminium industry has understood that prior to the advent of the Aluminium Age all biochemical evolution proceeded in the absence of biologically available aluminium and that this can only mean that their interventions in facilitating human exposure to aluminium have set off a timebomb, a ticking clock of biologically available aluminium.
Well, even if they don’t actually agree with me it is quite clear that the aluminium industry is not prepared to take a chance on me being right. There is an almost infinite amount of aluminium waiting to be mined from the Earth’s crust. Infinite profits are there to be made. How long, I wonder, will we have to spend such bounties before the aluminium timebomb explodes?
PS. Thank you for reading this latest musing. Also many thanks to those who decided to take out a paid subscription. My random musings on aluminium will always be free to all though the paid subscriptions are extremely helpful and in particular in maintaining my website, an excellent way I hope you can agree to disseminate my life’s work.
Thank you for your years of research and dedication.
McAfee has marked your website status as Risky. “This site contains potentially dangerous content that could harm your computer.” It’s a shame that a similar warning isn’t attached to flu shots.
Posted this at the Highwire. Such important information you always write. Thank you.