A major new study has investigated the claim by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and others that vaccines administered to protect children from infectious diseases are dangerous—and found no evidence of it. Vaccine critics often cite aluminum salts, a product added to many childhood vaccines to increase their effectiveness, as a problem; Kennedy said last year that that aluminum in vaccines is "extremely neurotoxic." Using Denmark's nationwide registry, researchers looked for any connections between aluminum exposure from childhood vaccines and 50 chronic disorders, NBC News reports.
They looked for 36 autoimmune disorders, nine allergy or asthma conditions, and five neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism and ADHD, in the study of more than 1.2 million children over 24 years. The study published Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine found no link between aluminum in vaccines and an increased risk of the 50 chronic conditions. Put another way, per STAT News, none of the conditions occurred at statistically higher levels than would be expected. "We can exclude meaningful increases with a large degree of certainty for many of these outcomes," said Anders Hviid, head of the epidemiology research at Denmark's public health agency and the study's lead author.
Hviid said he understands the claims about the safety of vaccines. "Our study addresses many of these concerns and provides clear and robust evidence for the safety of childhood vaccines," he said. "This is evidence that parents need to make the best choices for the health of their children." An expert at the University of Colorado who was not involved in the research said Scandinavian public health studies are particularly reliable. Part of the reason is those nations "have, for a long time, had such a unified health system," said Ross Kedl. "Everyone is tracked for life from birth and you can go back for many years and ask, 'Can we find a link between something that happened in the past and in the future?'"
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