By Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D.

The lead author of a controversial Danish study on aluminum in vaccines responded this week to a call by U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for the study to be retracted.

In an op-ed published Aug. 1 in Trial Site News, Kennedy outlined at least 10 “fatal deficiencies.” According to the Danish researchers, their study showed no link between aluminum in vaccines and autism — a finding that Kennedy and others rejected.

Kennedy wrote:

“The slavish, pharma-funded mainstream media, ever eager to defend industry orthodoxies, have triumphantly hailed this study as proof of aluminum’s safety without even a cursory examination of the study’s fatal deficiencies or the financial conflicts of its authors.

“But a closer look reveals a study so deeply flawed it functions not as science but as a deceitful propaganda stunt by the pharmaceutical industry.”

Anders Hviid, a professor and department head of epidemiology at the Statens Serum Institut (SSI) and the study’s lead author, responded to Kennedy’s criticism in his own op-ed, also published in Trial Site News.

Hviid included a bullet-point list of the methodological issues Kennedy raised, but without refuting any of them.

“Despite the veneer of professional courtesy,” said James Lyons-Weiler, Ph.D., “Anders Hviid’s response fails to address any of the core methodological flaws … What Hviid offers the public is not a defense, but a performance. The press should not mistake posturing for scientific rebuttal.”

Children’s Health Defense (CHD) Chief Scientific Officer Brian Hooker agreed. “Hviid offers no scientific arguments whatsoever against Secretary Kennedy’s observations.” Chris Exley, Ph.D., one of the world’s leading experts on the health effects of aluminum exposure, said Hviid’s response had “no science” in it.

Hviid ‘categorically’ denies any deceit

Hviid claimed that “none of the critiques put forward by the Secretary is substantive. … I categorically deny that any deceit is involved as implied by the Secretary.”

But other critics of the study argued that many of Kennedy’s concerns are not only “substantive,” but are also shared by other independent scientists.

For instance, Kennedy pointed out — as did scientists with CHD in a July 28 press release — that data from the corrected version of the study’s supplemental materials showed that children who received a large dose of aluminum from vaccines had a statistically significantly higher risk of being diagnosed with a neurodevelopmental disorder, including autism, compared to those who received a moderate dose of aluminum.

“Yet the authors,” Kennedy wrote, “gloss over these harms to children by claiming they ‘did not find evidence’ for an increased risk.”

On July 17, the Annals of Internal Medicine, which originally published the Danish study on July 15, issued a correction, stating that the journal “included an incorrect version of the Supplementary Material at the time of initial publication.”

The updated materials are available here with the link to the study.

Hviid didn’t explain why he believes the corrected supplemental material data do not contradict the study’s conclusion. Instead, he repeated the claim that the study “does not provide support for the hypothesis that aluminum used as adjuvants in vaccines are associated with increased risks of early childhood health conditions.”

“Just because Dr. Hviid makes a statement about something doesn’t mean that it is true,” Hooker said. “Frankly, his paper shows the exact opposite — a strong, statistically significant relationship between aluminum adjuvant exposure and autism spectrum disorders.”

Hviid also didn’t refute Kennedy’s claim that the study authors had biased the data when they made statistical adjustments for the number of times a child visited the doctor.

According to Kennedy:

“The authors inappropriately treated general practitioner visits before age two as a confounder, without assessing whether these GP visits reflected early aluminum-related illness or were predictive of later diagnoses.

“This introduced ‘collider bias’ — a distortion that can suppress real associations even to the extent of making aluminum appear protective. It’s like studying whether smoking causes lung cancer while adjusting for coughing or for yellowed fingers — symptoms associated with smoking.”

Lyons-Weiler had pointed out the same methodological problem in a lengthy Substack post published July 15.

Both Kennedy and Lyons-Weiler also pointed out that the Danish study lacked a control group of kids unexposed to aluminum.

They also criticized the study authors for excluding children who were diagnosed with certain preexisting conditions by age two, including respiratory conditions, congenital rubella syndrome, primary immune deficiency, and heart or liver failure, and for excluding children who died by age two.

According to Kennedy, “The exclusion included all children who died before age two, those diagnosed early with respiratory conditions, and an astonishing 34,547 children — 2.8% of the study population — whose vaccination records showed the highest aluminum exposure levels.”

In other words, the study “systematically omits the very cases most plausibly linked to early-life neurotoxicity,” Lyons-Weiler said. “You cannot detect harm in infants if you erase harmed infants from the dataset.”

Study not intentionally designed to find no link, author says

Hviid offered no scientific rebuttal to Kennedy’s specific criticisms, but he did push back against Kennedy’s insinuation that the study had been designed to find no link between aluminum in vaccines and negative health conditions, including autism and asthma.

Hviid said he and his co-authors chose their study design in an attempt to replicate a 2023 study led by Dr. Matthew Daley that found a link between aluminum in vaccines and asthma in young children.

Seeking to replicate Daley’s study doesn’t exonerate Hviid and his co-authors from the claim that their study was ill-designed, Exley said.

When Daley’s study first came out, Exley said in a Substack post that it had so many flaws that it wouldn’t have survived “peer review at any reputable journal operating independent peer review.”

Exley wrote:

“Not a single reputable and independent researcher on aluminium toxicity in humans is cited in this paper. If any of the world’s leading researchers on aluminium had been sent this manuscript to review they would have rejected it on multiple standpoints.”

Hviid also criticized Kennedy for calling on the authors to ask the Danish government to let them release the raw data so scientists around the world could replicate their work. He said that as a lawyer, Kennedy should know that’s impossible.

“Accredited Danish researchers and their international collaborators” can access the data, Hviid said.

He also rejected Kennedy’s suggestion that Hviid’s financial ties may have influenced the study. Hviid acknowledged he has received grants from the Novo Nordisk Foundation — which is linked to the pharmaceutical industry — but said the grants were “unrelated” to the aluminum study.

Hviid clarified that SSI, where he and two of his co-authors work, is not a “company,” as Kennedy claimed, but an “institute.” Hviid acknowledged that SSI historically produced vaccines but said it sold its vaccine manufacturing capacities to AJ Vaccines in 2017.

Hooker said:

“The fact that SSI held the vaccine manufacturing capabilities up until 2017 and sold those capabilities shows that it is profiting off of vaccine sales regardless of whether the funds are reinvested in research or used to reward vaccine developers directly. This is a conflict of interest.”

More than a dozen researchers post critical comments

Kennedy is far from alone in voicing concerns about the Danish researchers’ aluminum study.

Over a dozen researchers, including Exley and CHD Senior Research Scientist Karl Jablonowski, have posted comments on the study’s webpage that detail specific methodological flaws they say undermine the study’s conclusions.

The study authors responded to comments posted in the first few days after the study’s publication on July 15, but haven’t responded to comments posted after July 21.

In his op-ed, Hviid said he and his co-authors will respond to the latter comments “in the coming weeks.”

Hviid and his co-authors have already responded to Exley’s comment, which he posted on July 15. But Exley said that, similar to Hviid’s op-ed, the authors’ online response had “little science” in it.

Exley said he tried to post a follow-up comment about the authors’ lack of scientific response and the questions that their response left unanswered. However, he was informed by the Annals of Internal Medicine, which published the study, that the journal does not allow follow-up comments, he said.

Exley shared with The Defender some of the questions he wanted to ask in a follow-up comment, including:

“How many infants are in their database that have never received an aluminium-containing vaccine? Why is this number insufficient for any comparative purpose? What are the confounding factors that make it impossible to compare populations of infants that have not received an aluminium-adjuvanted vaccine with those that have? Are the authors wholly unaware that the data relating to the aluminium content of vaccines are completely unreliable, one might even say random?”

Exley and colleagues in 2021 published a study showing that among 13 aluminum-containing vaccines given to babies, only three contained the amount of aluminum specified by the vaccine manufacturer.

Related articles in The Defender

• ‘Deceitful Propaganda Stunt’: RFK Jr. Breaks Down Danish Study on Autism and Aluminum in Vaccines
• Danish Researchers Remain Mum on Corrected Data Showing Link Between Aluminum in Vaccines and Autism
• Calls Grow for Journal to Retract Danish Study After Corrected Data Show Link Between Aluminum in Vaccines and Autism
• Study Claiming No Link Between Aluminum in Vaccines and Autism Riddled with Flaws, Critics Say
• 4 Things the New York Times Got Wrong About Aluminum in Vaccines

The post Danish Researcher Responds to RFK Jr.’s Call to Retract ‘Deeply Flawed’ Aluminum Study appeared first on Children’s Health Defense.

 

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