Aluminium based adjuvants and a disease hypothesis by Gherardi

[Jonathan Edwards]

I came onto this website believing that people here were interested in scientific research and would give it a fair hearing.

I am very interested in scientific research and giving it a fair hearing. That is pretty much all I am here for. But I am afraid to say, @currer, that this looks like very poor science with no firm basis. I trained in both immunology and pathology and what is being suggested simply does not make any sense in terms of micro anatomy. If a tiny dose of alum caused brain malfunction people with tattoos should be comatose - they have vast numbers of bits of rubbish pumped into macrophages.

Why is it that all these fringe people bang on about the same thing - how bad vaccines are? If he had an original idea I would be a bit more interested.

 

[currer]

Prof Gherardi discusses his research of 18 years on aluminium based vaccine adjuvants.

His team found that

"without any doubt, in some patients the aluminium persists for many years, and if we look at the patient's disease or clinical manifestations, these can be linked to a syndrome which causes chronic muscular and joint pain, a profound chronic tiredness without any apparent cause, memory and attention deficit problems, sleep disorders, which we normally call chronic fatigue syndrome."

 

[currer]

"The second thing we did was to try and understand why the clinical symptoms that affect the brain were so common when the persistence of the adjuvant had only been observed at the injection site.
So we had to use an animal model to follow what happens to the aluminium particles once they are injected into the muscle of a mouse. We took standard vaccines .. Hep. B...and we administered them and we observed that deposits of aluminium formed in the brain and the spleen.

The deposits of aluminium increased even up to a year following the intramuscular injection, We then tried to understand how the deposits of aluminium travelled from the muscle to the brain.......We were surprised to find that within minutes to a few hours after the injection the particles are captured by macrophages. Some stay at the injection site and we are able to observe them in the muscle for years, but some travel to the lymphatic system, the blood and then the brain.

 

[currer]

NTERVIEWER "What you have just described is the perfect scientific demonstration. How is it possible that your request for funding to continue this research has been turned down by the National Agency for Drug Safety? Who turned down your funding request?

GHERARDI "I'd be happy to find out myself"

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

ASIA' - autoimmune/inflammatory syndrome induced by adjuvants.
Shoenfeld Y1, Agmon-Levin N.

I am afraid that dear old Yehuda Schoenfeld's name is not a recommendation. I might mutter something about the used car salesman of immunology but that might be rude.

 

[currer]

If a tiny dose of alum caused brain malfunction people with tattoos should be comatose - they have vast numbers of bits of rubbish pumped into macrophages.

My understanding of the research is that it is the aluminium adjuvant that is toxic. The Nature article above discusses this.
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep31578

I think you should read the research papers.

 

[Wonko]

I am very disappointed with the response from members of this forum.

I came onto this website believing that people here were interested in scientific research and would give it a fair hearing.

I have read what you and others have posted here, I have even gone to the other place where you started posting on this issue a long time ago, and read what you and others have posted on it.

I am not impressed, granted the fault on that may be mine, I do have a somewhat reduced capacity these days, but you have not convinced me, not in the slightest, too many overtones of Wakefield.

But if you feel I haven't given you a fair hearing, it might be worth considering if the only definition of fair hearing you are considering is total agreement.

I have read, I have thought, I have, until this post, stayed out of it, you've had as fair a hearing as I am capable of.

You should note, when I was a child things that are routinely vaccinated for now were not. I have had chickenpox, shingles, mumps, measles etc. The only vaccine I remember having was the sugar cube, and a flu vaccine about a decade ago, 20 years past onset. Vaccines definitely did not cause my ME.

 

[currer]

Does human exposure to aluminium have a role to play in autism spectrum disorder (ASD)?
Research at Keele University published in the Journal of Trace Elements in Medicine and Biology provides the strongest indication yet that aluminium is an aetiological agent in ASD.

The aluminium content of brain tissues from 5 donors who died with a diagnosis of ASD was found to be extraordinarily high, some of the highest values yet measured in human brain tissue. Why for example, would the occipital lobe of a 15 year old boy with autism be 8.74 (11.59) micrograms/g dry wt., a value which is at least 10 times higher than might be considered as acceptable for an aged adult never mind a child?

However, while the aluminium content of each of the 5 brains was shockingly high it was the location of the aluminium in the brain tissue which served as the standout observation. The majority of aluminium was identified inside non-neuronal cells including microglia and astrocytes.

Aluminium was also found in lymphocytes in the meninges and in similar inflammatory cells in the vasculature. There was clear evidence of inflammatory cells heavily loaded with aluminium entering the brain via the meningeal membranes and the blood-brain-barrier.

The fact that the majority of aluminium found in brain tissues in ASD was intracellular and associated with non-neuronal cells is, at least for now, unique to ASD and may begin to explain why young adolescents had so much aluminium in their brains.

Perhaps there is something within the genetic make-up of specific individuals which predisposes them to accumulate and retain aluminium in their brain, as is similarly suggested for individuals with familial Alzheimer’s disease.

The new evidence strongly suggests that aluminium is entering the brain in ASD via pro-inflammatory cells which have become loaded up with aluminium in the blood and/or lymph, much as has been demonstrated for monocytes at injection sites for vaccines including aluminium adjuvants. Perhaps we now have the putative link between vaccination and ASD, the link being the inclusion of an aluminium adjuvant in the vaccine.



Professor Chris Exley

Professor in Bioinorganic Chemistry Keele University
Honorary Professor, UHI Millennium Institute
Group Leader - Bioinorganic Chemistry Laboratory at Keele

 

[Wonko]

You should also note I have aspergers, at least in my case, vaccines do not cause aspergers.

You are fully entitled to your point of view, and to express it, however saying people aren't being fair and are being biased and unscientific, because they don't agree with you - is out of order IMO, this is the only reason I have piped up.

 

[lansbergen]

You should note, when I was a child things that are routinely vaccinated for now were not.

I am that old too.

 

[currer]

Exley quote
"For me it is quite shocking....things have changed. For me this tells me that regardless, any vaccine that includes an aluminium adjuvant, you will get aluminium from that vaccine going into your brain. It does not produce disease in all of us...clearly, there are other factors...probably genetic, which mean that some people either have more transfer of aluminium into the brain in this form, or they retain the aluminium in the brain tissue for longer.. but there are clear differences in individual physiology which mean that some people are much more susceptible than others.

However, it still means that a significant proportion of people are probably suffering from some form of brain disorder brecause of aluminium adjvants in vaccines.

And now I would probably say that unless that vaccine is proven to save your life, I would not have it if it had an aluminium adjuvant"

 

[Wonko]

Vaccines are not there to save individuals lives, you may be misunderstanding their purpose, which is to build herd immunity, i.e. if enough people take them it acts as a "firebreak" to prevent a virus from being able to spread, and thus protecting "everyone". But a 1:1 take this vaccine and you definitely won't get this virus...nah.

 

[Guest 3]

I am very disappointed with the response from members of this forum.

I came onto this website believing that people here were interested in scientific research and would give it a fair hearing.

People here are interested in scientific research. This site is mainly for research related to ME/CFS not a platform for agendas related to vaccine adjuvants.

We do not have blindly accept all posts here are going to be based on good solid research and we will critique those that are not. That doesn’t mean we aren’t giving it a fair hearing.

This research is not new, research into the adverse effects of aluminium based adjuvants has been going on for years and you only need to google Gherardi, Schoenfeld and Exley to find that out. In fact it has been known or suspected for many years that a number of illnesses are connected to aluminium based adjuvants and these diseases are increasing. - parkinson's multiple sclerosis, lupus ME/CFS, autism. There cannot be a genetic reason for this increase, it has to be environmental.

You are ignoring hundreds of good valid research papers that directly debunk Gheradi’s et al hypotheses and theories. Most of their work is based on poor research methodology and they have never provided any proof of causation. There are many many good studies out there that show no causation re: aluminum adjuvants cause any sort of disease.

If you ignore the research that refutes their theories, I guess it would be easy to believe in what they are promoting. This is cognitive bias and really, please, pay attention to all the studies — don’t just cherry pick what confirms your own beliefs.

I have put up the research papers in the past - I thought the videos would be easier for people to understand.

Just because somebody makes a video doesn’t mean what they are saying in the video is good science or proven science. Most here are able to understand science and don’t need simple videos to help us understand something. That’s a bit insulting.

I have a long history of working in the ME world and when I became ill in 1981 ME was not new. I watched it progressively being stigmatised and sidelined by those with the power in government to release research funding.

You have to ask yourself Why?

This has nothing to do with vaccines.

I believe that government institutions have known or suspected all along that ME/CFS is linked to vaccination and for reasons of public health policy have refused to help those who suffer from ME/CFS or research this illness.

I doubt this. Which governments are you referring to? Is the whole world in colusion regarding this. There are some very good resources out there related to all this.

They have already had a long run in denial and abuse of sufferers, and it is time this stopped.

There is now incontrovertable research evidence showing how adjuvants cause disease. This did not exist ten years ago.

There is more evidence to show that adjuvants do not cause disease except in very rare cases.

It is vital that we, as sufferers who have paid the price for these government policies of denial and neglect, understand what has been done to us and why.

How about we concentrate on the real causes of ME and stop believing in debunked science. To post support for these theories is not doing the patient population any favours.

 

[lansbergen]

And now I would probably say that unless that vaccine is proven to save your life, I would not have it if it had an aluminium adjuvant"

You are free to do that.

 

[Guest 3]

And now I would probably say that unless that vaccine is proven to save your life, I would not have it if it had an aluminium adjuvant"

Aluminium is every where. In the water, in fruit, in breast milk, the third commonest element, you can’t avoid it. There is less aluminium in a vaccine than you are exposed to every day. With this kind of thinking, we should avoid all aluminium containing things. Have the variables of daily exposure been dealt with in Exley’s research?

 

[lansbergen]

Aluminium is every where. In the water, in fruit, in breast milk, the third commonest element, you can’t avoid it. There is less aluminium in a vaccine than you are exposed to every day. With this kind of thinking, we should avoid all aluminium containing things. Have the variables of daily exposure been dealt with in Exley’s research?

Behind paywall

Trace Elem Med Biol. 2015 Apr;30:90-5. doi: 10.1016/j.jtemb.2014.11.002. Epub 2014 Nov 20.
The binding, transport and fate of aluminium in biological cells.
Exley C1, Mold MJ2.
Author information
Abstract
Aluminium is the most abundant metal in the Earth's crust and yet, paradoxically, it has no known biological function. Aluminium is biochemically reactive, it is simply that it is not required for any essential process in extant biota. There is evidence neither of element-specific nor evolutionarily conserved aluminium biochemistry. This means that there are no ligands or chaperones which are specific to its transport, there are no transporters or channels to selectively facilitate its passage across membranes, there are no intracellular storage proteins to aid its cellular homeostasis and there are no pathways which evolved to enable the metabolism and excretion of aluminium. Of course, aluminium is found in every compartment of every cell of every organism, from virus through to Man. Herein we have investigated each of the 'silent' pathways and metabolic events which together constitute a form of aluminium homeostasis in biota, identifying and evaluating as far as is possible what is known and, equally importantly, what is unknown about its uptake, transport, storage and excretion.

 

[Valentijn]

I am very disappointed with the response from members of this forum.

I came onto this website believing that people here were interested in scientific research and would give it a fair hearing.

There is nothing disappointing in people asking for the evidence, especially when you have only provided a soft interview for a morning news show and a trailer for an anti-vax video. Videos are not scientific research, and instead of providing the abstract and link to Gherardi's own research, you have dumped a pile of other dubious research here.

Prof Gherardi discusses his research of 18 years on aluminium based vaccine adjuvants.

His team found that

"without any doubt, in some patients the aluminium persists for many years

If he finds anything "without any doubt" he isn't engaged in science. That sort of all-or-nothing statement is reflective of dogma, whereas honest research inherently acknowledges a lack of certainty. I'd also like to know how he claims to determine that the aluminum which he claims to find is from vaccines, rather than from normal exposure to an element that is extremely common in our environment.

NTERVIEWER "What you have just described is the perfect scientific demonstration. How is it possible that your request for funding to continue this research has been turned down by the National Agency for Drug Safety? Who turned down your funding request?

GHERARDI "I'd be happy to find out myself"

So if he doesn't know, why is he claiming a conspiracy based on someone disliking his findings? He seems to have a habit of overstating the evidence for his claims, and it's extremely likely that his research has been tainted by the same behavior.

 

[currer]

Johnathan Edwards said "I trained in both immunology and pathology and what is being suggested simply does not make any sense in terms of micro anatomy. If a tiny dose of alum caused brain malfunction people with tattoos should be comatose - they have vast numbers of bits of rubbish pumped into macrophages.

With regard to the above remark, I think we need to consider the new research on aluminium content in the brains of boys who died with a diagnosis of autism. The levels of aluminium in the brains are very high, and the aluminium has clearly been transported into the brain by immune cells from a vaccination site.

From "Aluminium in brain tissue in Autism" http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0946672X17308763

"The aluminium content of brain tissues from 5 donors who died with a diagnosis of ASD was found to be extraordinarily high, some of the highest values yet measured in human brain tissue. Why for example, would the occipital lobe of a 15 year old boy with autism be 8.74 (11.59) micrograms/g dry wt., a value which is at least 10 times higher than might be considered as acceptable for an aged adult never mind a child?


.......it was the location of the aluminium in the brain tissue which served as the standout observation. The majority of aluminium was identified inside non-neuronal cells including microglia and astrocytes."

The new evidence strongly suggests that aluminium is entering the brain in ASD via pro-inflammatory cells which have become loaded up with aluminium in the blood and/or lymph

 

[currer]

Guest 3 said "Aluminium is every where. In the water, in fruit, in breast milk, the third commonest element, you can’t avoid it. There is less aluminium in a vaccine than you are exposed to every day. With this kind of thinking, we should avoid all aluminium containing things. Have the variables of daily exposure been dealt with in Exley’s research?"

Aluminium is not a part of any biological reaction in plants or animals and only became biologically available once humans developed the technology to purify the ores - about one hundred years ago. Prior to this aluminium was usually always found bound to oxygen and silicon and was biologically unavailable. People were not normally exposed to elemental aluminium.

Yes Professor Exley thinks that we should avoid exposure to aluminium. This video has an interesting lecture on the biology of aluminium and how it has been released into the biosphere by human activity.

No, we should not be eating it or finding it in breast milk. This is not "normal" Discussion of our aluminium exposure through diet and environment starts in this video at about 26 mins.

Professor Exley has tried to get the aluminium content of packaged foods declared by manufacturers as an initial means to raise awareness of the amount of aluminium we are exposed to and absorb over our lifetimes. He is particularly concerned by the high levels of aluminium in some baby foods. I think this is discussed in this video. (at 35.30)

 

[currer]

The folowing paper discusses Guam, an island with an unusual soil chemistry.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24202289

Aluminium and calcium in soil and food from Guam, Palau and Jamaica: Implications for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and parkinsonism-dementia syndromes of Guam.
Crapper McLachlarf DR1, McLachlan CD, Krishnan B, Krishnan SS, Dalton AJ, Steele JC.
Author information

Abstract
Low calcium and high aluminium concentrations in the soils, waters and native foods have been hypothesised as environmental factors contributing to the unusually high incidence of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and parkinsonism with dementia (ALS-PD) found on the island of Guam. The amounts of elemental aluminium and calcium were measured in foods of the native diet of the Chamorro people of Guam. The amount of aluminium eluted from topsoil by water at pH 7 at 22 °C was also measured. For comparison, food, water and soil samples were collected from two islands which have not reported a high incidence of ALS-PD syndromes: Palau and Jamaica.Compared with agricultural soils of Jamaica or Palau, the agricultural soils of Guam averaged 42-fold higher yield of elutable aluminium. The food data, however, do not indicate a differentially high exposure to elemental aluminium or low calcium intake in the diet of any one population. While this study did not detect an unusually high dietary aluminium or low dietary calcium content, the soils and possibly the dusts of Guam may be a major source of aluminium entering the body of the native people, particularly through the respiratory epithelium. Since iipid soluble organic ligands of aluminium more readily penetrate epithelial membranes, further study of soil aluminium ligands is required.