The Aluminum Firestorm Starts Tomorrow
How we got to this point, that we never "nailed" this question of aluminum safety, and were "saved" by a Danish epidemiologist who had a last-minute "hunch," is a subject of a future story. But, as a top vaccine expert told me, "one study will not be enough."
At today's ACIP meeting, the HBV vaccine was discussed, which contains aluminum. In response to a question about safety, an ACIP member, Dr Evelyn Griffin, jumped in to say, "Sometimes autoimmune conditions take decades to develop... One specific example. Researcher Romain Gherardi, to give something more concrete. Macrophagic Myofasciitis (MMF). He and his researchers sampled injection sites, granulomas, called MMF lesions, where they were able to identify aluminum in those granulomas... These patients had autoimmune conditions, brain fog, generalized weakness, to the degree of debilitating disease, where they were unable to work, function in their daily activities. These conditions are characterized in close association with the vaccine..."
Who is Evelyn Griffin? More on her below. And what about MMF?
As we previously reported, Macrophagic myofasciitis (MMF) is a syndrome discovered by Gherardi in a saga he describes in his 2016 book, “Toxic Story: Two or Three Embarrassing Truths About Vaccine Adjuvants.”
According to Gherardi, MMF is an exceedingly rare condition with vague symptoms that can develop in adults years after receiving an aluminum-containing vaccine. And Gherardi showed that if you biopsy their deltoid - the shoulder muscle where the vaccine was injected years earlier - you do find traces of aluminum.
There is only one problem. He never biopsied people without symptoms. His excuse is that this would be unethical. He is clearly wrong. Even sham surgeries have been done in the interest of research. The real reason he did not biopsy healthy individuals is clear: they, too, would likely have traces of aluminum at the site of vaccination. It’s what we call in medicine a “red herring” - a totally irrelevant finding.
Of course, this is not to diminish in any way the symptoms and the suffering of the patients. Gherardi’s research, his book and his activism led to the patients in France forming their own association called E3M. Its website says that the group “does not oppose vaccination in principle, but advocates for the use of aluminum-free vaccines.” In 2013, when the French Ministry of Health refused to fund Gherardi’s work, E3M members went on a hunger strike until the Ministry relented. When I spoke to Crepeaux, Gherardi’s former student and a recent guest on CHD TV, she denied that Gherardi was involved in organizing the strike. But regardless, as a physician, I am not sure that these patients are helped by tying their symptoms to a vaccine they received years earlier.
ACIP Day 2 tomorrow: aluminum in the cross-hairs
Tomorrow's detailed ACIP agenda was just posted. The broad topic is "adjuvants and contaminants" but make no mistake: this is all about aluminum. Aaron Siri, an antivax lawyer known and feared for his impeccable knowledge of vaccines, will open.
We were first to report (on MSNBC) on the "Kennedy-Del Bigtree-Siri plan," years in the making, to attack aluminum-containing vaccines. The trio has been filing briefs with the HHS for years warning of the safety risks of aluminum-containing vaccines. It is very likely that aluminum was the main topic when Kennedy and Trump met in January 2017. More background on this fascinating story, and the role of Andrew Wakefield, is here (Part 1) and here (Part 2).
Next on the agenda tomorrow will be Tracy Beth Høeg. We covered her briefly yesterday. Why is she presenting on the differences between US and Danish vaccination schedules? Because the only retrospective cohort study ever done looking at the association of aluminum-containing vaccines with adverse outcomes in children, was done in Denmark and published recently by Dr Anders Hviid, a world's leading vaccine epidemiologist. ("Why did you decide to do this study," I asked him when I visited him in Copenhagen. "I had a hunch," he said.) The study showed no association between aluminum dose and a host of pediatric chronic diseases.
Incidentally, here is how this paper, published on July 15, 2025, summarizes the current state of evidence regarding aluminum safety:
How we got to this point, that we never "nailed" this question of aluminum safety, and were "saved" by a Danish epidemiologist who had a last-minute "hunch," is a subject of a future story. But, as a top vaccine expert told me, "one study will not be enough." And dozens of studies by the "aluminum family" (sponsored by antivax philanthropists such as Claire Dwoskin - even Kennedy himself offered to chip in) proposing how aluminum might travel to the brain from the injection site remain in the scientific literature, unretracted and unaddressed.
(Note, the studies often quoted that talk about vaccines in general not causing autism, have not specifically examined aluminum as a factor. For example, there is an often-cited metaanalysis, Taylor 2014, with a catchy title - "Vaccines are not associated with autism" - but this study was mostly focused on MMR, which does not contain aluminum, so the study cannot be used to infer anything with regards to the safety of aluminum-containing vaccines, its senior author, Dr Guy Eslick, told me).
Next on tomorrow's agenda is Martin Kulldorff, a former head of ACIP, now appointed as a senior advisor at HHS. He is presenting new asthma data. As a reminder, there was a CDC study, and a follow-up, little-known analysis.
Finally, to bring this home, is Dr Evelyn Griffin mentioned above. She is new to aluminum research, "an obstetrician and gynecologist who has practiced in Baton Rouge for about 20 years... concerns about the COVID vaccine prompted her to study other vaccines: what they’re made of, how they’re doing, and how those vaccines got on the childhood vaccination schedule."
