(The Epoch Times)—A medical journal is declining a call from Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to retract a study that authors said showed no association between aluminum, which is used as an adjuvant in many vaccines, and chronic diseases.
The journal Annals of Internal Medicine released the study on July 15.
“Annals will not be retracting the study,” a spokeswoman for the American College of Physicians, which publishes the journal, told The Epoch Times in an email on Aug. 11.
Danish researchers, including Anders Hviid, said they studied records from children born in Denmark between 1997 and 2018 and looked for links between exposure to aluminum and 50 disorders, including autism spectrum disorder.
“This nationwide cohort study did not find evidence supporting an increased risk for autoimmune, atopic or allergic, or neurodevelopmental disorders associated with early childhood exposure to aluminum-adsorbed vaccines,” they stated.
Kennedy said in an op-ed that there were major problems with the paper, such as the exclusion of all children who died before the age of 2 and children who were diagnosed with early respiratory conditions.
“These choices suggest an intention to exclude the children at highest risk of harm,” he said, calling on Annals to “immediately retract this badly flawed study.”
Kennedy also noted that supplementary material, an updated version of which was added after the paper’s publication, indicated an increased risk of Asperger’s syndrome with higher aluminum exposure.
Hviid, an epidemiologist with the Statens Serum Institut, said in an article in response that the authors did not design the study to find no association between aluminum and the disorders.
He said the study design was inspired by an American study, published in 2022, that found a link between aluminum exposure from vaccines and asthma.
He also said he maintained that the study does not support the idea that aluminum exposure was associated with increased risks of any of the disorders.
Dr. Christine Laine, editor-in-chief of Annals and a professor of medicine at Thomas Jefferson University, told Reuters that Kennedy raised issues that may underscore limitations of the study, but that the issues “do not invalidate what they found, and there’s no evidence of scientific misconduct.”
“I see no reason for retraction,” she said.
Laine said the journal did not plan to respond directly to Kennedy’s piece.
A spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services said the department had “no further comment than what the secretary said.”
Other critics in comments to the journal highlighted how there was no comparison to unvaccinated children and said that children’s outpatient diagnoses did not appear to be included.
Hviid and co-authors said in the paper that the study’s limitations included being unable to rule out associations with the disorders later in life, since they only followed up with children to the age of 8.
Authors said in responses to critics that they disagreed that unvaccinated children should have been included as a reference group, and that the hospital system in Denmark includes outpatient services.
Laine wrote in an editor’s note posted by the journal that Annals found the study “to be among the strongest research currently available to address the important question of whether there is an association of the dose of vaccine-associated aluminum exposure and chronic conditions in early childhood.”
Reuters contributed to this report.
