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The journal that published a controversial Danish study on aluminum in vaccines today announced it will not retract the study, despite calls from U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and others.
Dr. Christine Laine wrote on behalf of the Annals of Internal Medicine’s editors:
“In accordance with the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, retraction is warranted only when serious errors invalidate findings or there is documented scientific misconduct, neither of which occurred here.”
Laine’s response is posted on the study’s webpage. It appears underneath posts added today by the study authors in response to comments from critics.
The study authors examined national vaccination records of about 1.2 million children born in Denmark between 1997 and 2018, and tracked the rates of 50 chronic health conditions.
Using statistical analyses, they concluded there was no link between aluminum content in vaccines and increased risk of developing autism, autoimmune diseases, asthma or allergic conditions, including food allergies and hay fever.
Calls for retraction grew after the Annals of Internal Medicine, which first published the study on July 15, uploaded corrected supplementary materials on July 17, stating that the journal’s editors had “included an incorrect version of the Supplementary Material at the time of initial publication.”
Scientists with Children’s Health Defense (CHD), who analyzed the corrected data, found a statistically significant link between a higher dose of aluminum and autism. Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., CHD’s senior research scientist, told The Defender in a July 24 interview:
“According to the corrected data, nearly 10 (9.7) of every 10,000 children who were vaccinated with a higher dose of aluminum (compared to a moderate dose) developed a neurodevelopmental disorder — mostly autism — between ages 2 and 5.”
On July 29, Jablonowski posted a comment on the study’s webpage saying the corrected data in Figure 11 contradicted the study authors’ conclusion that the research “did not find evidence supporting an increased risk for … neurodevelopmental disorders associated with early childhood exposure to aluminum-adsorbed vaccines.”
The study authors today posted a response to Jablonowski, saying their data still support their conclusions.
They said the supplemental materials report on extra analyses the researchers conducted, in addition to their main analyses. The supplemental material data in Figure 11 “should be interpreted with caution, as they may be unstable or biased,” they wrote.
In their response, the authors reported new results they obtained by rerunning the Figure 11 analysis without children who were born before 2002. This time, the new results didn’t show the increased risk of neurodevelopmental disorder that Jablonowski had flagged.
The study authors concluded:
“Again, given the nature of the observational data available to us, we continue to believe that our primary analytical approach is the most appropriate for evaluating the hypothesis, and we stand by our interpretation.”
Brian Hooker, Ph.D., CHD’s chief scientific officer, said the authors’ response to Jablonowski’s comment was “woefully inadequate.” Hooker said:
“The authors show how they arbitrarily removed a substantial portion of the cohort that received between 1.5-3 mg [milligrams] aluminum (i.e., the children born between 1997-2001), which eliminated any hope of having sufficient statistical power to see an effect.
“In other words, the authors’ Supplemental Figure 11, updated on July 17, showed a significant effect. But now, their figure is incorrect and their newly adjusted numbers that show no effect are instead correct.”
Jablonowski also criticized the authors for rerunning the analysis. “The authors removed 268,552 children (or 38.3% of the 701,571 moderate aluminum dose cohort) and then claimed no statistical significance.”
Anders Hviid, a professor and department head of epidemiology at the Statens Serum Institut and the study’s lead author, did not immediately respond when The Defender asked him to clarify why it was necessary to rerun the analysis excluding children born before 2002.
According to Jablonowski, the authors’ reanalysis doesn’t make sense. Jablonowski said:
“For it to make sense, the neurodevelopmental outcome risk in the 1997-2001 birth cohort would have to be substantially lower to shift the risk to the cohort born after 2002.
“This is the only way to make the risk difference of high and moderate dose smaller, as the authors claimed in their reanalysis. If this were the case, we would see a dramatic difference in Supplemental Figure 4, where they show the difference between two birth cohorts (1997-2006 and 2007-2018).
“We do not see that difference. They are, in fact, the same number. The adjusted hazard ratio per 1 mg aluminum is 0.93 for both cohorts.”
Authors push back against other criticisms
Jablonowski was one of roughly a dozen scientists who posted criticism of the study that received a response from the authors.
Dr. Steven Black, professor emeritus and co-director of the Global Vaccine Data Network, and Daniel Salmon, Ph.D., a vaccinologist at the Johns Hopkins Institute for Vaccine Safety, said the Danish study — and the 2023 study led by Dr. Matthew Daley that Hviid said “inspired” its design — had limitations.
These limitations mean that the possible link between aluminum exposure in vaccines and the risk of chronic diseases “remains an open question with large public health implications that need to be addressed,” Black and Salmon wrote.
The Danish study’s authors said their results reflect only “the Danish vaccination schedule during the study period” and “should be interpreted in this context.”
In a response to critiques by Christopher Exley, Ph.D., Dr. Paul Koshy and Yaakov Ophir, Ph.D., the study authors acknowledged that their study did nothing to evaluate the difference in chronic disease risk between kids who received aluminum-containing vaccines and those who received no aluminum via vaccines.
Their study focused only on whether the amount of aluminum in vaccines affected the risk of getting diagnosed with a chronic health condition, they said, adding:
“It is fair to say that our study does not evaluate the hypothesis that any exposure to aluminum vaccine adjuvants, irrespective of the cumulative amount received, increases the risk of these outcomes.”
Several scientists criticized the authors for not having a control group of children who didn’t receive an aluminum-containing vaccine. They said the authors should have done analyses using the 15,237 children who didn’t receive an aluminum-containing vaccine, who were reported in the study but excluded from its main analyses.
The authors rationalized their choice by saying that kids who declined childhood vaccinations likely differed substantially “in how they interact with healthcare services” from those who didn’t, and that these differences could have skewed the results.
The study authors did not respond to criticisms posted by David AuBuchon and Steve Kirsch.
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Journal explains why it posted corrected supplemental materials
Today’s response by the journal’s editors also addressed why the journal issued a correction on July 17, stating that the original supplemental materials posted with the study on July 15 were incorrect.
Laine wrote:
“During the review process, the authors discovered that, for some study years, the registry did not include data from psychiatry hospital contacts, so they repeated their analyses incorporating these data and resubmitted the manuscript.
“However, when Annals published the article, journal staff inadvertently uploaded the initial instead of the authors’ corrected supplement.
“Annals published the correct supplement as soon as the mistake was detected. This was a simple administrative error and reflects no malfeasance on the part of the authors or Annals.”
Related articles in The Defender
- Danish Researcher Responds to RFK Jr.’s Call to Retract ‘Deeply Flawed’ Aluminum Study
- ‘Deceitful Propaganda Stunt’: RFK Jr. Breaks Down Danish Study on Autism and Aluminum in Vaccines
- 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
