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Aluminum adjuvants in vaccines can and likely do cause autism in genetically susceptible babies and children, according to a new scientific review of over 200 peer-reviewed studies.
The review, led by Children’s Health Defense (CHD) Chief Scientific Officer Brian Hooker, lays out the biochemical and physiological framework that explains how aluminum-containing vaccines can cause autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
Hooker and his co-authors concluded that “mechanistic, neuropathological, epidemiological, and genetic evidence” show that aluminum adjuvants “can trigger ASD in genetically susceptible individuals” by causing inflammation of the brain.
They published their report on Jan. 31 on the preprint server Zenodo. They plan to submit the paper to a peer-reviewed journal in the near future.
Review refutes claim that ‘vaccines do not cause autism’
Hooker called the report “groundbreaking” because it scientifically explains the causal link between vaccines and autism that “has been denied and dismissed for over 30 years.”
In November 2025, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) finally revised its autism webpage to say there is no evidence supporting the blanket claim that vaccines do not cause autism.
The webpage previously stated there is no link between vaccines and autism and that “vaccines do not cause autism.” It now says: “The claim ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.”
Hooker’s new paper adds weight to the argument that infant vaccines cause autism. Its authors show how the over 200 studies they reviewed collectively meet all nine of the Bradford Hill criteria for causation.
“U.S. courts routinely reference the Bradford Hill criteria as a recognized, reliable methodology for moving from association to causation — provided it is applied properly,” Hooker said.
Christopher Shaw, Ph.D., a neuroscientist and professor in the faculty of medicine at the University of British Columbia and one of the report’s authors, said he hopes the paper will catch the eye of CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). He said:
“Let’s hope ACIP will look at the paper and conclude that aluminum should have no part in vaccines and begin the process for at least removing it from pediatric vaccines, let alone for all vaccines.
“Or alternatively, force the pharma industry to create vaccines with no aluminum or begin the process of finding and testing safer adjuvants.”
Aluminum adjuvants are in many vaccines recommended by the CDC, including the shots for hepatitis B (Hep B), DTaP, Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib), polio, pneumococcal disease, hepatitis A (Hep A) and human papillomavirus (HPV), according to an April 2025 presentation by ACIP member Dr. Evelyn Griffin.
Paper provides mechanistic explanation for how aluminum-containing vaccines can cause autism
In their report, the authors analyze a host of scientific data related to aluminum adjuvants and autism, including animal studies and postmortem human studies. The studies they reviewed spanned immunology, neuropathology, epidemiology, genetics and toxicology.
The paper is the first to mechanistically link the known impact of aluminum nanoparticles in vaccines with the pathology seen in autism, according to Dr. James Neuenschwander, an integrative medicine doctor and one of the report’s authors.
“Anyone reading this paper will understand how an aluminum nanoparticle-adjuvanted vaccine can create a pathway of injury and inflammation that can alter synaptic pruning, brain architecture and inflammation,” he said.
Synaptic pruning refers to what the brain normally does between ages 3 months and 3 years, the time during which it undergoes “dramatic remodeling,” the authors wrote. Redundant or immature synapses get pruned away, while new connectivity patterns that will serve the person into adulthood are established.
Aluminum adjuvants can disrupt this process by triggering an immune response that causes inflammation in the brain, or encephalitis, during the peak time when a baby’s or toddler’s brain is developing.
The authors noted that the CDC recommends that children ages 3 months to 3 years receive numerous vaccine doses.
Other common vaccine ingredients, including polysorbate 80, may further increase kids’ risk of autism, they wrote:
“The scale of the current ASD crisis — now affecting 1 in 31 children with societal costs approaching half a trillion dollars annually — requires nothing less than a complete paradigm shift in how we evaluate and regulate vaccine components that enter the developing nervous system during its most vulnerable period.”
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A ‘map’ for how aluminum in vaccines can cause brain injury that leads to autism
Dr. Clayton Baker, an internal medicine doctor and senior scholar with the Brownstone Institute and one of the report’s authors, said the paper “should awaken all people to the toxicity of aluminum compounds to the human nervous system.”
Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., CHD’s senior research scientist, also an author, agreed. “It is a map that shows how a vaccine can cause brain injury manifesting as autism.”
Jablonowski said the paper is really important now because it counters recently published reports claiming that aluminum adjuvants are safe.
In December 2025, Pediatrics, the flagship journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), published a review that claimed “the evidence strongly supports the safety of aluminum adjuvants and their necessity in certain vaccines.”
“That would be wonderful if it were true, but it’s not,” Jablonowski said.
On Jan. 21, CHD sued the AAP in federal court. The lawsuit alleges that the AAP violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, by making “false and fraudulent” claims about the safety of the CDC’s childhood immunization schedule — while receiving funding from vaccine manufacturers and providing financial incentives to pediatricians who achieve high vaccination rates.
The Pediatrics study authors made several errors, Jablonowski said. They conflated ingested aluminum and injected aluminum, even though there are molecular differences between the two.
They also focused on organ toxicity from aluminum accumulation, rather than how aluminum adjuvants can trigger an immune response that causes brain inflammation, Jablonowski said.
“It was never about so much aluminum that the organs stop working; it has always been how the immune system responds to that aluminum.”
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- Journal Rejects Calls to Retract Danish Study Claiming No Link Between Aluminum in Vaccines and Autism
- ‘Vaccines Do Not Cause Autism’ Claim Built on ‘House of Cards,’ Authors of New Review Say
- ‘Autism Epidemic Is Real and Overvaccination Is Its Cause’: A Conversation With Mark Blaxill
