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It is difficult to ignore research showing that vaccines can trigger autoimmunity and with it a whole range of subsequent illnesses.
Who is sensitive to harmful and toxic metals, ingredients of some vaccines, and which groups of people are more at risk?
Top immunologists question vaccination
No one would accuse Yehuda Shoenfeld of being a charlatan. This Israeli clinical physician has been studying the human immune system for more than three decades and represents the pinnacle of his profession.
One could say that in his specialty he is more of a pillar than an insignificant worker. He wrote textbooks Mosaic of Autoimmunity, Autoantigen, Diagnostic Criteria in Autoimmune Diseases, Infection and Autoimmunity, Cancer and Autoimmunity — his list includes 25 titles and some are foundational building blocks of clinical practice.
It will hardly surprise you that Shoenfeld is called the “Godfather of Autoimmunology” — the field studying the immune system turning against itself in a range of diseases, from type 1 diabetes to ulcerative colitis and multiple sclerosis.
Recently, however, something strange has been happening in the world of immunology, and a small sign of that is that the “godfather of autoimmunology” points to vaccine substances — specifically some of their components containing the toxic metal aluminum — as significantly contributing to the rise of the global epidemic of autoimmune diseases.
Stronger evidence is presented by extensive research emerging over the last fifteen years, and especially over the last five years.
For example, a recent article published in the journal Pharmaceutical Research, in which Shoenfeld and his colleagues set out unprecedented guidelines, identifies four categories of people who are most at risk of vaccine-induced autoimmunity.
“On the one hand, vaccines prevent infections that can trigger autoimmunity”, say the study authors Alessandra Soriano from the Department of Clinical Medicine and Rheumatology at Campus Bio-Medico University in Rome, Gideon Nesher from the Faculty of Medicine at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and Shoenfeld, founder and head of the Zabludowicz Center for Autoimmune Diseases at Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer.
He is also the publisher of three medical journals and the founder of the International Autoimmunity Congress.
“On the other hand, many reports describing post-vaccination autoimmunity strongly suggest that vaccines can indeed cause autoimmunity.
Autoimmune diseases that can occur after vaccination include arthritis, lupus (systemic lupus erythematosus, SLE), diabetes mellitus, thrombocytopenia, vasculitis, dermatomyositis, Guillain-Barré syndrome and demyelinating diseases.
An association with the onset of ASIA is reported for almost all types of vaccines.”
Vaccination and autoimmunity
ASIA — or the Autoimmune/Inflammatory Syndrome Induced by Adjuvants (also known as Shoenfeld’s syndrome) — first appeared four years ago in the Journal of Autoimmunity.
It is an umbrella term for a set of similar symptoms, including chronic fatigue syndrome, that occur after exposure to an adjuvant — an environmental agent, including common vaccine components, that stimulates the immune system.
Since then a vast amount of research using ASIA as a paradigm has begun to clarify the mystery of how toxins in the environment, particularly the metal aluminum used in vaccines, can in sensitive individuals trigger a cascade of immune system reactions and possibly lead to manifest autoimmune diseases.
Autoimmune diseases occur when the body’s system that should fight external attackers instead turns against a part of the body to which it belongs (auto means self in Greek).
If we compare the immune system to a system of national defense, antigens are like drones programmed to recognize a certain type of invader (say a bacterium) and destroy it or mark it for destruction by other special units.
Autoantigens are like drones that incorrectly identify some component of the human body and trigger a continuous attack on it. For example, if they mistakenly target the insulating sheath of neurons, they stop conducting nerve impulses properly, muscles go into spasm and coordination fails; the result is multiple sclerosis.
If an autoantigen mistakenly targets joint tissue, the result is rheumatoid arthritis. If it targets the islets of Langerhans in the pancreas, the result is type 1 diabetes, and so on.
“During our life the immune system walks a fine line between maintaining normal immune responses and the emergence of autoimmune diseases,” the study writes.
“A healthy immune system is tolerant to self-antigens. When self-tolerance is disrupted, immune system dysregulation follows, leading to the emergence of autoimmune disease. Vaccination is one of the states that can disturb this homeostasis in sensitive individuals, leading to an autoimmune phenomenon and ASIA.”
The question of who is “sensitive” is discussed in more detail in an article titled “Predicting Post-Vaccination Autoimmunity: Who Might Be at Risk?”.
It lists four categories of people:
- Those who previously had an autoimmune reaction to vaccination.
- Everyone who has already experienced an autoimmune reaction.
- Patients who have had allergic reactions.
- All those who have a high risk of developing an autoimmune disease, including anyone with a family history of autoimmunity, those who test positive for autoantibodies by blood tests and other factors, including low vitamin D levels and smoking.
1. Previous reaction
As for those who previously had an adverse reaction to vaccination, the article cites five relevant studies, including the case of the death of an adolescent girl six months after the third Gardasil HPV vaccination.
Shortly after the first dose she developed a range of symptoms, including dizziness, decreased sensation and tingling in the hands and memory lapses. After the second vaccination she experienced “occasional weakness in the hands, frequent fatigue requiring dozing during the day, increased tingling, night sweats, chest pain and palpitations.
The overall autopsy found nothing, but analysis of blood and spleen tissue discovered fragments of DNA from the HPV-16 L1 gene — matching DNA found in vials of the Gardasil vaccine against cervical cancer — “pointing to the vaccine as a causal factor”.
It was also found that the DNA fragments “contain an aluminum adjuvant,” which, according to the report, has been shown to persist for 8 to 10 years and cause chronic stimulation of the immune system.
“Although data are insufficient”, Shoenfeld and his colleagues concluded that “it would probably be better if individuals with a prior autoimmune or autoimmune-like reaction were not vaccinated, at least not with the same type of vaccine.”
2. Documented autoimmune condition
The second group that according to the paper should be exempted from vaccination are patients with “documented autoimmune conditions.” Vaccination is often ineffective for them, Shoenfeld and his colleagues say, and “there is a risk of exacerbation after vaccination.”
In general, vaccines containing live viruses, such as chickenpox, yellow fever and the combined MMR vaccine (measles, mumps and rubella), are “contraindicated” in people with autoimmune conditions due to the risk of “uncontrolled viral replication”.
Inactivated vaccines are also not a good idea because they usually contain added aluminum, which is associated with autoimmunity.
Immunologists describe recent studies in which patients with autoimmune rheumatic disease who received the influenza vaccine (without aluminum) experienced more joint pain and fever than the control group and whose levels of autoantibodies (drones that attack self) increased after receiving the flu vaccine.
Moreover, new types of autoantibodies that were not present before vaccination appeared and persisted. Since the presence of autoantibodies can predate the onset of autoimmune disease by years in asymptomatic patients, this is concerning information for those who understand immunology.
The studies acknowledge that a number of studies declare vaccination safe for the “vast majority of patients with already diagnosed autoimmune diseases,” but these focused only on rheumatoid arthritis and lupus, and not on severe and active cases.
Immunologists therefore warned that “the potential benefits of vaccination should be weighed against their potential risks”.
3. Patients who already have allergies
Vaccine trials usually excluded “vulnerable” individuals — recruitment is carried out only among extremely healthy people who have no allergies.
According to Soriano and Shoenfeld this is a “biased selection” and probably led to serious adverse events that are “seriously underestimated” in “real life, where vaccination is mandated for all individuals regardless of their sensitivity”.
They say the true incidence of allergic reactions to vaccines, usually estimated at one in 50,000 to one in a million doses, is apparently much higher, especially where ingredients such as gelatin or egg proteins are on the list.
The list of vaccine ingredients that are potential allergens is long: in addition to the disease-causing components themselves there are those from chicken eggs, horse serum, baker’s yeast, numerous antibiotics, formaldehyde and lactose, as well as “unwanted” components like latex.
Researchers say prior allergic reactions should be considered before vaccination. However, some signs of a reaction only appear after vaccination.
A nurse or doctor may tell patients that persistent itching around the injection site after vaccination is a normal reaction. Immunologists say otherwise.
“Sensitivity to aluminum manifests as nodules [hard swellings] at the injection site, which often resolve only after days or months but can persist for years.”
They say that in such cases a patch test can be performed to confirm sensitivity and avoid vaccination.
According to an increasing body of research, however, allergy may be only the beginning of many dangerous phenomena caused by aluminum.
4. High risk of autoimmunity and an issue with aluminum
Aluminum has been added to vaccines since 1925, when Alexander Glenny and colleagues noticed that it produced better antigen responses in vaccines than the antigen itself.
Glenny concluded that aluminum induced what he called the “depot effect” — slowing antigen release and intensifying the immune response.
And for all that time the vaccination schedule has expanded decade after decade, but few considered the effects of introducing aluminum into the body, which is peculiar given its known toxicity.
Searching for the terms aluminum and “toxicity” on PubMed yields 4,258 references. Its neurotoxicity is well documented.
It affects memory, cognitive abilities, psychomotor control; it damages the blood-brain barrier, activates brain inflammation, suppresses mitochondrial function and many studies identify it as a main player in creating amyloid “plaques” and aggregates in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients.
It has been shown to cause amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, autism and also triggers allergy.
When an aluminum infusion was accidentally given to kidney dialysis patients, “dialysis encephalopathy” (DAE) appeared with neurological symptoms: speech abnormalities, chills, memory loss, impaired concentration and behavioral changes.
Many patients ultimately fell into a coma and died. The lucky survivors: when the source of toxicity, aluminum, was removed from dialysis, they recovered rapidly.
New research on aluminum toxicity
With these observations, researchers began to study the adjuvant effects of aluminum and over the last decade many studies have been conducted.
It turns out that instead of acting like a depot that holds antigen for a time to be released, aluminum salts provoke a storm of defensive actions.
For example, within hours after vaccinating mice with the same amount of aluminum oxyhydroxide as contained in vaccines, armies of specialized immune cells are set in motion, tightly organized into ranks of even more specialized attacking units.
Within one day the whole army of immune system assault units is in play — neutrophils, eosinophils, inflammatory monocytes, myeloid and dendritic cells activating lymphocytes and secreting proteins called cytokines.
The cytokines themselves cause collateral damage, they send signals, regulate communication between cells and mobilize further cells into action. When subsequent phases of attack are triggered, all kinds of factors may be involved, such as fibroblast growth factor and interferons, interleukins, platelet-derived growth factor, transforming growth factor and tumor necrosis factor.
There is evidence that weakly explored and troublesome inflammasomes are also activated (currently a topic of the latest research into cancer causes), such as the NOD-like receptor 3 (NLRP) gene, but it is still early to say exactly what they do.
New research from the University of British Columbia found that aluminum adjuvant injected into mice can alter the expression of genes related to autoimmunity.
And in their recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists from the University of Colorado found that host DNA is recruited into the aluminum attack, quickly coating the injected aluminum and producing effects that scientists so far barely understand superficially.
The significance of macrophagic myofasciitis
This mobility, or the “translocation” of aluminum in the body, is from accumulating evidence in current aluminum research apparently the greatest concern.
In 1998 French researcher Romain Gherardi and his colleagues observed the emergence of a condition of unknown origin present in vaccinated patients with symptoms similar to chronic fatigue, including swollen lymph nodes, joint and muscle pain and exhaustion.
Biopsies from the deltoid muscles of patients showed lesions, damage averaging up to 1 centimeter, distinct from lesions of other diseases.
In lab analysis to Gherardi’s amazement they found that they consisted mainly of macrophages — large white immune cells whose job is to engulf foreign invaders in the body. In the cellular fluid of these phagocytes were clusters of nanocrystals of aluminum.
To see what would happen, Gherardi and colleagues began vaccinating mice with aluminum. Their research, published in 2013, showed that the metal particles were engulfed by macrophages and formed MMF (macrophagic myofasciitis)-like granulomas, which dispersed — to distant lymph nodes, spleen, liver and ultimately the brain.
“It strongly suggests that long-term biopersistence of the adjuvant in phagocytic cells is a necessary condition for slow brain translocation and timed neurotoxicity”, Gherardi writes in his February 2015 review of relevant research in the journal Frontiers in Neurology.
An even more frightening animal study on aluminum is the Spanish veterinary researcher Lluis Lujan’s study of ASIA in sheep.
After a large number of sheep died in Spain in 2008 following a mandated multiple-vaccine campaign against sheep catarrhal fever, Lujan decided to find out what killed them — and started by vaccinating them with aluminum.
His 2013 study found that in just 0.5% of sheep vaccinated with aluminum-containing vaccines immediate reactions of lethargy, temporary blindness, stupor, prostration and seizures occurred — characterized by severe meningoencephalitis, similar to post-vaccination reactions seen in humans.
Most of them recovered transiently, but post-mortem examinations of those that did not showed acute brain inflammation.
Far more sheep — 50 to 70% of a flock and sometimes literally 100% of animals in a given flock — were affected by a delayed onset “chronic” phase of disease. And usually those included even those who had recovered earlier.
The reaction was often triggered by exposure to cold and began with restlessness and compulsive wool-biting, then progressed to acute skin redness, general weakness, extreme weight loss and muscle tremors, until finally entering the terminal phase when the animals lay down, fell into a coma and died. Post-mortem examinations found “severe neuronal necrosis” and aluminum in nervous tissue.
The immune response to aluminum “represents a serious health problem,” Gerhard states in his recent report and adds that “serious attempts to investigate safety concerns raised by the biopersistence and dispersive nature and accumulation of aluminum particles in the brain have not been carried out …
Much work is needed to understand how vaccines containing aluminum can become insidiously dangerous in certain individuals.
But let’s return to the issue of “certain individuals” who should avoid vaccination to prevent autoimmune diseases.
People prone to autoimmune disease
Soriano and Shoenfeld identify the final category: it is anyone at risk of developing autoimmune disease. Since many of them have been shown to have genetic factors, that would be anyone who has someone in their family with an autoimmune disease.
This also includes everyone who has tested positive for autoantibodies, which can indicate disease many years before symptoms appear. Doctors say that “vaccination can trigger or worsen disease”.
Smokers, according to the report, have an especially high risk of developing autoimmune disease. Today roughly 15 to 30% of the population smokes (figures vary by country).
That means, for example, that in Slovakia about 1 million people have an increased risk of developing autoimmune disease and the chance of it increases with each vaccination.
And finally, according to Shoenfeld and Soriano, factors associated with high risk of autoimmunity include high estrogen levels and low vitamin D levels — which means all those using contraceptives or undergoing hormone replacement therapy.
According to a 2009 study on vitamin D status, three quarters of teenagers and adults should be cautious when being vaccinated.
However, it does not seem that Shoenfeld wants to exclude all these people from immunization. The article concludes: “For the vast majority of individuals, vaccination does not pose a significant risk of systemic autoimmune disease and should be performed according to current recommendations.”
Which is in sharp contradiction with the content of the article. The conclusion cautiously speaks of weighing the “potential benefit of vaccination … against its potential risks”.
It is an example of a peculiar kind of schizophrenia in a number of recent immunological articles. It looks as if doctors are trying to reconcile the century-old dogma of “safe and effective vaccination” with the alarming findings of research over the past decade. There is a lot of “pro” and “con” in them.
However, it seems that new research is beginning to win out. For example, the 2013 ASIA review by six immunologists including Shoenfeld is a catalog of vaccine side effects, starting with Gardasil deaths, epidemics of narcolepsy, infertility, chronic fatigue, dead sheep and aluminum-confused brains.
It is full of statements that a decade ago would have been literally unheard of in mainstream medicine. How shocking:
“Maybe in twenty years doctors will be dealing with better characterized particles of autoimmunity and vaccines may become as fully safe as they are effective.
Nevertheless, the recognition of ASIA has initiated a shift to devote more effort to identifying what is good, bad and ugly in vaccines. And specifically in adjuvants as triggers of autoimmunity.”
The bad and ugly in vaccines? What is bad about adjuvants? Nothing like that is found in the leaflets of public health institutes.
Or what about this
“Despite the huge amount of money invested in vaccine research, there are only a few observational studies and literally no randomized clinical trials that would document the effect of any existing vaccine on mortality.
One recent study found an increased rate of hospitalization with an increasing number of vaccine doses and a mortality ratio of 1.5 when comparing dosing from 5–8 vaccine doses to 1–4 doses, suggesting a statistically significant increase in deaths associated with higher vaccine doses.
Since vaccines are administered annually to millions of young children, it is urgent that health authorities have scientific data from synergistic toxicity studies of all combinations of vaccines …”
It could be the drivel of some anti-vaccine opponent … but it is not.
This, however, is the pinnacle
“The highest court in the USA decided that vaccine manufacturers are immune from claims alleging that the vaccine design is defective.
It is therefore necessary to innovate clinical trial design and to redesign the vaccines themselves.”
Immunologists, including the greatest global authorities on autoimmunity, say it is time to take vaccines back to the drawing board.
Autoimmune diseases are the third most common cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide and are now among the top 10 killers of young women.
The American Autoimmune Related Diseases Association estimates that one in 88 autoimmune diseases affects 50 million Americans (1/6 of the population) — ranging from type 1 diabetes to systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) — and some studies give a worldwide figure of one in five.
At least 40 other diseases are suspected to be immune-mediated. Most of them are devastating — often leading to permanent damage, their treatment is expensive or they are untreatable. And they are increasing at an astonishing rate.
At this stage it seems that the more research emerges, the harder it will be for pro-vaccine immunologists to keep their dissociative personality disorder — or total nervous breakdown — under control.
Ten years of intensive research into the effects of aluminum on the immune system has mainly revealed how wrong they were. And how little they know. When, after 90 years, doctors finally began to seriously study the mechanism and reflect on the essence of vaccinating newborns with metal toxins, what else will they discover?
ASIA sounds awful. (Tough luck for all those whose children suffered chronic fatigue when it was merely a Freudian desire to sleep with their mother.) But what if, similarly to Lujan’s sheep, the “negligible” minority that pays the price for the good of humanity is actually just the tip of the iceberg?
What if some people without obvious adverse immune reactions still have nanocrystals of aluminum quietly stored in their brains? What if part of ASIA really is Alzheimer’s disease? ALS, autism? ADD? And those are just the ones that start with A.
Even if immunologists continue to wear their rose-colored glasses and vaccine components are responsible for only small fractions of rapidly spreading autoimmunity, that “ugly” part of vaccines will be increasingly difficult to ignore.
If everyone on the planet is vaccinated, twenty years is a long time for the maimed to regroup while scientists “fight over the described particles of autoimmunity”.
In the fury over the Disneyland measles outbreak, which the global vaccine advocates keep bringing up, time is running out for doctors and researchers who see the “bad and ugly” side of vaccines and their adjuvants to do something about it.
There is little chance of vaccine redesign in the absence of profit incentive and a good chance of universal vaccination mandates for everyone — regardless of whether they previously had anaphylactic shock.
