The Annals of Internal Medicine ran a large-scale study in July, pointing to the lack of an association between childhood aluminum exposure through vaccination and chronic conditions. The Health Secretary, in an opinion piece earlier this month, called the paper a “ballyhooed study.”
A leading medical journal refused to retract a large vaccine study despite public criticism from Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who alleged in an opinion piece earlier this month that the study was inappropriately designed.
“I see no reason for retraction,” Christine Laine, editor in chief of the Annals of Internal Medicine, told Reuters in an interview. Laine added that while some of the issues Kennedy raised could indeed be considered as “acceptable limitations” of the study, “they do not invalidate what they found, and there’s no evidence of scientific misconduct.”
On Aug. 2, Kennedy wrote an opinion piece for TrialSiteNews calling the Annals paper a “ballyhooed study,” one that is “so deeply flawed it functions not as science but as a deceitful propaganda stunt by the pharmaceutical industry.”
The study, published in mid-July, was funded by the Danish government and looked at health registry data of more than 1.2 million children from 1997 to 2018, seeking to determine whether aluminum exposure from early childhood vaccination was linked to the risk of chronic conditions, such as autoimmune or neurodevelopmental disorders. This is a claim that Kennedy has long backed. The Children’s Health Defense, a non-profit he founded, continues to identify aluminum as a “neurotoxic” adjuvant in vaccines.
Results of the Annals study, however, showed that over two decades of follow-up, cumulative exposure to aluminum through vaccination in early childhood is not associated with a heightened risk of autoimmune or neurodevelopmental disorders. Aluminum was also not linked to atopic or allergic diseases.
In his opinion piece, Kennedy claimed without providing evidence that the authors “meticulously designed” the study “not to find harm.” The researchers, he alleged, left out children who were at the highest risk of harm from aluminum exposure, such as those who died before 2 years of age and those with early respiratory conditions.
Among the many other so-called “deceptive devices” that Kennedy took issue with were the study’s reliance on hospital diagnoses from inpatient registers, the reliability of Denmark’s national health registry as a data source and the failure to consider populations that might be more susceptible due to their genetic makeup.
Kennedy in his opinion called on the Annals to “immediately retract this badly flawed study.”
This is not the first time that Kennedy has targeted high-profile academic journals. In May, he trained his sights on the New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association and The Lancet, three of the biggest medical publications, calling them “corrupt” and considered barring government scientists from publishing their studies in them.
Weeks later, however, FDA Commissioner Marty Makary and Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research Director Vinay Prasad published an article in JAMA outlining the agency’s priorities.
