Health

Yes, Some Vaccines Contain Aluminum. That’s a Good Thing.

Published

1 year ago

January 24, 2025

Yes, Some Vaccines Contain Aluminum. That’s a Good Thing.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has often trained his criticisms of vaccines on a common ingredient: aluminum, which he has suggested is responsible for a litany of childhood ailments, including food allergies, autism and depression.

“You wonder why a whole generation of children is allergic to stuff,” Mr. Kennedy said during a 2021 interview. “It’s because we’re inducing allergies, pumping them full of aluminum.”

To many vaccine scientists, aluminum is a strange target. It is among the most studied ingredients in vaccines, and perhaps in modern medicine.

“There’s a huge amount of information that’s gathered,” said Dr. Andrew Racine, a pediatrician and chief medical officer at the Montefiore Health System. “If there was something jumping out about a lack of safety, we would most likely have seen it someplace, and it just doesn’t appear.”

Aluminum salts, a more soluble form of the metal, are added to vaccines like the Tdap shot to bolster the body’s immune response. The ingredient has repeatedly been evaluated as a part of vaccines in clinical trials and administered in billions of doses over several decades.

Even so, as Mr. Kennedy prepares for confirmation hearings as secretary of health and human services, many experts fear the standby will face fresh scrutiny, and may even serve as a justification for limiting access to several childhood vaccines, like the shots for hepatitis B and pneumococcal disease.

Aaron Siri, a lawyer and close ally of Mr. Kennedy, has represented clients in petitioning federal regulators to pause the distribution of more than a dozen vaccines until the makers provided more information about the amount of aluminum in the formulations.

Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Siri did not respond to requests for comment.

The origins of added aluminum in vaccines can be traced back nearly a century. In a stable on the outskirts of Paris, a young veterinarian had made a peculiar discovery: mixing tapioca into his horses’ diphtheria vaccines made them more effective.

The doctor, Gaston Ramon, had noticed that the horses who developed a minor infection at the injection site had much more robust immunity against diphtheria. He theorized that adding something to his shots that caused inflammation — ingredients he later named adjuvants, derived from the Latin root “to help” — helped induce a stronger immune response.

After testing several candidates — including bread crumbs, petroleum jelly and rubber latex — he found success with a tapioca-laced injection, which produced slight swelling and far more antibodies.

Tapioca never caught on as an adjuvant. But in 1932, a few years after Dr. Ramon’s studies were published, the United States began including aluminum salts in diphtheria immunizations, as they were found to invoke a similar but more reliable effect.

Today, aluminum adjuvants are found in 27 routine vaccines, and nearly half of those recommended for children under 5.

This extra boost of immunity is not needed in all types of vaccines. Shots that contain a weakened form of a virus, like the measles mumps and rubella shot, or created with mRNA technology, like the Pfizer and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines, generate strong enough immune responses on their own.

But in vaccines that contain only small fragments of the pathogen, which would garner little attention from the immune system, adjuvants help stimulate a stronger response, allowing vaccines to be given in fewer doses.

Scientists believe that aluminum salts work in two ways. First, aluminum binds to the core component of the vaccine and causes it to diffuse into the bloodstream more slowly, giving immune cells more time to build a response.

It’s also thought that aluminum operates more directly, enhancing the activity of certain immune cells, though this mechanism is not fully understood.

Though aluminum salts are not the only adjuvants on the market, vaccine makers often prefer them because of a lengthy track record of safety data.

Each time a new vaccine that uses an aluminum adjuvant is developed, it undergoes lengthy clinical trials to evaluate its safety, and side effects are continuously monitored after approval. One of the earliest trials including an aluminum adjuvant was published in 1934.

Later trials revealed some minor side effects, like redness, body aches and, in rare cases, painful nodules at the injection site. But there is little credible evidence that aluminum in vaccines causes serious, long-term side effects, as Mr. Kennedy has suggested.

People who are routinely exposed to large quantities of aluminum — such as workers who breathe in aluminum dust, or dialysis patients who routinely receive aluminum-rich medications — may experience respiratory, bone and neurological complications.

The amount of aluminum in childhood vaccines, however, is trivial compared with what people are routinely exposed to via the environment and food, said Dr. Tony Moody, director of the Duke CIVICs Vaccine Center.

“We’re exposed to aluminum constantly,” he said. “If you inhale dust from the outside, you’re coming into contact with aluminum.”

In the first six months of babies’ lives, vaccines expose them to roughly 4.4 milligrams of aluminum. One slice of American cheese, by contrast, can contain as much as 50 milligrams of aluminum.

When scientists compared aluminum levels in the blood and hair of babies who had been given aluminum-containing vaccines versus those who hadn’t, they found no significant difference.

Some scientists believe that one potential side effect needs additional research.

In 2022, after a federally funded study found a minor association between aluminum exposure from vaccines and asthma, the C.D.C. noted that the link warranted “further investigation.” (The agency said it would not change vaccine recommendations “based on a single study.”)

Mr. Kennedy, who was then the chairman of Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit frequently critical of vaccines, held out the study as evidence that immunizations were causing an “asthma epidemic.”

But the authors of the paper were careful to point out the limitations of their findings, most notably that the effect was small and that the study was observational, which means it cannot prove cause-and-effect.

In the paper, they cautioned that their results “do not constitute strong evidence for questioning the safety of aluminum in vaccines.”

Independent experts also noted that the authors did not collect data on several key risk factors, like whether the participants were exposed to cigarette smoke or had a family history of asthma — either of which could explain the difference they observed.

In response to the study, a group of researchers from the Statens Serum Institut, Denmark’s public health agency, ran a similar analysis on a national data set of more than 450,000 children.

Their preliminary results did not show an association between aluminum adjuvants and asthma, they told the C.D.C.’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices in 2023.

Still, a C.D.C. spokeswoman said the agency was “discussing additional studies” to investigate the potential risk.

But until rigorous research can confirm the finding, the link between aluminum and asthma is tenuous at best, said Dr. Stanley Plotkin, who played a pivotal role in helping create the rubella vaccine.

“You cannot change conclusions from any single paper,” he said. “You have to look at the overall literature.”

Anders Hviid, who led the Danish study, said he welcomed more research into the safety of adjuvants, but he added that these studies might never be enough to convince skeptics that aluminum does not cause long-term side effects.

“You cannot prove a negative,” he said. “There will always be this goal-post moving, saying, ‘Well, you didn’t look at this and you didn’t look at that in that way.’”

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Health

Family pleads for help as teen faces life-threatening bone marrow failure

Published

5 hours ago

March 23, 2026

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Family pleads for help as teen faces life-threatening bone marrow failure

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A New York City father is desperately seeking a donor to save his teenage son’s life.

Max Uribe, now 15 and a high-school freshman, has just weeks until he will need to be hospitalized with a rare blood disorder that could lead to a deadly cancer.

“Max was just 6 when we first noticed there was something wrong with his blood counts,” his father, Juan Uribe, told Fox News Digital. “At the time, we thought it was due to a viral infection, but they never fully recovered back to their normal level.”

RFK JR. ANNOUNCES ‘HISTORIC CRACKDOWN’ ON ‘BROKEN’ ORGAN DONATION SYSTEM

In December 2024, Max’s condition grew worse, and he was diagnosed with clonal cytopenia, a condition involving the blood and bone marrow.

“All three of his blood counts are low — red, white and platelets,” Uribe said.

Max Uribe, pictured with his parents and sister, is in urgent need of a stem cell transplant to save his life. (Uribe Family)

In August 2025, another bone marrow biopsy revealed that Max is on a path to bone marrow failure, creating an urgent need for a stem cell transplant.

“The disease has continued to progress, as his blood counts continue to drop, and therefore, we have to take him to transplant in May of this year,” Uribe said.

MOM WITH NO SYMPTOMS HAD STAGE 4 COLORECTAL CANCER — AND A RARE SURGERY SAVED HER LIFE

If left untreated, Max’s condition could lead to MDS (myelodysplastic syndrome), a type of blood cancer, and from there possibly into acute myeloid leukemia (AML).

A bone marrow match must have a specific type of HLA (human leukocyte antigen), which are proteins found on the surface of most cells in the body, according to the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP).

Max Uribe, pictured with his parents, will be hospitalized for a transplant in May, as his blood count has been steadily decreasing. (Uribe Family)

The closer the donor’s HLA markers are to the patient’s, the more likely the body will accept the new cells without a high risk of complications.

People from the same ethnic background are more likely to share similar HLA types, meaning a patient is most likely to find a compatible donor among individuals with similar ancestry, per the NMDP.

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Non-Hispanic White patients have a 79% chance of a perfect match. That drops to 49% for Hispanic/Latino patients, 29% for Black patients and even lower for mixed ancestries, the NMDP reports.

Because Max is a “very rare combination” of half-Colombian from his father and a mix of Italian, British and German from his mother, his path to a perfect match is proving much more difficult, Uribe noted.

“For a kid like Max, with complex, mixed heritage, the math is devastating.”

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“For a kid like Max, with complex, mixed heritage, the math is devastating,” he said. “The thinking is, we need large numbers if we’re going to have that perfect match for my son.”

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Max, who participates in competitive tennis and varsity wrestling, just had additional blood work done on Friday, which revealed that his counts continue to plummet.

“We’re at the point where this is beginning to manifest a bit more, which is why the urgency is so critical,” Uribe said.

If a donor is not secured by Max’s hospitalization in May, the medical team will have to proceed with a partial match, which is not ideal for a number of reasons.

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“The survival rate is meaningfully lower with a partial match, and there’s more risk of graft versus host disease (GVHD), which could lead to complications in the process,” Uribe said. With GVHD, the donor cells begin to attack the body.

Max Uribe, an active athlete, is on a path to bone marrow failure, requiring a stem cell transplant. (Uribe Family)

To help prevent this with a partial match, Max would likely need chemotherapy and immunosuppressants for a longer period of time, which could weaken his immune system.

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Anyone interested in donating can order a free test kit on the Team Max website. The kit includes a quick cheek swab that is sent back to the lab to determine whether someone is a match.

Melissa Rudy is senior health editor and a member of the lifestyle team at Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to melissa.rudy@fox.com.

Health

Eat This Before Bed To Lose Weight Overnight: ‘Second Meal Effect’ Explained

Published

17 hours ago

March 22, 2026

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Eat This Before Bed To Lose Weight Overnight: ‘Second Meal Effect’ Explained

What To Eat Before Bed To Lose Weight and Burn Fat

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Health

The real reasons you’re still exhausted after 8 hours of sleep, according to an expert

Published

17 hours ago

March 22, 2026

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The real reasons you’re still exhausted after 8 hours of sleep, according to an expert

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Getting a full eight hours of sleep and still feeling drowsy? Sleep experts say it’s not just about how much shuteye you get.

Dr. Wendy Troxel, a licensed clinical psychologist and senior behavioral scientist at RAND based in Utah, emphasized the “really important distinction” between quantity and quality of sleep.

SLEEP PATTERNS COULD PREDICT RISK FOR DEMENTIA, CANCER AND STROKE, STUDY SUGGESTS

“Many people will say, ‘Man, I’m sleeping enough, I got seven to eight hours of sleep, but I still wake up feeling groggy and not refreshed,’” she told Fox News Digital during an in-studio interview. “About one in three adults has non-restorative sleep quality.”

Sleep quality could be making you feel groggy, despite the number of hours you slept, an expert said. (iStock)

“There are many factors that can contribute to poor sleep quality, regardless of how many hours you slept,” Troxel noted.

These include drinking alcohol — a “major contributor” to poor quality or disrupted sleep — and consuming caffeine late in the day.

Being stressed or feeling worried about something can also contribute to fragmented sleep, as can phone use at bedtime.

CHANGE TO NIGHTLY EATING HABITS MAY HELP PROTECT YOUR HEART, STUDY SUGGESTS

Troxel addressed the belief that women need more sleep than men, noting that research does support it — though only slightly, by about 10 to 15 extra minutes per night.

“What we absolutely know is that women’s sleep quality often suffers more than men’s,” she said. “They may be getting more non-restorative sleep quality, therefore needing slightly more sleep.”

Women are also twice as likely to have insomnia compared to men, and their risk for sleep disturbances “skyrockets” during the menopausal transition.

Women suffer from poorer sleep quality than men, according to the expert. (iStock)

For those who claim they sleep better with fewer hours of sleep — and feel sleepier when they get the recommended seven to nine hours — Troxel said this is not an indicator that they actually require less shuteye. “It’s simply that their body is not used to it,” she said.

Laboratory studies have shown that sleep deprivation causes impairments in judgment, according to the expert. “That means someone who thinks they’re fine with only four hours of sleep per night likely isn’t aware of the impact sleep deprivation has on their cognition and performance.”

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For those getting less than the recommended amount, Troxel recommends taking small steps toward sleeping longer. That might mean adding about 15 minutes each night to see how it impacts the body, eventually getting into a healthier circadian rhythm.

“You will likely see benefits when you increase your sleep in small increments,” she said.

The expert recommends adding a few extra minutes of sleep each night to work up to a longer duration of rest. (iStock)

Tips for better quality sleep

Quality sleep hinges on following a healthy lifestyle and a consistent sleep-wake schedule, according to experts.

INSUFFICIENT SLEEP LINKED TO MAJOR HIDDEN HEALTH RISK, STUDY REVEALS

Eating a nutritious diet free of foods that cause upset stomach or indigestion, especially in the late evening hours, can help improve sleep quality, Troxel shared.

“You don’t want to be starving at bedtime, but you also don’t want to be trying to fall asleep on a full stomach while your body’s still actively digesting,” she said.

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Exercise helps to promote quality sleep, just as sleep also improves exercise quality. However, it’s best to avoid vigorous physical activity too close to bedtime, Troxel advised.

“Exercise is very stimulating, particularly if it’s in a social environment, and that can disrupt sleep,” she said. “Exercising earlier in the day is better.”

“Those who are natural morning people are more likely to benefit from exercising earlier,” Troxel said. (iStock)

That doesn’t have to mean working out first thing in the morning, Troxel noted, as not everyone’s circadian rhythm supports early wake-ups for exercise.

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“Those who are natural morning people are more likely to benefit from exercising earlier,” she said. “If you’re a night owl, don’t expect to love doing a workout first thing in the morning. That might not be consistent with your circadian rhythm.”

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Troxel added that people should not be “sleep-shamed” for adhering to their own internal clocks.

“These cultural trends have these subtle, or not-so-subtle, ways of undermining people’s sleep-wake biology, which is largely out of our control,” she said.

Angelica Stabile is a lifestyle reporter for Fox News Digital.