On November 10th, 2018 Columbia Lyme & Tick-borne Diseases Research Center will host a walk-in Lyme clinic from 12pm-4pm. This will take place at the Pleasant Valley Fire Company in Pleasant Valley, New York. This study is open to people between ages 18-75 who have been diagnosed with Lyme disease in the last two years. Please bring medical records supporting your Lyme disagnosis (blood work, doctor’s notes, photo of rash. We look forward to seeing you there!
The biggest number of winter ticks that Peter J. Pekins ever found on a moose was about 100,000. But that moose calf was already dead, most likely the victim of anemia, which develops when that many ticks drain a moose’s blood. So it was probably a lowball estimate, because some of the ticks had already detached.
“It’s about as grody a picture as you can imagine on a dead animal,” said Dr. Pekins, a professor of natural resources and the environment at the University of New Hampshire. (A warning: The pictures below are, indeed, grody.)
The longer-lasting warmth gives the ticks a leg up as they glom onto the moose, their preferred hosts, in the fall. They then feed through winter and hop off in the spring to lay eggs.
Moose ticks at Maine Medical Center Research Institute. The ticks live on the moose through the winter, at first so small that they’re difficult to see with the naked eye — until they’re engorged with blood as adults. Credit Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Portland Press Herald via Getty Images
The moose-tracking exploits of Dr. Pekins and his colleagues were published last month in the Canadian Journal of Zoology. They argued that three consecutive years of tick outbreaks “arguably reflects a host-parasite relationship strongly influenced by climate change at the southern fringe of moose habitat.”
While large numbers of ticks, literal bloodsucking parasites, aren’t great for adult moose, they’re especially bad for moose calves, which can die from the onslaught.
With the help of a team that shoots nets from helicopters to catch and tag the calves with radio collars (a process that takes about 15 minutes for the moose and eschews the use of drugs), Dr. Pekins was able to track 179 moose calves. The average number of ticks he found on them was 47,371.
This moose calf was covered with more than 50,000 ticks when it died from extreme weight loss and acute anemia. Credit Henry Jones/Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife
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“Anything over 35,000 is trouble for a calf moose,” he said.
Over the study period, 125 calves died, 70 percent of those being tracked.
In some ways, the moose are a victim of their own success.
“Maine and New Hampshire had less than 50 moose in the 1970s,” Dr. Pekins said. But their numbers have multiplied many times over since then, thanks to improvements in the available habitat and a lack of predators like wolves.
As a result, Maine now has anywhere from 60,000 to 70,000 moose; New Hampshire had as many as 8,000 or 9,000 in the early 2000s, though the numbers now hover around 5,000. And it’s the abundance of moose that enables the ticks to survive.
“You need a lot of moose on the landscape to have a lot of parasites,” Dr. Pekins said. “That’s the host-parasite relationship.”
That relationship was more or less in balance until the changing climate tilted the scales in the ticks’ favor. Over the long term, Dr. Pekins doesn’t expect the moose to die off completely, but there will be fewer of them.
The ticks don’t want the moose to die off completely, either.
“The parasite doesn’t want to kill off its host — that’s bad evolution,” Dr. Pekins said. “Because the parasite loses the game.”
Kendra Pierre-Louis is a reporter on the climate team. Before joining The Times in 2017, she covered science and the environment for Popular Science. @kendrawrites
What does affect tick proliferation is migrating birds and photoperiod.
Black-legged ticks require 14 hours of daylight to molt. If ticks can’t molt, they can’t move on to their next life-cycle. Photoperiod is innate and can not be altered by the climate. He states:
“The hypothesis that I. scapularis ticks will expand further north in the Prairie Provinces because of climate change is not only unscientific, but deceiving.”
Please see link above for numerous reasons why the whole climate change issue is “apocryphal” according to Scott.
Scientists and legal scholars question the rationale for the use of insects to disperse infectious GE viruses engineered to edit the chromosomes in plants, warning that the technology could very easily be weaponized
A new DARPA program is the first to propose and fund the development of viral horizontal environmental genetic alteration agents with the capacity to perform genetic engineering in the environment
The $27 million project, called “Insect Allies,” is trying to take advantage of insects’ natural ability to spread crop diseases, but instead of carrying disease, they would spread plant-protective traits
The opinion paper “Agricultural Research, or a New Bioweapon System?” argues that if plant modification were really the ultimate goal, a far simpler and more targeted agricultural delivery system could be used
There are also serious concerns about environmental ramifications, as the insects’ spread cannot be controlled. It would also be impossible to prevent the insects from genetically modifying organic crops
Genetic engineering (GE) is being used in myriad ways these days, despite the fact we know very little about the long-term ramifications of such meddling in the natural order.
For example, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), an arm of the U.S. Department of Defense, is now planning to use insects to deliver GE viruses to crops, with the aim of altering the plant’s genetic traits in the field.
The $27 million DARPA project, called “Insect Allies,” is basically trying to take advantage of insects’ natural ability to spread crop diseases, but instead of carrying disease-causing genes, they would carry plant-protective traits. As explained by The Washington Post:1
“Recent advances in gene editing, including the relatively cheap and simple system known as CRISPR (for clustered regularly interspaced palindromic repeats), could potentially allow researchers to customize viruses to achieve a specific goal in the infected plant.
The engineered virus could switch on or off certain genes that, for example, control a plant’s growth rate, which could be useful during an unexpected, severe drought.”
Insect Allies Project Raises Concerns About Bioterror Use
However, scientists and legal scholars question the rationale for the use of insects to disperse infectious GE viruses engineered to edit the chromosomes in plants, warning that the technology could very easily be weaponized.2,3,4,5
The opinion paper6 “Agricultural Research, or a New Bioweapon System?” published October 4, 2018, in the journal Science questions DARPA’s Insect Allies project, saying it could be perceived as a threat by the international community, and that if plant modification were really the ultimate goal, a far simpler agricultural delivery system could be used.
Jason Delborne, associate professor at North Carolina State University, has expertise in genetic engineering and its consequences. He told Gizmodo:7
“The social, ethical, political and ecological implications of producing HEGAAs [horizontal environmental genetic alteration agents] are significant and worthy of the same level of attention as exploring the science underpinning the potential technology.
The authors argue persuasively that specifying insects as the preferred delivery mechanism for HEGAAs is poorly justified by visions of agricultural applications.
The infrastructure and expertise required for spraying agricultural fields — at least in the U.S. context — is well established, and this delivery mechanism would offer greater control over the potential spread of a HEGAA.”
The team has also created a website8 to accompany the paper, the stated aim of which is “to contribute toward fostering an informed and public debate about this type of technology.” On this site you can also find a link to download the 38-page DARPA work plan. DARPA, meanwhile, insists the project’s goal is strictly to protect the U.S. food supply. A DARPA spokesperson told The Independent:9
“[S]prayed treatments are impractical for introducing protective traits on a large scale and potentially infeasible if the spraying technology cannot access the necessary plant tissues with specificity, which is a known problem.
If Insect Allies succeeds, it will offer a highly specific, efficient, safe and readily deployed means of introducing transient protective traits into only the plants intended, with minimal infrastructure required.”
Scientists from the U.S. Department of Agriculture are also participating in the research, which is currently restricted to contained laboratories. Still, many are unconvinced by DARPA’s claims of peaceful aims.
The release of such insects could “play into longstanding fears among countries that enemies might try to harm their crops,” says Dr. David Relman, a former White House biodefense adviser and professor of medicine and microbiology at Stanford. According to The Associated Press (AP):10
“Guy Reeves, a coauthor of the Science paper and a biologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Germany, says the technology is more feasible as a weapon — to kill plants — than as an agricultural tool. As a result, he said DARPA could be sending an alarming message regardless of its intentions.”
Unforeseen Ramifications Abound
Others are concerned about environmental ramifications, regardless of whether the genetic traits being delivered to the plants are perceived as beneficial or harmful. According to DARPA, none of the insects would be able to survive for more than two weeks, but what if such guarantees fail? What if nature finds a way? If so, the insects’ spread could be near-unlimited.
Gregory Kaebnick, an ethicist at the Hastings Center bioethics research institute in Garrison, New York, told the AP he’s concerned the project may end up causing unforeseen environmental destruction, as insects will be virtually impossible to eradicate once released. If it turns out the genetic modification traits they carry are harmful, there will be no going back.
Yet others, such as Fred Gould, an entomologist at North Carolina State University who chaired a National Academy of Sciences panel on genetically modified food, believe the project’s stated goal of altering genetic traits of plants via insects is near-impossible in the first place.
However, while the research is still in its initial phase, they already have proof of concept. In one test, an aphid infected a mature corn plant with a GE virus carrying a gene for fluorescence, creating a fluorescent corn plant.11
Open Scientific Debate Is Needed
Reeves questions why there’s been virtually no open scientific debate about the technology. According to Reeves, who is an expert on GE insects, the Insect Allies project is “largely unknown even in expert circles,” which in and of itself raises a red flag about its true intent.
He told The Independent, “It is very much easier to kill or sterilize a plant using gene editing than it is to make it herbicide- or insect-resistant.”12 Felix Beck, a lawyer at the University of Freiburg, added:13
“The quite obvious question of whether the viruses selected for development should or should not be capable of plant-to-plant transmission — and plant-to-insect-to-plant transmission — was not addressed in the DARPA work plan at all.”
How Horizontal Environmental Genetic Alteration Agents Work
As explained in the featured paper, the technology DARPA is using is known as horizontal environmental genetic alteration agents or HEGAAs. Essentially, HEGAAs are GE viruses capable of editing the chromosomes of a target species, be it a plant or an animal. The specificity of HEGAAs are dependent on:
The range of species the GE virus can infect
The presence of a specific DNA sequence in the chromosome that can then become infected
The image below illustrates how an insect-dispersed viral HEGAA would disrupt a specific plant gene. As noted on the team’s website:
“Interest in genetically modified viruses, including HEGAAs, largely stems from their rapid speed of action, as infections can sweep quickly through target populations. This same property is also a serious safety concern, in that it makes it hard to predict where viruses geographically disperse to or what species they eventually infect.
Probably due to the complex regulatory, biological, economic and societal implications that need to be considered little progress has been made on how genetically modified viruses should be regulated when the intention is to disperse them in the environment. It is in this context that DARPA presented its Insect Allies work program in November 2016.”
The team also notes the use of HEGAAs are ultimately not likely to be limited to agriculture, which is why it’s so important to have an open discussion about the technology, its potential uses, misuses and ramifications — including unintended ones.
In 2018, three scientific publications discussed the development of “transmissible vaccines,” i.e., vaccines that would be transmissible between humans and therefore would no longer require individual vaccinations. Such products would also remove any possibility of informed consent, which creates a really huge ethical dilemma. In the past decade, at least seven scientific papers have focused on transmissible vaccines.
The team also brings up the obvious point that insects will not be able to distinguish between conventional crops and certifiedorganic crops, which do not permit genetic engineering.Just how are organic farmers to keep these insect vectors from altering their crops? They can’t, and this could effectively destroy the organic industry as we know it.
DARPA Technology May Violate Biological Weapons Convention
According to DARPA, the technology does not violate the United Nations (U.N.) Biological Weapons Convention. However, according to the Science paper, it could be in breach of the U.N.’s convention if the research is unjustifiable. Silja Voeneky, a specialist in international law at Freiburg University, told The Independent:14
“Because of the broad ban of the Biological Weapons Convention, any biological research of concern must be plausibly justified as serving peaceful purposes. The Insect Allies Program could be seen to violate the Biological Weapons Convention, if the motivations presented by DARPA are not plausible. This is particularly true considering this kind of technology could easily be used for biological warfare.”
The Science team also call for greater transparency from DARPA in order to discourage other countries from following suit and developing similar delivery technologies as a defensive measure.
Gene Drive Technology Needs International Governance
In related news, Simon Terry, executive director of the Sustainability Council of New Zealand, is calling for gene drive technology to be brought under international governance,15,16,17 as this kind of technology can make an entire species infertile in a relatively short amount of time, depending on the species life cycle.
Gene drive is yet another application forCRISPR. In short, it’s a genetic engineering technology that allows you to propagate a specific set of genes throughout an entire population, including its offspring, which allows you to genetically alter the future of an entire species. Gene drive has been proposed as a means to control pests, including mosquitoes and possum.
However, there’s no known way to control it. As an example, while New Zealand would like to use gene drive to eradicate possums, it would be virtually impossible to prevent the spread of the gene drive to other areas, and in Australia, the possum is a protected species.
Gene drive has also been considered as an answer for barnyard grass, a pesky weed among Australian farmers, but a prized commodity in India. Likewise, Palmer Amaranth is considered a weed in the U.S. but an important food source in Central America, Africa, India and China. As noted by Terry, “One man’s pest could be another’s desired plant or animal,” and creating national regulations for a technology that can wipe out an entire species globally simply isn’t enough.
Should We Use Technology That Can Eradicate Entire Species?
In a 2016 report,18 the Institute of Science in Society (ISIS) discussed the creation of transgenic mosquitoes, carrying genes against a malarial pathogen. Using CRISPR/Cas9, a gene drive was created that makes virtually all progeny of the male transgenic mosquitoes’ carriers of this antimalaria gene. However, the transgene was found to be unstable in female mosquitoes, and key safety issues were also raised, including:
To what extent might crossbreeding or horizontal gene transfer allow a drive to move beyond target populations?
For how long might horizontal gene transfer allow a drive to move beyond target populations?
Is it possible for a gene drive to evolve to regain drive capabilities in a nontarget population?
According to ISIS, answering these questions is “crucial in the light of the instability of the gene drive in transgenic female mosquitoes.” As noted in the report:
“When these females bite animals including humans, there is indeed the possibility of horizontal gene transfer of parts, or the entire gene-drive construct, with potentially serious effects on animal and human health.
Cas9 nuclease could insert randomly or otherwise into the host genome, causing insertion mutagenesis that could trigger cancer or activate dominant viruses …
Finally, the ecological risks of gene drives are enormous … As the gene drive can in principle lead to the extinction of a species, this could involve the species in its native habitat as well as where it is considered invasive. As distinct from conventional biological control, which can be applied locally, there is no way to control gene flow …
[B]ecause the CRISPR/Cas gene drive remains fully functional in the mutated strain after it is created, the chance of off-target mutations also remain and the likelihood increases with every generation.
‘If there is any risk of gene flow between the target species and other species, then there is also a risk that the modified sequence could be transferred and the adverse trait manifested in nontarget organisms.’ (This commentary has not even begun to consider horizontal gene flow, which would multiply the risks manyfold.)”
DARPA Brushes Off Concerns
James Stack, a plant pathologist at Kansas State University and a member on the advisory panel of DARPA’s Insect Allies project, believes the concerns raised in the Science paper are unfounded. He told The Washington Post:19
“I don’t understand the level of concern raised in this paper, and to jump ahead and accuse DARPA of using this as a screen to develop biological weapons is outrageous.
There’s risk inherent in life and you just have to manage it well. And I think as we move into a more crowded planet it’s going to put increasing demands on our food systems, our water systems. We’re going to need all the tools in the tool box that we possibly have.”
Unfortunately, recent history demonstrates we’ve not been very capable of managing these kinds of man-made risks very well at all. Just look at Roundup-resistant GMO food, for example, or electromagnetic field radiation from cellphones and wireless technologies, both of which have been shown to cause significant health and environmental problems since their inception.
There’s virtually no evidence to suggest mankind is very good at predicting the potential outcomes of our technological advancements, so unleashing gene-altering technologies that cannot be recalled or reversed seems foolish in the extreme. As mentioned, the Insect Allies project may be particularly detrimental for organic and biodynamic farming, as it would be completely impossible to prevent these gene-altering insect vectors from infecting organic crops.
Let’s face it: We’re surrounded by threats, some of them unseen, that are putting us at risk of ill health. GMOs. Processed foods. EMFs. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. It’s at this time that most people seek guidance to help guard against these perils and secure their well-being. Oftentimes, it seems like an impossible feat.
But here’s a secret: The most complex of tasks can become easier and simpler if you take them one step at a time. If you’re truly committed to take control of your health, then my 30-Day Resolution Guide is exactly what you need. This step-by-step plan outlines the most important strategies for achieving optimal wellness, which include:
The healthiest foods to eat (and when to eat them)
The importance of high-quality sleep (and how to get enough)
An innovative HIIT exercise that boosts your mitochondrial health (it only takes 4 minutes!)
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**Comment**
I’ve been writing about this for some time and am very concerned about the law of unintended consequences with this technology. Please share this information far and wide because if we don’t, we could find ourselves precisely in the same situation we are in with vaccines (little to no safety studies and serious health ramifications – more coming out daily).
Besides crops, mosquitos, & possums, work is being done on both mice and mosquitoes in efforts of eradicating Lyme/MSIDS. For that info:
https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/10/11/new-england-scientists-explore-new-method-for-eradicating-lyme-disease/ “There are a lot of microbes in ticks, not just the Borrelia microbe that is associated with Lyme disease,” said Dr. Rawls, medical director for Vital Plan, an herbal supplement company. “The problem with the mouse thing is that even if it is successful, and you block the transmission of Borrelia and prevent the spread of that variety of Lyme disease, perhaps that opens the door to something worse, like Rickettsia, (a microbe associated with the spread of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever).”
How important are mice anyway? Independent Canadian tick researcher, John Scott, has shown established populations of deer ticks in Manitoba as well as in insular, hyper-endemic Corkscrew Island, yet both are devoid of white-footed mice. He points out that there are numerous reservoir hosts that must be considered including other mammals, birds, and reptiles. https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/08/13/study-shows-lyme-not-propelled-by-climate-change/
Numerous studies show unexpected insertions and deletions which can translate into possible toxins, allergens, carcinogens, and other changes. Science can not predict the real-life consequences on global pattens of gene function.
“It means for all the new inventions … you would need to go through the lengthy approval process of the European Union,” Kai Purnhagen, an expert at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, told Nature.
A project to track ticks in Indiana hosted student scientists at Purdue University last week. The students have been involved in the statewide collection of ticks to better understand what diseases they carry.
Purdue University entomology professor Catherine Hill leads the project. She says a better understanding of what else is inside a tick influences diagnosis and treatment.
“We always think about one tick bite, one pathogen, one disease and that’s not really the case,” says Hill.
The Tick INsider project was created because so many Hoosiers reported difficulty getting an accurate right diagnosis.
“What we’re beginning to understand is that ticks are filled with lots of different bacteria and probably some parasites and protozoa and viruses,” says Hill.
These factors are influenced by what animal the tick feeds on.
The students visited the Purdue labs to learn about how the analysis works.
Hill says students are drawn to this opportunity because of the intersection of environment, entomology and health. Another class of student scientists will be recruited next year.
Nine different diseases have been identified in ticks in Indiana including Rocky Mountain spotted fever and Lyme disease.
One thing is for sure, the idea of numerous pathogens working symbiotically is not even on The Cabal’s radar. No research exists.No treatments are offered – just a “one-size fit’s all” 21 days of doxy to “cure” you of this complex monster, which if you ponder that for just 1 solitary second would be a joke if it wasn’t so deadly.
The discovery of aluminum (Al) in quantities unexpectedly high in brain tissue in five patients with autism spectrum disorder [1] has immediately imposed to us the question: from where has this aluminum come? We live in what one leading researcher on the chemistry of aluminum has called “the Aluminum Age” [2] and concerns about the toxicity of ingested Al were expressed over hundred years ago [3] long before it became as widely used as it is today.
Al is the third most abundant element in the earth’s crust and occurs naturally in the environment, foodstuffs, and drinking water [4]. It is also used in: processed foods, materials and articles such as, Al-containing food packaging, Al foils, cooking utensils and baking trays. It has long been assumed that dietary Al is the main risk source of exposure to biologically available Al. Under physiologic conditions intestinal absorption of aluminum is impossible since biometals (Fe, Cu, Zn, Mn, Mo, Cr) and toxic metals (Pb, Hg, Ni, Cd,) are absorbed exclusively in their 2+ state. Aluminum as a trivalent under physiologic conditions cannot be absorbed. Trivalent Al can be absorbed through the intestinal mucosa only in the cases of mucosal damage (infection, inflammation, intoxication as was the case in 1988 in England [5]).
The Camelford water pollution incident [5] involved the accidental contamination of the drinking water supply to the town of Camelford, Cornwall, in July 1988, when twenty tonnes of aluminium sulphate was inadvertently added to the water supply, raising the concentration to 3000 times the admissible level. If present in the intestinal lumen while the mucosa is damaged, or is ingested in toxic quantities, Al3+ is absorbed probably by simple diffusion.
It has been suggested that acid digestion in the stomach would solubilise most of the ingested aluminum compounds. In acidic aqueous solutions with pH < 5 the aluminum ion exists mainly as Al3+, e.g. hydrated Al3+ [Al(H2O)6]3+. By passing from the stomach to the intestines the increase in pH results in the formation of complexes of aluminum with hydroxide and finally the formation of insoluble aluminum hydroxide at neutral pH. Therefore as the pH is neutralized in the duodenum the aluminum ion is gradually converted to aluminum hydroxide and the majority is then expected to precipitate in the intestine with subsequent fecal excretion, leaving only a minor fraction available for potential absorption. In conclusion, independently of the pH value Al in its compounds always retains its trivalent state. Divalent aluminum does exist. It has been detected in the gas phase after explosion of aluminized grenades in the upper atmosphere and in stellar absorption spectra [6]. Usually humans live very far from these events and spaces.
Aluminum can be potentially absorbed through the skin essentially if it is shaved or irritated by application of skin care creams,rejuvenationcreams, sprays against unpleasant smells and sweats and after shave lotions that contain aluminum [7]. However, the use of these cosmetic products in newborns, infants, and children is not common. Al can be also absorbed across the lung or olfactory epithelia by persons working in workplaces where Al welding is carried out during electrolysis in Al production or in the processing industries (e.g., foundries, powder production). There are thus clearly different routes of Al exposure and what must be emphasized is that these are not necessarily equivalent with regard to the amount delivered per unit of time and more importantly with regard to the age at which the person is exposed to Al. The younger age carries greater probability for toxic effects.
Although it is commonly assumed that children obtain much more Al from diet than from vaccination[8], this notion contradicts basic toxicological principles. The route of exposure that bypasses the protective barriers of the gastrointestinal tract and/or the skin will likely require a lower dose to produce a toxic outcome [2]. In the case of Al only approximately 0.25% of dietary Al is absorbed into systemic circulation [9]. Much of the Al that enterally enters the human body is typically rapidly removed by the kidneys [10]. In contrast, Al hydroxide (the most common adjuvant form) injected intramuscularlymay be absorbed at nearly 100% efficiency over time [11].
More importantly, wherever the anatomical place of vaccine application is, adjuvant Al enters into the circulation where it binds to transferrin. This adjuvant Al bound to transferrin, has a unique capacity to cross the blood-brain and blood-cerebrospinal fluid barriers, access the brain where it is deposited probably for the whole life [12] since adjuvant Al is poorly excreted [13].
Today we live in an era of aluminum. Aluminum is all around us. Therefore, one can rightly ask the question: were Mold et al. [1] aware in their research that there was no contamination with external aluminum during the acquisition of brain tissue and the procedure for determining the amount of aluminum in it? The same question can be posed to all other former researchers and to their research on the basis of which a ″Handbook on the Toxicology of Metals″ has been written [14].
In the paper of Mold et al. [1] the strangest and most intriguing fact is that the highest concentrations of aluminum were measured in the youngest person. The boy was only 15 years old (case A4). Generally accepted claim that dietary aluminum is the main source of exposure to aluminum, inevitably raises the question: how is it possible that in the course of only 15 years of life, this boy “absorbed” such amount of aluminum and deposited it in his brain? On the other hand the boy in that age probably did not use creams containing aluminum, antiperspirant sprays, nor shaved. He also could not have been present in1988 in Camelford, Cornwall (UK). At the age of 15 he could not be a worker in the aluminum industry where he would be exposed to aluminum dust and fumes. Even less it was likely that this boy lived near the place where aluminized grenades exploded! We also do not believe that the boy was a cosmonaut and he travelled in interstellar spaces where divalent aluminum is located. In the work of Mold et al. [1] the year of birth of persons shown in the work is not indicated. We can only assume that the 15-year-old boy was born around the year 2000.
Given all of the above under normal, usual, physiological conditions the most important, the most regular and most predictable even by the law legislated access of aluminum into the human body is through vaccines.According to the vaccination schedule which was established in 2000 in the USA, by the age of 18 months, approximately 4425 μg of aluminum is parenterally delivered into the human body through vaccines [15]. After 2005 with the introducing of new vaccines, the quantity of adjuvant Al has increased up to 4925 μg [15].
Aluminumneurotoxicity has been shown in experiments on mice [16]. Aluminumtoxicity has been shown even in one clinical study in which 182 infants were treated with intravenous injections of nutritional formula that contained different quantities of aluminum [17] but received significantly less aluminum than the infants receiving aluminum via vaccines.Recently it was shown that another metal i.e. mercury is also neurotoxic for children even in much less quantities in comparison with aluminum [18]. Toxic effects of Al can be assigned to its physical and chemical properties. Owing to its 3+ charge Al attracts negatively charged ions and electrons but because it cannot transition to other oxidation states besides 3+, Al is not a direct component in any redox reactions but may participate indirectly in Fenton reactions. Moreover, the small ionic radius and the high charge of Al3+ are its important properties by which this metal can exert its toxic activity. The Al ion (0.054 nm) is roughly the same size as the ferric (Fe3+) ion (0.065 nm) and much smaller than magnesium (Mg; 0.072 nm) and calcium (Ca) ions (0.100 nm). Thus, in biological systems, Al can effectively replace these essential biometals in many enzymatic reactions [19,20].
2. Conclusion
Aluminum is undoubtedlyneurotoxic. The main the most important “physiological” way to reach the human body is viavaccines in the form of a trivalentadjuvant. But on the other hand, vaccines have saved humanity from many deadly infectious diseases. So-called cost-benefit is in absolute overdose in favor of vaccination. One should never think about abolishing vaccination, but rather to work on finding ways to reduce the toxicity of adjuvant aluminum and if possible to completely eliminate it.
To achieve this goal, we suggest:
1
All aluminum containing vaccines must be postponed until the time when the child’s brain shows sufficient physiological maturation. That would be the day when the child loses its last primitive reflex, corresponding the age of 6–7 months, ideally, after 12 months. By this age most of so-called synaptic pruning is completed and consequently the child’s brain is probably less vulnerable to the deleterious effects of aluminum, in comparison with the brain vulnerability to the toxins given immediately after birth when the newborns on their first day of life are injected with 0.25 mg of Al3+ through the application of hepatitis B vaccine. The younger the time age of exposition to Al, carries the greater harm for Al toxicity and brain damage. This is in accordance with a recent review in which it has been calculated and shown, that the levels of aluminum suggested by the currently used limits place infants at risk of acute, repeated and possibly chronic exposures of toxic levels of aluminum in modern vaccine schedules [21]. Therefore, it has been suggested that vaccination in neonates and low birth-weight infants has to be re-assessed in the sense of aluminum dosage reduction in vaccines, according to the birth-weights. The main obstacle to this proposal is the unknown effect of this proposed reduction on the final antigenicity of the vaccine [21].
2
It is necessary to totally eliminate the metal(s) in all vaccines (especially aluminum and mercury), whether in children or in adults;it very much matters to be clear and totally intransigent, on this point. Complete elimination of vaccine aluminum neurotoxicity could be achieved by its replacement with some other element, or compound. Squalene could also be used to replace Al. In a recent review [22] it was reported that calcium phosphate could be as effective adjuvant as aluminum salts, with the following advantages: Calcium phosphate is present in the general monographic on human vaccines of the European Pharmacopoeia 8.0; calcium phosphate is classified as safe and biocompatible by the US FDA; calcium phosphate is a natural compound of the human body, thus suggesting its good tolerance for individuals; adsorption capability of calcium phosphate is equivalent to aluminum adjuvants depending on preparation mode, considered antigens, and particle size; calcium phosphate booster antigenicity is potentially better than with aluminum adjuvants [22].
Calcium phosphate was used in France until the mid-1980s mainly for the diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus vaccine group without any mention of adverse reactions by physicians. Until the early-1970s it was also successfully used in the pentavalent human vaccination (smallpox, yellow fever, measles, BCG, and tetanus) and also without any reported adverse reaction [23].
With all of this in mind it is very mysterious and curious that in the 1980s, vaccines manufacturers opted for replacing calcium phosphate, which was used as adjuvant for human vaccines with Al as preferred adjuvant. Since then most of the clinical experience has been gathered with the use of Al as vaccines adjuvant while calcium phosphate was only marginally investigated [24]. From the other side we do not insist but to our knowledge, we would like to suggest that zinc could be the element of choice to replace aluminum for the following reasons: 1. Both metals, Zn and Al are amphoteric; 2. Zinc is necessary for normal human life (zinc human body burden is between 200 and 300 mg); and finally; 3. so far, no zinc overload related disease has been described. In animal experiments zinc toxicity has been shown but normally and fortunately, humans do not live in “experimental” conditions, in which experimental animals are exposed to excessive, toxic quantities of various substances, including zinc. There are no literature data so far on the use of zinc as adjuvant. Therefore, vaccinologists and immunologists must start as soon as possible with the experiments with zinc compounds (hydroxide, sulphate or phosphate) as adjuvant. If it turns out after the experiment that zinc compound(s) have successfully replaced Al compounds as adjuvants, the amount of zinc that would be administered by vaccine in children up to 18 months of age would be about 5.000 μg ( = 5 mg), which is absolutely far beyond the domain of experimental Zn toxicity.
Naturally many scientists will not be in agreement with our arguments on the potential role of zinc in future vaccines. The fact is that we presently possess no critical perspective for zinc to be the substitution for Al, as well. Both of these statements should not at all be the arguments against our proposal for the experiments with zinc as adjuvant to find out whether zinc and its compounds could offer advantages over aluminum.
A.L.R. Merce, J. Felcman, M.A.L. Recio (Eds.), Molecular and Supramolecular Bioinorganic Chemistry: Applications in Medical Science, Nova Biomedical Books., NY, USA (2009), pp. 45-68
EFSA (European Food Safety Authority)Safety of aluminum from dietary intake, scientific opinion of the panel on food additives, flavourings, processing aids and food contact materials
A. Pineau, O. Guillard, F. Favreau, A. Marrauld, B. FauconneauIn vitro study of percutaneous absorption of aluminum from antiperspirants through human skin in the Franz™ diffusion cell
G. Crépeaux, H. Eidi, M.-O. David, Y. Baba-Amer, E. Tzavara, B. Giros, F.-J. Authier, C. Exley, C.A. Shaw, J. Cadusseau, R.K. GherardiNon-linear dose-response of aluminium hydroxyde adjuvant particles : selective low dose neurotoxicity
I. Prpić, A. Milardović, I. Vlašić-Cicvarić, Z. Špiric, J. Radić Nišević, P. Vukelić, J. Snoj Tratnik, D. Mazej, M. HorvatPrenatal exposure to low-level methylmercury alters the child’s fine motor skills at the age of 18 months
