Yesterday, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. published a sharp and comprehensive critique of the recent study by Andersson et al., which was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. The study made headlines for claiming that aluminum-adjuvanted vaccines administered in early childhood are not associated with increased risks of autoimmune, allergic, or neurodevelopmental disorders.
Kennedy did not mince words. He described the study as “so deeply flawed it functions not as science but as a deceitful propaganda stunt by the pharmaceutical industry.” Among the many questionable features he identified, one stood out to me in particular. Kennedy wrote:
“These sleights of hand magnify the potential for allowing the authors to reach their absurd suggestion that higher aluminum exposure is somehow protective against asthma, allergies, and neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism.”
This sentence stopped me in my tracks because I had noticed the exact same thing. While Kennedy voiced this concern from the standpoint of public health advocacy, I approached the same issue from an academic and data-driven perspective. What I found not only aligns with his observation but adds further empirical grounding to it. In fact, this very point was at the heart of a formal comment I submitted to the Annals of Internal Medicine. The authors of the study responded — but, in my view, did not adequately address the core contradiction. In this short article, I lay out the full story, supported by the data, to show why this implausible pattern of protective effects cannot be ignored.
Hellbound and Down 