Arguing with Anti-Vaxxer friend

[LadyForCamus]

Ask your friend to explain what it means to them in their own words.  Then see if that understanding is a relevant and valid concern.  This study seems to highlight the potential for alum from vaccine adjuvants to accumulate in the brain as a consequence of repeated exposure.  I'd have to read the study to quantify the amounts considered by the study, the amount needed for one's exposure to be problematic, and the actual quantity of alum adjuvant one is likely to be exposed to from vaccines and other sources.  Unless those factors are known and related to each other, the consolidation in the brain which the article discusses cannot be determined to be relevant to the supposed pathological consequences of them.   So it's unclear whether the exposure risk that one suffers as a consequence of vaccination significantly enhances risk of certain pathological outcomes.  The abstract doesn't say.

Thanks for your thoughtful response.  If you’re up for doing me the favor I have the full article. If not, that’s fine too, Ofc. 🙂

In case anyone wants a crack at it:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4318414/

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A few sections that stood out to me were:

...as shown in a recent review of 130 consecutive deltoid muscle biopsies performed for diagnostic purposes in myalgic patients previously immunized with alum-containing vaccines. This study revealed that most alum receivers do not have long-lasting MMF. This could be reliably assessed whereas age, sex ratio, number of alum-adjuvanted injections, and delays elapsed from the last injection to deltoid muscle biopsy were similar in the MMF and non-MMF groups (43). This refutes non-documented belief that every vaccinee may have long-standing MMF lesions when biopsy is performed in the deltoid muscle.

We have identified selective increase of circulating MCP-1/CCL2 in CFS/ME patients with MMF (45). The imbalance between the huge number of vaccinated individuals and the relatively low number of MMF cases suggests crucial involvement of individual susceptibility factors in intolerance to alum. Genetically driven MCP-1/CCL2 production might represent one of these factors (5).

And from the conclusion:

It is important to look for genetic susceptibility factors that could explain why a given individual will appear intolerant to alum-containing vaccines whereas the vast majority of individuals vaccinated with the same vaccines remain healthy.

Seems like they’re indicating that a small segment of the population may be genetically susceptible to certain illnesses that may be triggered by the alum in vaccines.