(NaturalHealth365) Aluminum in vaccines is a growing concern – and for good reason, as you’ll soon see.

Aluminum, a neurotoxic metal, is an ingredient in many vaccines used today – including the HPV vaccine manufactured by Merck.  Now, a professor of veterinary pathology says he has found a link between aluminum in vaccines and a potentially life-threatening autoimmune condition.

Yet this explosive discovery may go largely unrecognized by Western medicine and the scientific community.  The professor’s peer-reviewed and published study has abruptly been withdrawn from publication in a scientific journal – leading many to suspect that the withdrawal is a blatant attempt to protect the interests of the pharmaceutical industry.

The journal, Pharmacology and Pharmaceutical Sciences, is published by Elsevier, widely considered to be one of the world’s major providers of science, technical and medical information. But the company’s inappropriate ties to big pharma have cast its integrity into doubt before.

Looks like aluminum in vaccines is an ‘unacceptable’ topic within the conventional scientific community

The trouble began when the journal’s publisher, Anne-Marie Pordon, e-mailed lead study author Professor Lluis Luján with a request that he withdraw his work.  Citing “concerns from the readership,” Pordon tried to “sweeten the pot” by stating that the withdrawal would not imply “misconduct” in any way.

The journal had received a signed note of concern from an unidentified letter writer, containing a litany of accusations characterizing Prof. Luján’s methodology as ‘flawed.’

Although Pordon stressed that “this is not a retraction, which implies wrongdoing,” her semantics failed to convince Prof. Luján, who refused to withdraw his work.

Instead, Prof. Luján – a professor of veterinary pathology at the University of Zaragoza in Spain – rebutted the claims, calling them “misleading” and “spurious.”

Over Prof. Luján’s objections, Pordon and Emilio Clementi – the Editor-in-Chief of Elsevier journal Pharmacological Research (which had already published the paper online) – stamped the paper “WITHDRAWN,” and removed it from the print publishing line-up.

Baffling epidemic in sheep yields clues to a ‘medical mystery’

The story really begins in 2007, when Luján, a practicing veterinarian, was summoned to a sheep farm in northern Spain in order to determine the nature of a strange illness ravaging a local flock. He found the sheep to be emaciated, as well as engaging in “wool-biting,” a self-destructive behavior usually attributed to overcrowding and nutritional deficiencies. (None of these were found to be a factor).

Luján also tested for viruses, bacteria, parasites and environmental toxins in food and water – and found nothing that would account for the strange symptoms.

Eventually, Luján came to believe that the symptoms were linked to vaccinations against a viral sheep disease known as bluetongue – which affects sheep in Belgium, Germany, Spain and the UK. In 2009, about 90 million animals throughout the E.U. were inoculated with four vaccines and two boosters.

In the years following this increased use of the bluetongue vaccination, the sheep population began to be decimated by the mysterious illness, which also featured muscle tremors, head tilts, collapse and bizarre behaviors.  Sheep – normally sociable, peaceful animals – began aggressively biting other flock members or withdrawing into isolation.

And, they were dying by the thousands.

Shocking link: Post-vaccination syndrome known as ASIA may affect humans and sheep alike

After poring over numerous immunology journals, Lujan realized that researchers had identified a similar post-vaccination syndrome in humans – and were attributing it to exposure to aluminum in vaccines.

Aluminum used as an adjuvant (or additive) was causing a hyperactive immune reaction in some people, which eventually triggered autoimmune diseases – including encephalitis, macrophagic myofascitis and Gulf War Syndrome.

The researchers had even coined a name for the condition: ASIA, or Autoimmune/ Inflammatory Syndrome Induced by Adjuvants.

Connecting the dots, Luján then diagnosed the sheep with Ovine ASIA (ovine simply means “pertaining to sheep”) – and published his first research on the syndrome in 2013.

Post-mortem findings and additional studies support Luján’s conclusion

Luján found that post-mortem examinations of sheep that had died from the “mystery condition” showed evidence of a meningoencephalitis-like disease.  In other words, the sheep were exhibiting brain inflammation.

Even more significantly, Luján found that the disease could be induced in a small number of sheep by giving repeated aluminum-containing vaccines.

Luján went on to publish three different studies involving ASIA.

One linked aluminum-containing vaccines to granulomas (nodules containing aluminum) in lambs, a second linked aluminum adjuvants to genetic changes, and a third (the study ultimately withdrawn from Pharmacological Research) involved bizarre behavioral changes.

The plot thickens: Elsevier has a shameful history of “shilling” for Merck

The questionable retraction of Luján’s article is not the only scandal in Elsevier’s history.

According to an article in Ghost Ship Media, Elsevier was paid by Merck & Co. to manufacture and distribute two journals specifically created to market Merck’s drugs.  Designed to resemble legitimate, peer-reviewed publications, the bogus journals were actually a collection of favorable studies involving Merck’s Vioxx, an anti-inflammatory medication.

Vioxx, of course, was withdrawn from the market after research showed that it increased the risk of heart attack and stroke.

In other words, the journals were merely paid advertising for Merck (although any reference to Merck & Co. was nowhere to be seen in the printed journals).

Although Elsevier said it regretted the “unacceptable practice,” the company was never penalized in any way. In addition, no system or agency exists to keep this sort of ethical breach from happening again.

Elsevier critics also point to the fact that the company has published research by virologist Dr. David Hawkes, a self-described “passionate vaccine advocate.” Highly critical of the legitimacy of ASIA, Hawkes has called the syndrome “the 21st century equivalent to the boy who cried ‘wolf.’”

Hawkes has also called for an immediate moratorium on animal ASIA experiments until an independent inquiry has been conducted to determine the existence of a clinically relevant syndrome, identifiable as ASIA, in humans.

Note: Ghost Ship Media reports that Hawkes is an employee of VCF Foundation, a company that performs research financed by Merck – a thoroughly unsurprising revelation.

However, Dr. Hawkes has not claimed ownership of the anonymous letter cited by Elsevier.

Still, for many in the natural health community, the picture is all too clear: a respected publishing company is attempting to suppress research in order to shield big pharma.

And, by all accounts, they seem to be getting away with it.

Sources for this article include:

NaturalMedicineJournal.com
GhostShipMedia.com