BRUSSELS, 9 August 2025 — A major Danish study has delivered a decisive scientific win for vaccine safety, finding no link between aluminum adjuvants in childhood vaccines and autism or chronic diseases. However, the findings have been met with immediate criticism from U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent lawyer with a long history of promoting anti-vaccine narratives.
Kennedy branded the research “a deceitful propaganda stunt,” claiming it was “meticulously designed not to find harm.” This reaction, which misrepresents the study’s methodology and data, has prompted a strong rebuttal from the scientific community. The Danish study, a large-scale replication effort, directly reinforces the long-standing scientific consensus on vaccine safety.
Misleading Claims on Study Design
Kennedy’s primary critique centered on the study’s design, accusing researchers of deliberately excluding critical data, such as diagnoses before age two, and failing to include a cohort of unvaccinated children. However, as senior author Professor Anders Hviid of the Statens Serum Institut (SSI) explained, the study followed the exact same design as Daley et al. (2023), a U.S. study that RFK Jr. had previously praised. That earlier study, published in The American Journal of Epidemiology and based on a smaller cohort of 326,991 children, found a weak association between aluminum exposure and persistent asthma but explicitly stated it was not proof of causation. The Danish team’s work built on this, replicating the design with a far larger cohort of over 1.2 million children and a wider range of health outcomes, finding no harmful link. By attacking the design of a study he once endorsed, critics say Kennedy’s position lacks logical consistency.
Selective Use of Evidence and Cherry-Picking
In his criticism, Kennedy referenced “mountains” of literature allegedly proving aluminum’s dangers, yet offered only a single, often misrepresented example: the Daley et al. asthma study. The Danish team’s work directly addressed this, and their results showed no harmful link. One of Kennedy’s most deceptive moves was citing a “67% increased risk” of Asperger’s syndrome per 1 mg of aluminum exposure. That figure was not in the main results but appeared in a tiny subgroup within the supplementary materials with only 51 cases. As statistical experts noted, this figure was not statistically significant and was contradicted by larger, more reliable datasets in the same study, which in some cases suggested a slight protective effect. This approach, which ignores the overall weight of evidence to highlight an isolated data point, is a classic hallmark of statistical cherry-picking.
Misrepresenting Conflicts of Interest
Kennedy also implied corruption, pointing to three authors’ affiliation with Denmark’s SSI. He incorrectly identified SSI as a government-owned vaccine manufacturer. In reality, SSI is Denmark’s public health institute and has not produced vaccines since it sold its manufacturing arm in 2017, as confirmed on the SSI’s official website. Similarly, his suggestion that funding from the Novo Nordisk Foundation tainted the study falls apart, as the grants were for broad public health research and not related to vaccine manufacturing. Notably, Kennedy has praised other researchers and studies with similar affiliations when their findings have aligned with his narratives, further highlighting what critics call his inconsistent and selective use of information.
Broader Implications for Public Health and Policy
The Danish aluminum vaccine study was a robust, large-scale effort that was consistent with decades of peer-reviewed science. RFK Jr.’s attacks rely on distortions, selective data use, and unfounded insinuations—all hallmarks of fear-based misinformation campaigns. These campaigns pose a significant threat to public health and institutional trust, especially in an era of heightened vaccine hesitancy. This issue resonates with broader European challenges, where public trust in scientific institutions and government health campaigns has been eroded by disinformation networks, a topic frequently covered in our Society & Culture section and analyses of political polarization in the EU.
The politicization of public health and science is not unique to the United States. Across Europe, debates over mandatory vaccinations and public health mandates continue to be influenced by misinformation, as seen in countries like Poland, where discussions have occurred on whether to ban unvaccinated children from schools as a public health measure. This situation underscores the critical need for transparent, evidence-based public health communication and a concerted effort to combat the disinformation that actively undermines it.