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The new paradigm -
aluminium may be responsible for two of our greatest threats to public health.

Doug Cross

20th May 2012

Aluminium’s unexpected toxicity appears to be responsible for two of our most calamitous public health disasters - the explosion in autism in children and dementia amongst the elderly. And the enforced administration of fluoride in drinking water could contribute to the absorption of aluminium from drinking water that causes dementia.

In the following two summaries, the role of aluminium salts in these two diseases is indicated and the need for immediate action to remove the causes explained. You will be profoundly shocked by what follows - but if your child has autism, or your parent is affected by dementia, you will understand just how important these new studies are, and why it is so urgent that we find alternatives to these aluminium-based products immediately.

Aluminium and Alzheimer’s Disease - the hidden connection with water fluoridation.

The most persuasive argument against water fluoridation is that fluoride can contributes to the epidemic of dementia. Whilst proponents and opponents of fluoridation argue over the minute details of its direct impacts on health, an almost unnoticed revolution in the understanding of dementia in the elderly is set to render such debates trivial in comparison.

New research into the relationship between aluminium poisoning and dementia has suddenly thrown a new spotlight on the contribution that water fluoridation could be making to the future burden of dementia within our society. We ignore this new understanding at the peril of both ourselves and our descendants.

The prevalence of dementia, and particularly Alzheimer’s Disease (AD), is already a far greater health concern than cancer, and it’s expected to triple in the next thirty years. For years the cause of AD has been controversial, and the main contender as the causative agent, aluminium, has been a matter of hot dispute. "It's the third most common element in the Earth's crust," these environmentally illiterate ignoramuses claim, "It can't possibly be toxic!" Well it is, and now we have the proof.

Now things are about to change. In an authoritative review published last year in the highly regarded Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, Lucija Tomljenovic concludes unequivocally that aluminium accumulation in brain tissue over a lifetime is a leading cause of the onset of Alzheimer’s Disease in the elderly.

She warns that “In stark contradiction with the abundance of research evidence . . there appear to be “several hostile intellectual attitudes” that reject the possibility that Al toxicity contributes to the growing incidence of AD. She says that the evidence that aluminium is not merely associated with AD but actually contributes significantly to its development “is built upon very solid experimental evidence and should not be dismissed.”

Most of the bioavailable aluminium that accumulates in our brains comes from our drinking water. That’s right - it appears that the almost universal use of aluminium sulphate in modern water treatment works may actually constitute one of the greatest health threats to the older people in our community.

As Tomljenovic says, resistance to the evidence that aluminium is a causative agent for dementia is extremely dangerous:
"Such widely circulated opinions hamper implementation of preventive plans to lessen exposure to aluminium which, according to some leading scientists advice, would be the most sound and cost-effective approach to the growing incidence of Alzheimer’s dementia.”

Why is this of interest to the anti-fluoridation community - and of course, those intellectually paralysed health professionals and politicians who still think that it’s a great policy? Because anything that increases the ability of aluminium to get into our bodies is liable also to be capable of accelerating the onset of dementia in old age - and fluoride is the most effective substance that increases its absorption from the environment.

Tomljenovic describes the problem very clearly:
"In the presence of fluoride, only trace amounts of Al are needed to produce substantial neuronal injury. Both fluoride and Al when complexed in AlF–x [fluoroaluminates] appear to be more easily absorbed from the GI [gastrointestinal] tract compared to their ionic forms."

She is particularly concerned over the practice of water fluoridation:
"In spite of these observations, water fluoridation persists in USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, whilst most of Europe has abandoned this practice. . . .In fluoride-treated water, fluoroaluminates are the prevalent species. The enhanced transport of fluoroaluminates across the GI tract and the BBB [blood-brain barrier], in context to their highly neurotoxic potential, raises significant concerns about the prevalence of these compounds in drinking water of various countries".

The practice of adding to our drinking water the very substance that is most likely to increase the risk of aluminium intoxication leading to Alzheimer’s Disease in the elderly - fluoride - could not represent a more direct threat to the future welfare of increasing numbers of our elderly. Already one in five over the age of 80 develops dementia, and things are only going to get worse.

It is essential that we get rid of the aluminium in our public drinking water supplies, and stop then stupidly adding fluoride to it. The evidence that the cumulative effects of chronic aluminium intoxication are responsible for this and related disastrous medical condition is now overwhelming, and causation established beyond reasonable doubt.

Claiming that there remains any uncertainty about aluminium as a primary cause of AD, in the face of the convincing evidence that it is, is as perverse as the persistent and perverse fiction that fluoride is ‘safe and effective’ as a prophylactic treatment for dental decay.

Now it is apparent that two rampant forms of man-made environmentally-mediated epidemic disease - dental fluorosis and dementia - could quite easily be brought under control. But this requires both the health and water sectors to recognise their responsibilities and take appropriate action.

Dental fluorosis could be brought under control within a decade or so, as the last vulnerable children pass through adolescence and experience the degradation of their teeth caused by their unfortunate exposure to fluoride during their earlier childhood.

But even if we take action now to replace the aluminium-based flocculants that are almost universally used in modern water treatment with less hazardous substances, most of us will not see a significant reduction in the prevalence of Alzheimer’s Disease within our own lifetimes.

The latent development period for dementia appears to be sixty to seventy years, suggesting that exposure over many decades eventually causes an inexorable progression towards the onset of this dreadful result of chronic poisoning. But that is no excuse for failing to act now - this is truly a just case for the imposition of the Precautionary Principle, for the future benefit and protection of those who will come after us.

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Lucija Tomljenovic. Aluminum and Alzheimer’s Disease: After a Century of Controversy, is there a Plausible Link? Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease 23(2011)567–598. (Abstract from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21157018 )

Aluminium in many vaccines is the cause of the autism epidemic amongst our children.

Just in case you find the link between aluminium and dementia hard to believe, and still think that aluminium can’t possibly be harmful (“Ridiculous! It’s the third most common element in the Earth’s crust!”) there’s more recent evidence that even tiny amounts can cause irreparable harm to our children as well as the elderly.

The papers that I am referring to will inevitably be viewed as highly controversial by those sections of the medical and pharmacological world that are most professionally and commercially dependent on vaccination as a public health intervention. So powerfully established as a therapeutic intervention is vaccination - and justifiably so - and so reliant is it on public confidence in its safety, that any implied threat to that perception is immediately responded to with virulent attacks on those who question the paradigm - the MMR travesty is a very well-publicised example.

But these papers are critical reviews of existing research by leaders in their fields. They examine the facts, and from these apply appropriate procedures to draw reliable conclusions. They have been subjected to extremely critical analysis before being published in internationally-respected peer-reviewed Journals, and their reliability is vouched for by the leading experts in these complex fields

Reading them is very hard going for anyone who doesn’t have a toxicology and biochemical background, but they provide the best scientific evidence yet that establishes the hazards of the uninformed use of apparently harmless aluminium compounds in medicine.

Aluminium hydroxide is used as an adjuvant - that is a substance that makes many vaccines more effective. Even the tiny amount present in each dose stimulates a very strong auto-immune response that is used to boost the action of the vaccine itself. And unfortunatley, it can cause permanent severe damage to some children.

That’s right - th authors state that aluminium poisoning from vaccines appears to be capable of causing Autism Spectrum Disorder (ADH). Tomljenovic and Shaw (2011) have reviewed 189 published papers related to this devastating condition, and conclude that
‘Our results show that: (i) children from countries with the highest ASD [Autism Spectrum Disorder] prevalence appear to have the highest exposure to Al from vaccines; (ii) the increase in exposure to Al adjuvants significantly correlates with the increase in ASD prevalence in the United States observed over the last two decades and (iii) a significant correlation exists between the amounts of Al administered to preschool children and the current prevalence of ASD in seven Western countries, particularly at 3–4 months of age.’

And if you, quite correctly, object that just because correlation exists, this does not prove that aluminium adjuvants actually cause autism, the authors have applied Hill’s Criteria to the data to show that in this case there is very powerful evidence that aluminium adjuvants in vaccines ARE a contributory cause.

(Hill’s Criteria are nine tests that are used to determine if there is a causal link between a specific factor and a disease or outcome - these tests are now used throughout science as an objective test of causation.)

This year the same authors warned that safety assessments for vaccines have often not included appropriate toxicity studies, because vaccines have not been viewed as inherently toxic (just remember the furore when Dr Andrew Wakefield suggested that there might be a problem with the MMR vaccine).

They conclude that
"In summary, research evidence shows that increasing concerns about current vaccination practices may indeed be warranted. Because children may be most at risk of vaccine-induced complications, a rigorous evaluation of the vaccine-related adverse health impacts in the pediatric population is urgently needed."

We are dealing with some very nasty diseases here, and an entrenched refusal of some parts of the medical establishment to accept the powerful evidence that the old ideas on the presumed safety of aluminium are unsound is liable to obstruct the acceptance of these new studies..

These new development have dragged fluoride into the limelight as a secondary player, but one with a hidden and disturbing significance to us all.

Unless we take immediate steps to remedy an already catastrophic situation, our children and elderly will become even more vulnerable to outdated ideas and treatments that fail to recognise the severe environmental threats of both aluminium and fluoride to us all.

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Lucija Tomljenovic and Christopher Shaw. Do aluminium adjuvants contribute to the rising prevalence of autism? J. Inorganic Biochemistry 105(11) 1489-1499. November 2011. Full pre-publication document available from http://omsj.org/reports/tomljenovic%202011.pdf

Tomljenovic L, Shaw CA. Mechanisms of aluminum adjuvant toxicity and autoimmunity in pediatric populations. Lupus. 2012 Feb;21(2):223-30. (Pre-publication document available from http://omsj.org/reports/tomljenovic%202011.pdf )

DISCLAIMER

The issues raised by these papers are highly controversial within certain sectors of the medical and pharmacological sectors. The comments in this summary are reflect my own personal interpretation of the reference sources identified here. They do not purport to provide medical opinion, and should not be taken as such. Anyone who may be concerned over their own or their family's medical welfare should consult a qualified medical practitioner - please do not contact me, as I am unqualified to offer any advice in medical matters.

Doug Cross, 20th May 2012