Sometimes you see journalists, commentators, or politicians saying that ordinary people should not use trial-and-error experiments with health treatments, but instead listen to the advice of certified scientists. Listen to the “science” we hear. But many of the most common practices in medicine originated with ordinary trial-and-error experiments of the sort that can be conducted with little if any certified expertise.
Consider adjuvants. An adjuvant “helps” the primary therapy; aluminum can be an adjuvant to a vaccine or, with cancer, radiation can be an adjuvant to a surgery. As the passages quoted below show, the first vaccine adjuvants were not discovered through the theorizing of a certified genius. A motivated alert and practical veterinarian wanted to protect horses from disease. He noticed that a horse vaccine worked better when, by chance, the horse also had an infection at the vaccination site. He speculated that the inflammation from the infection aroused the immune system. So why not try deliberately causing inflammation? He tried different substances, landing on tapioca as the best of what he tried. Others later found aluminum to be more reliable.
Maybe what often matters most for medical progress is a sense of open-eyed urgency and a persistent willingness to engage in trial-and-error experimentation. The uncertified can have those traits. When they do, we should not ridicule, ban, or cancel them.
(p. A14) The origins of added aluminum in vaccines can be traced back nearly a century. In a stable on the outskirts of Paris, a young veterinarian had made a peculiar discovery: mixing tapioca into his horses’ diphtheria vaccines made them more effective.
The doctor, Gaston Ramon, had noticed that the horses who developed a minor infection at the injection site had much more robust immunity against diphtheria. He theorized that adding something to his shots that caused inflammation — ingredients he later named adjuvants, derived from the Latin root “to help” — helped induce a stronger immune response.
After testing several candidates — including bread crumbs, petroleum jelly and rubber latex — he found success with a tapioca-laced injection, which produced slight swelling and far more antibodies.
Tapioca never caught on as an adjuvant. But in 1932, a few years after Dr. Ramon’s studies were published, the United States began including aluminum salts in diphtheria immunizations, as they were found to invoke a similar but more reliable effect.
Today, aluminum adjuvants are found in 27 routine vaccines, and nearly half of those recommended for children under 5.
This extra boost of immunity is not needed in all types of vaccines. Shots that contain a weakened form of a virus, like the measles mumps and rubella shot, or created with mRNA technology, like the Pfizer and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines, generate strong enough immune responses on their own.
But in vaccines that contain only small fragments of the pathogen, which would garner little attention from the immune system, adjuvants help stimulate a stronger response, allowing vaccines to be given in fewer doses.
Scientists believe that aluminum salts work in two ways. First, aluminum binds to the core component of the vaccine and causes it to diffuse into the bloodstream more slowly, giving immune cells more time to build a response.
It’s also thought that aluminum operates more directly, enhancing the activity of certain immune cells, though this mechanism is not fully understood.
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(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Jan. 24, 2025, and has the title “Yes, Some Vaccines Contain Aluminum. That’s a Good Thing.”)