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Despite assurances from pharmaceutical companies and health authorities that squalene in vaccines acting as immune adjuvants are safe, there are valid reasons for concern. This article looks at:
What is squalene?
Squalene is a type of oil found in animals and plants. All higher organisms, including humans, naturally produce squalene. Animals and humans produce it in the liver.
A particularly rich source of squalene is shark liver and sharks are being hunted to extract squalene. Due to protests by environmentalists, however, squalene is increasingly extracted from plant sources, including rice bran, wheat germ, amaranth seeds and olive oil.
Squalene is used in cosmetics, vaccines and other products.At health stores, you might even find shark liver squalene and squalene in olive oil sold in capsule form as health supplements, with claims that it has poewrful antioxidant properties that protect the body against degenerative diseases such as cancer.
Yes. Besides containing antioxidants, squalene boosts the body's immune response and is vital for the health of the body's nervous system. But squalene is healthy provided you EAT IT.
Squalene injected into the body, as in the case of squalene in vaccines, is a different matter altogether. When squalene goes directly into the bloodstream, the body reacts to it differently from the way it reacts to squalene consumed as food. Some scientists believe the body will recognise injected squalene as "foreign cells" and react by seeking to destroy it. In the process, naturally-occuring squalene, which is vital for health, gets destroyed as well.
A study published in the American Journal of Pathology (2000) showed that rats injected with a single dose of the adjuvant squalene developed “chronic, immune-mediated joint-specific inflammation” - a condition commonly known as rheumatoid arthritis!
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Dr Russell Blaylock on squalene in vaccines
One vocal critic of squalene is Dr Russell Blaylock, a retired neurosurgeon, author and a strong critic of vaccination - and also of the flavour enhancer MSG (monosodium glutamate) and the artificial sweetener aspartame. In a recent article titled Vaccine may be more dangerous than swine flu, Dr Blaylock writes: What is terrifying is that these pandemic vaccines contain ingredients, called immune adjuvants that a number of studies have shown cause devastating autoimmune disorders, including rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis and lupus. Animal studies using this adjuvant have found them to be deadly. A study using 14 guinea pigs found that when they were injected with the special adjuvant, only one animal survived. A repeat of the study found the same deadly outcome. So, what is this deadly ingredient? It is called squalene, a type of oil. The Chiron company, maker of the deadly anthrax vaccine, makes an adjuvant called MF-59 which contains two main ingredients of concern—squalene and gp120. A number of studies have shown that squalene can trigger all of the above-mentioned autoimmune diseases when injected. The MF-59 adjuvant has been used in several vaccines. These vaccines, including tetanus and diphtheria, are the same vaccines frequently associated with adverse reactions. I reviewed a number of studies on this adjuvant and found something quite interesting. Several studies done on human test subjects found MF59 to be a very safe immune adjuvant. But when I checked to see who did these studies, I found—to no surprise—that they were done by the Novartis Pharmaceutical Company and Chiron Pharmaceutical Company, which have merged. They were all published in “prestigious” medical journals. Also, to no surprise, a great number of studies done by independent laboratories and research institutions all found a strong link between MF-59 and autoimmune diseases. |
Why, then, would anyone want to inject squalene directly into the bloodstream?
Well, some pharmaceutical companies that produce vaccines see an advantage in this. The role of squalene in vaccines is to act as an immune adjuvant that makes the vaccine more effective by enhancing the body's immune response. This means two things:
Technically, squalene is actually not an adjuvant but a component of adjuvants used by vaccine makers. But in everyday language, squalene in vaccines is commonly described as an adjuvant.
Currently, there are two types of squalene in vaccines used as adjuvants - MF59 used by Novartis and AS03 used by GlaxoSmithKline. Of the two, MF59 is more controversial and widely discussed, while not a lot is being discussed about AS03. However, both contan squalene squelent and are not allowed in the US, but used in Europe and most other countries.
Many Americans believe MF59 was one of the ingredients in an anthrax vaccine given to US troops in the 1991 Gult War and that it caused or contributed to the "Gulf War Syndrome", in which tens of thousands of US troops suffered a wide range of medically unexplained symptoms.
These include:
The Defense and Veterans Affairs departments have now recognised the following symptoms as being potentially connected to the Gulf War:
However, the US Department of Defense has denied that squalene was added to the anthrax vaccine recived by Gilf War troops as well as by participants in the more recent Anthrax Vaccine Immunization Program (AVIP). However, the FDA discovered the presence of squalene in certain lots of AVIP product.
This has led to intense debates, with some Americans saying they do not trust the Department of Defense and other government bodies, while others have dismissed any link between squalene and the Gulf War Syndrome as being unproven and untrue.
Those who see a danger in squalene say it is strongly associated with auto immune diseases, where the body's immune system attack healthy cells. The trouble is, these diseases take years to develop and it is hard to pin point the cause to squalene in vaccines, or, for that matter, other causes.
Indirectly acknowledging the dangers of squalene in vaccines, doctors and government health authorities often recommend that pregnant women and young children be given vaccines without adjuvants.
More indirect affirmations came from Germany, where it was reported in October that government officials, the German military, police and members of pandemic crisis committees will receive a non adjuvanted H1N1 vaccine produced by Baxter that does not contain squalene, while the general public will only be offered the GlaxoSmithKline Pandemrix shot, which contains the adjuvalent squalene in vaccines.
This led to public outrage. And the result is that most Germans are now rejecting the H1N1 vaccine even though it is being offered for free. Latest polls indicate that, as of November 2009, only 13 percent of Germans say they would get themselves vaccinated whereas two months earlier, some 51 percent of Germans said they would.
Incidentally, why doesn't Baxter, unlike other vaccine manufacturers, use squalene in vaccines? According to them, and contrary to popular belief, adjuvants such as squalene in vaccines DO NOT enhance the immune response and the effectiveness of vaccines.
The controversy continues...