Paper Linking Vaccine to Behavioral Changes Removed

The editor in chief of Vaccine has “temporarily removed” a study, published on the journal’s website in January, which suggested the aluminum adjuvant in an HPV vaccine caused behavioral changes in mice.

Written byBob Grant

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WIKIMEDIA, NCIA paper claiming to report a link between behavioral changes in mice and the aluminum adjuvant in a vaccine against human papillomavirus (HPV) has been temporarily removed from the website of the journal that published it a month ago, according to Retraction Watch. The paper, “Behavioral abnormalities in young female mice following administration of aluminum adjuvants and the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine Gardasil,” was appeared online in Vaccine January 9. But now, the page that used to display the paper’s abstract has been replaced by a message that reads: “The publisher regrets that this article has been temporarily removed. A replacement will appear as soon as possible in which the reason for the removal of the article will be specified, or the article will be reinstated.”

Two of the paper’s coauthors—Christopher Shaw of the University of British Columbia and Lucija Tomljenovic of the University of British Columbia and the Sheba Medical Center in Ramat Gan, Israel—published a 2011 study suggesting a link between aluminum adjuvants in vaccines and autism. Those findings were criticized by the World Health Organization (WHO), which called the work “seriously flawed,” according to Retraction Watch.

One of the Vaccine paper’s coauthors, Yehuda Shoenfeld of Tel Aviv University, forwarded Retraction Watch an email he sent to the journal upon learning that the paper was temporarily removed. “This morning we tried to access it through PubMed and we found that there has been a TEMPORARY REMOVAL,” the email read. “We will like to know the reason or if this ...

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Meet the Author

Bob Grant
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From 2017 to 2022, Bob Grant was Editor in Chief of The Scientist, where he started in 2007 as a Staff Writer. Before joining the team, he worked as a reporter at Audubon and earned a master’s degree in science journalism from New York University. In his previous life, he pursued a career in science, getting a bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology from Montana State University and a master’s degree in marine biology from the College of Charleston in South Carolina. Bob edited Reading Frames and other sections of the magazine.
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