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Among the many epidemiological trends blamed on vaccines, one of the lesser known fallacies is that they are the cause of an increased incidence of childhood peanut allergies in the United States and other nations. Alternative health website and alien false flag watchdog Natural News, for example, used this argument in a 13 February 2017 story arguing that President Trump’s allegedly exemplary health is, in part, thanks to his never having received a flu shot: Though articles and individuals attempting to make this link propose a variety of mechanisms for the ways in which an inoculation could contribute to the development of peanut allergies, each relies on the false premise that vaccines (childhood and/or influenza) contain undisclosed traces of peanut oil. The most common narrative found online is that peanut oil is used as what is known as an adjuvant (a chemical that increases the body's immune response to an inoculation) but loopholes in the legal system allow this information to remain undisclosed. This assertion appears to have its roots in the 2011 book The Peanut Allergy Epidemic by Heather Fraser, which has a section about the potential presence of peanut oil adjuvants in vaccines. Fraser attempts to argue that some kinds of adjuvants in injections (not specifically childhood vaccines) may have, through poorly understood mechanisms, sensitized children to peanut and other allergies. This specific chapter (and the evidence it cites) appears to be the basis for a number peanut oil claims on numerous anti-vaccine websites. The web site VaccineInformationNetwork.com summarizes that narrative in a way that is representative of many posts: While the Vaccine Information Network post is a bit more dramatic in its language, both that post and the book from which that information is derived make a number of claims that require investigation: Vaccines Have Used Peanut Adjuvants Since The 1960s — False The notion that vaccines containing peanut oil adjuvants were introduced to the public, as presented in Fraser’s book, relies on a 1964 New York Times report about a clinical trial conducted by the pharmaceutical company Merck of a flu vaccine that contained a new peanut-oil based adjuvant given the name Adjuvant 65, which at the time seemed to show considerable promise: This article, however, in no way demonstrates that vaccines commonly contained peanut-oil adjuvants in the 1960s; In fact, it makes it clear that they were not even approved for public use in the United States, explicitly stating the new vaccine is still under study and is not yet licensed for general use. This kind of bait-and-switch is also applied to another New York Times article from 1966. Here, crucially, Fraser says that in 1966, Merck introduced this novel peanut oil additive to the public in a flu vaccine, implying the product was approved for public use. The only problem is the story she cited concerns a conference presentation by the same researchers in the 1964 study, and it once again makes it clear that it is not a publicly available concoction, but instead still undergoing testing: When asked for clarification, Fraser told us via email that she did not intend to suggest that Adjuvant 65 was ever used in American vaccines: Intent or not, it appears likely that many anti-vaccine websites have taken these two citations as proof that Adjuvant 65, or some peanut oil containing progeny, is and remains a commonly used ingredient in vaccines. In reality, however, Adjuvant 65 was never approved for use in the United States and many other countries due to concerns about its toxicity. No human vaccines presently contain the compound. Peanut Oil Became a Model for Subsequent Adjuvants in Vaccines — False This wording is vague as it does not define what became a model actually means. One thing it does not mean, however, is that the failure of Adjuvant 65 resulted in a number of other more successful and widely used peanut based vaccine adjuvants, as there has not been a single such product licensed for use in human vaccines. A more accurate narrative concerning vegetable oil based adjuvants and the relative importance of Adjuvant 65 in medical history can be found in a 1993 review of the topic, which describes the efforts to create vegetable oil adjuvants (which can be metabolized by the body) as a replacement for mineral oil adjuvants (which, because they cannot, lead to health concerns): In her book, Fraser cites a single research paper testing a peanut-oil based adjuvant in a variety of animal models, as well as a handful of patent applications, to defend the claim that it was a model for other adjuvants at the time. While it is unclear what became of that particular adjuvant in that study, no peanut-oil adjuvant has ever been licensed for use in American vaccines, meaning it likely didn't go anywhere. At least one of the patents Fraser cites, incidentally, certainly didn’t go anywhere — it is currently listed as expired because of lack of payment for administrative fees. Far from being a model for new adjuvants, peanut oil could more accurately be described as a dead end. By the 1980s Peanut Oil Was the Preferred Adjuvant for Vaccines — False This claim, incidentally, is not made in Fraser’s book, but is included on the VaccineInformationNetwork.com post, and may stem from a misreading of her statement that the inclusion of peanut oil in vaccine adjuvant patents became common practice. Regardless of the relative meaninglessness of the term common practice in this context (or the irrelevance of a patent application to a larger discussion of epidemiological trends) claiming that peanut oil was a preferred adjuvant for vaccines by the 1980s is about as alternative fact as they come. As discussed above, efforts to develop vegetable oil based adjuvants essentially stopped in the late 1970s. There are, currently, only two types of adjuvants approved for U.S. use: aluminum salts and a single, animal-derived oil emulsion used only in the Cervarix vaccine and only since 2009. Far from being the preferred adjuvant beginning in the 1980s, peanut oil adjuvants have never been licensed for human use in US vaccines, and are currently not licensed for human vaccine use anywhere else. There Are Loopholes That Make it Legal for Vaccine Manufacturers to Hide the Presence of Peanut Oil from the Public — False In case the complete and total lack of evidence supporting the claim that peanut oil can be found in vaccines convinced you that they were peanut free, anti-vaccine advocates also throw in a burden-of-proof logical fallacy to contend with: that pharmaceutical companies are doing it secretly and there is literally no way to know for sure. A number of websites make the argument that there are legal loopholes that allow pharmaceutical companies to get away with putting peanut oil in vaccines. Fraser makes that argument in her book, too, but without any supporting evidence: The response to the increased number of lawsuits was not to reduce regulations regarding disclosure of ingredients, but to set up a no-fault vaccine court to settle lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies that produce vaccines. This court significantly reduced pharmaceutical companies’ liability, which would make them less concerned with lawsuits, not more. United States law remains quite clear on the labeling requirements for vaccines, according to Section 610.61 of Title 21 of the US Code of Federal Regulations. This code explicitly requires the presence of any sensitizing substance (proteins left over from a vegetable oil, for instance) as well as the specific adjuvant present (along with pretty much every chemical that would have been used at any point, even if no longer present) to be clearly defined: The complete contents of all US approved vaccines can be found on the CDC web site. Ok, So It’s Not in Adjuvants, But They Do Brew Vaccines in Peanut Oil — False Some venues avoid the concept of peanut oil based adjuvants entirely. These publications, most notably Natural News (which referenced a series of posts authored by a doctor who, by their own disclaimer, may not exist), instead claim that peanut oil is (or could be) used as a growth medium in the production of vaccines, which could then leave undetectable traces of peanut proteins or other allergens that companies would be under no obligation to disclose: By asserting that peanut oil has been used in vaccines since the 1960s — a reference to the previously mentioned trial study — Natural News may be conflating adjuvants with growth media. A growth medium is simply a concoction of nutrients, sugars and other hydrocarbons that help either bacterial cells or cells hosting a virus to survive. In a post explaining why animal products are sometimes used to achieve this goal, the Food and Drug Administration describes the basics: The generally untestable argument made here is that nothing is stopping pharmaceutical companies from using peanut oil in their growth media. From a legal standpoint, however, this too is false. As mentioned above, U.S. law requires the identity of each microorganism used in manufacture, and, where applicable, the production medium to be disclosed. The argument that pharmaceutical companies don’t need to report things that appear only in trace amounts or not at all is equally false. According to the disclaimer on the CDC’s list of vaccine ingredients: While some of these media are patented products, their method of production and ingredients are publicly known — and peanut oil free. The Bottom Line Despite all of the above hoops one must jump through to debunk this myth, the basic facts are quite simple. Arguments suggesting that peanut oil is present in vaccines of any kind rely on using a clinical trial for a peanut-oil based adjuvant in the 1960s as evidence that peanut oil adjuvants are and have been in widespread use. Those trials were a failure. No peanut oil based adjuvants (or growth media) are used in human vaccines, and there are no legal loopholes (at least in the United States) that would allow pharmaceutical companies to avoid disclosure of different compounds used in their production. In response to our inquiry about the claims made in her book, Fraser told us: Despite this, Fraser’s book is still often offered as the definitive source for the fact that childhood vaccines (or flu shots) contain peanut oil.
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