Glyphosate is another of those substances (like fluoride & 1080) that can be the focus of a lot of unease. So it wasn’t entirely surprising to see the claim on WAVES’ FB page that glyphosate is found in vaccines.
Predictably, various little Gish gallops saw Yellow told that injection & ingestion aren’t the same, & by the way what about mercury? However, Yellow also asked for “evidence that [glyphosate] is above the background levels in drinking water or mother’s milk. Please cite evidence that glyphosate levels are at dangerous levels in vaccines, as hinted at by “Glyphosate has also been found invaccines” (sic)”.
Which is exactly what I’d have asked. For I suspect that WAVES’ claim is based on either a very poor study done by the activist group Moms Across America (MAAM), or claims made by researchers such as Drs Seneff* (who is opposed to both vaccination & the use of glyphosate) & Samsel.
If the latter, then WAVES should really read this critical review of their claims, which points out the distinct lack of any convincing clinical evidence supporting them. The authors comment that
We found that these authors inappropriately employ a deductive reasoning approach based on syllogism. We found that their conclusions are not supported by the available scientific evidence. Thus, the mechanisms and vast range of conditions proposed to result from glyphosate toxicity presented by Samsel and Seneff in their commentaries are at best unsubstantiated theories, speculations, or simply incorrect. This misrepresentation of glyphosate’s toxicity misleads the public, the scientific community, and regulators. Although evidence exists that glyphosate-based herbicides are toxic below regulatory set safety limits, the arguments of Samsel and Seneff largely serve to distract rather than to give a rational direction to much needed future research investigating the toxicity of these pesticides, especially at levels of ingestion that are typical for human populations.
What about MAAM’s ‘study’?
For a start, it doesn’t seem to have been published, other than on their website: it doesn’t show up in either Google Scholar or PubMed. Secondly, MAAM claim that the study found glyphosate in vaccine samples at very low levels indeed – mostly 0.2 parts per billion (ppb) or lower. But this was done using a test (ELISA, an ‘enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay) designed for use in water, & with a lower level of sensitivity that’s above almost all the findings in MAAM’s report. In other words, its accuracy at these very low ppb levels is doubtful and another test – a combination of gas & mass spectrometry – would be needed to confirm the results. Which doesn’t seem to have happened.
Thus, I suspect that Yellow’s request for proper citations to support WAVES’ claim will go unanswered.
* Worth noting at this point that Dr Seneff is a computer scientist, not a biologist, & hasn’t actually done any productive (data-generating) research into this issue. She & Dr Samsel have published quite a bit on glyphosate (a lot of it in what might be characterised as ‘predatory’ journals), but neither a Google Scholar nor a PubMed search found anything relating to glyphosate & vaccines.