EPOCHTV
- Sep 23, 2022
- 6 min read

A new film "Under the Skin" Explores Harms of Aluminum in Vaccines and Potential Remedies

Updated: Nov 1, 2022

A new film, “Under the Skin” explores how aluminum in the Gardasil vaccine can cause serious autoimmune conditions in girls and young women who receive it. Directed by Austrian science writer and filmmaker Bert Ehgartner, this film is both eye-opening and deeply disturbing. It is now available exclusively on EpochTV.

What Is Gardasil?

First approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2006, Gardasil was heavily touted and aggressively marketed as a vaccine to end cervical cancer. It was designed to protect against the human papillomavirus (HPV).

HPV refers to a group of more than 200 related viruses. They are spread from human to human through anal, oral, and vaginal sex. Some HPV strains are “low-risk,” causing genital warts but are not associated with cancer.

Other strains are associated with several types of cancer, including throat cancer, penile cancer, cancers of the vagina, and cervical cancer. Gardasil was originally designed to protect against just four sexually transmitted HPV strains.

In 2016, the FDA approved Gardasil 9, a broader vaccine to protect against five additional strains of HPV, for both males and females. In 2018 its approved use was expanded to include people from the ages of 9 to 45 years old.

In America, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommend a two-dose series of this vaccine starting at age 11, given six to 12 months apart and a three-dose series given to people who get the first dose when they are 15 years old or older, as well as for people with immune-compromising conditions.

The Gardasil Girls

“Under the Skin” tells the story of several young women, in particular, two in Denmark, who have suffered from debilitating health issues after getting the Gardasil vaccine.

Kesia Lyng and Sesilje Petersen both took part in the manufacturer’s vaccine trials in Denmark. They initially thought participating in a vaccine trial “sounded really awesome,” as Lyng put it. They were randomly assigned to one of two groups, a test group and a control group that would receive a saline placebo.

The vaccine, they were told, had “already been carefully tested for safety.”

Yet, it wasn’t long before both young women began to have disturbing symptoms, including overwhelming fatigue, chronic pain, fainting, and heart rate disturbances.

In one particularly affecting story, Paula Aldea was given the vaccine as a teenager. Shortly afterward she called her father and told him she was at the bus stop and couldn’t feel her legs. Her condition rapidly progressed: within three hours, she was unable to move her legs at all.

These severe and debilitating conditions are particularly concerning because they most commonly hit youngsters who are not only healthy to begin with but active as well. As Dr. Chris Exley, a professor at Keele University, put it in the film, “I don’t think it’s acceptable to have collateral damage in a vaccination program.”

When Japanese young women started reporting similar side effects from the HPV vaccine, the program was halted. In 2013, Japan stopped recommending routine vaccination with Gardasil.

At the same time, the symptoms that these young women in Denmark experienced were dismissed by the European Medicines Agency (EMA), a regulatory agency that has as its mission to “foster scientific excellence in the evaluation and supervision of medicines, for the benefit of public and animal health in the European Union.”

The EMA maintained that their symptoms “can in no way be related to the vaccination.” And several spokespeople connected to the EMA unequivocally dismiss any safety concerns about Gardasil. Instead, they maintain that the debilitating health problems are psychological in origin.

Under the Skin

A Danish Doctor Finds Evidence of Harm

A Danish physician, Dr. Jesper Mehlsen—who is one of the most likable, articulate, and competent people in the film—uncovers irrefutable evidence of harm.

He counters that the government mouthpieces who dismiss his patients’ symptoms are epidemiologists who study spreadsheets and have little, if any, clinical experience. In fact, Mehlsen says, none of those defending the safety record of Gardasil have ever seen a single patient.

Mehlsen specializes in disturbances in the autonomic nervous system, the part of your body that controls automatic functions like your heartbeat and your breathing. He noticed a surge in young people with debilitating and inexplicable illnesses following vaccination with Gardasil. Some had been to 50 or more doctor visits before they found their way to him.

By testing the autonomic nervous systems of his patients—something that is completely outside of our conscious power to control—Mehlsen confirmed that they were, indeed, extremely sick.

Mehlsen hypothesized that something in the vaccine had caused the production of autoantibodies capable of attacking the central nervous system.

He was later able to identify three particularly problematic antibodies that can attack the autonomic nervous system.

Both Lyng and Petersen tested positive for all three.

The Problem With HPV

At the time the vaccine was approved, virtually every sexually active adult was exposed to HPV at some point in their lifetime. However, more than 90 percent of women clear it from the body within two years without any intervention.

What’s more, cervical cancers generally grow slowly over decades; this cancer is highly detectable (via pap smears), and also highly treatable. Simple lifestyle changes (like not smoking, and using condoms) can also greatly reduce your risk.

Cervical cancer is one of the more treatable forms of cancer, but black women are the most likely to die from it. However, Gardasil 9 does not cover the most common type of HPV found in cervical cancers in black women: genotype 35.

Under the Skin

The Problem With the HPV Vaccines

For any vaccine to be effective, the body must recognize the components in the vaccine as foreign and mount an immune response against them.

For this reason, adjuvants are sometimes used in vaccines. These adjuvants are substances that stimulate a stronger response to the vaccine antigen.

In the United States, some form of aluminum is usually used in inactivated vaccines, most commonly aluminum hydroxide and aluminum phosphate.

As the film explores, these aluminum salts have been used for almost a hundred years in vaccines. They are generally regarded as safe. However, not a single safety study has been done using modern scientific methods.

There is no interest on the part of industry or government agencies in studying the safety of aluminum, despite a growing body of scientific research that shows that aluminum is neurotoxic and cytotoxic (damaging to the cells).

Some research indicates that the aluminum can be engulfed by white blood cells called macrophages and carried to vulnerable areas of the body.

There, the macrophages may dump their aluminum and damage the already vulnerable tissue.

Immune Overstimulation Courtesy of Aluminum

Aluminum has no known purpose in the body and is known to be toxic to human cells.

So when an aluminum-containing vaccine is injected into the body, the damaged cells send out a dangerous signal, calling inflammatory cells to the injection site.

As the film explores, “fierce battles take place.” This battle can result in immune recognition of the vaccine antigen and the production of protective antibodies. This works well for many people, but no two people have identical immune responses.

And therein lies the rub. While a weak immune system may require exposure to aluminum to produce any sort of response, a robust immune system can be overstimulated by the addition of aluminum.

Interestingly, as Ehgartner explores in the film, most common chronic illnesses are characterized by hyperactivation of the immune system. This is especially true of autoimmune conditions where the body begins producing autoantibodies—antibodies that target human body cells.

Aluminum in Gardasil

The company that makes Gardasil, Merck, is using a novel adjuvant in their HPV vaccine: amorphous aluminum hydroxyphosphate sulfate, or AAHS.

This adjuvant has also never been tested for safety.

Enrica Alteri, who worked for the EMA for eight years, insisted it would only be “scientifically justified to investigate” individual components of vaccines if the component were capable of causing harm.

But, as the film shows, there is an excellent reason to suspect this novel aluminum adjuvant of causing harm.

When Merck’s safety testing was unblinded, Kesia Lyng was told she was part of the test group that received the Gardasil vaccine.

Petersen, however, was part of the control group.

How can that be? Further investigation revealed that this control group did not receive an inert saline placebo. Instead, Merck gave the control group injections of their aluminum compound without the antigen.

Petersen already knew she was sensitive to aluminum in deodorants. Had she been told that she would be injected with aluminum, she would not have participated.

Lyng is exhausted all the time. She cannot work and she barely has enough energy to make it through the day. Ten years later, she told Ehgartner that participating in the vaccine trials was a mistake.

“I feel it’s the worst decision that I’ve ever done in my life,” she said.

Bert Ehgartner made this film to begin a conversation about vaccines and vaccine safety. “Vaccinations are the Holy Grail of science,” he told us, “and no one is allowed to discuss them.” He is on a mission to change that.

At 59 years old, Ehgartner, who lives in Austria, has worked as a science writer and filmmaker for almost 30 years. “I want to open the discussion. I want to encourage scientists to ask questions and do studies and to think about answers,” he explained.

Safer HPV Vaccines, Remedies for Side Effects Are Possible

As Dr. Christopher Exley explained in the film, although aluminum has been used in medicine for decades, we don’t have a complete understanding of how it works. More research on aluminum could help scientists develop aluminum-containing vaccines that are both safer and more effective.

Dr. Jesper Mehlsen, who discovered the problematic antibodies in Lyng and Petersen’s blood, is trying to find ways to neutralize these harmful antibodies. Although retired, Mehlsen remains committed to finding a way to reverse the adverse effects these patients have been suffering from for years.

Watch the film “Under the Skin” that PREMIERING on Sept. 23 at 9 PM ET. It is now available exclusively with an EpochTV subscription. ($1 for 2 months trial available )