  In an earlier paper we demonstrated that the "novel attractive force" between
protons in dense hydrogen reported by Shukla and Eliasson based on linearized
quantum hydrodynamics (LQHD) is wrong. As benchmark results we used state of
the art density functional theory (DFT) simulations. In their response to that
paper Shukla et al. (arXiv:1112.5556) claimed that the disagreement is due to a
failure of DFT. Here we show - by comparing the properties and limitations of
DFT and QHD - that their statements have no scientific basis and that DFT is a
suitable benchmark for more approximate approaches such as QHD and LQHD.
