You are doubtless aware of certain vaccine controversies. But the issue lingers. Are they safe? Do they cause autism? Might simian-derived vaccination even have caused cancers, especially of the brain?
And then there is that searing abortion debate: There are vaccines that were developed from the cell lines of slain unborn babies. While the Church allows Catholics to have them — for the “greater good” — one prays that this might be re-discerned (for there is the dictum: “good cannot come from evil, no matter how much ‘good’ evil does”).
It reduces to this, as “History of Vaccines” describes rather succinctly:
“The first licensed vaccine made with the use of a human cell strain was the adenovirus vaccine used by the military in the late 1960s. Later, other vaccines were developed in human cell strains, most notably the rubella vaccine developed by Stanley Plotkin, MD, at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia.
“In 1941, Australian ophthalmologist Norman Gregg first realized that congenital cataracts in babies were the result of their mothers being infected with rubella during pregnancy. Along with cataracts, it was eventually determined that congenital rubella syndrome (CRS) could also cause deafness, heart disease, encephalitis, mental retardation, and pneumonia, among many other conditions. At the height of a rubella epidemic that began in Europe and spread to the United States in the mid-1960s, Plotkin calculated that 1% of all births at Philadelphia General Hospital were affected by congenital rubella syndrome. In some cases, women who were infected with rubella while pregnant terminated their pregnancies due to the serious risks from CRS.
“Following one such abortion, the fetus was sent to Plotkin at the laboratory he had devoted to rubella research. Testing the kidney of the fetus, Plotkin found and isolated the rubella virus. Separately, Leonard Hayflick (also working at the Wistar Institute at that time) developed a cell strain called WI-38 using lung cells from an aborted fetus. Hayflick found that many viruses, including rubella, grew well in the WI-38, and he showed that it proved to be free of contaminants and safe to use for human vaccines.
“Plotkin grew the rubella virus he had isolated in WI-38 cells kept at 86°F (30°C), so that it eventually grew very poorly at normal body temperature. (He chose the low temperature approach following previous experiences with attenuating poliovirus.) After the virus had been grown through the cells 25 times at the lower temperature, it was no longer able to replicate enough to cause illness in a living person, but was still able to provoke a protective immune response. The rubella vaccine developed with WI-38 is still used throughout much of the world today as part of the combined MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine.”
Adds Scientific American: “Cell lines derived from aborted fetal tissue have been fairly commonplace in research and medicine since the creation in the 1960s of the WI-38 cell strain, which was derived at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and MRC-5, which came from a Medical Research Council laboratory in London. Viruses multiply readily in these cells, and they are used to manufacture many globally important vaccines, including those against measles, rubella, rabies, chicken pox, shingles and hepatitis A. An estimated 5.8 billion people have received vaccines made with these two cell lines.”
Let that figure sink in. The official stance taken by the National Catholic Bioethics Center is that “one is morally free to use the vaccine regardless of its historical association with abortion. The reason is that the risk to public health, if one chooses not to vaccinate, outweighs the legitimate concern about the origins of the vaccine. This is especially important for parents, who have a moral obligation to protect the life and health of their children and those around them.”
It added: “Descendant cells are the medium in which these vaccines are prepared. The cell lines under consideration were begun using cells taken from one or more fetuses aborted almost 40 years ago. Since that time the cell lines have grown independently. It is important to note that descendant cells are not the cells of the aborted child. They never, themselves, formed a part of the victim’s body.”
Is that the right stance?
Not in the opinion of a priest named Father Michael Copenhagen, who in an article called , “Restore Ye to Its Owners: On the Immorality of Receiving Vaccines Derived From Abortion” writes:
“’Take heed lest perhaps it be stolen: restore ye to its owners, for it is not lawful for us to eat or to
touch anything that cometh by theft.’ –– Tobit 2:21
“Such is the warning given by the just man Tobit, who suffered mockery, persecution, and tribulation at the hands of his own people because he sought to keep God’s law, to alone refuse idolatry and corruption in an evil age. He insisted on honoring God and neighbor by burying the dead at a time when the desecration of their remains was the state mandate. For this great deed, he was forced to flee and placed under a sentence of death.
“Holy Scripture relates this account because burying the dead is more than just a corporal work of mercy, it is a grave obligation so that the creature whom the Creator loves so much, fashioned after his own image and likeness, is not abandoned at the wayside to be disfigured and dishonored while the rest of us callously step over his remains to go about our daily commerce.
“Was not the dignity of the human body and soul elevated still more after the time of Tobit when our nature was assumed by the Son of God who took flesh of the Virgin and came in our likeness that we might be irreversibly elevated above the angels?
“Tobit’s predicament stemmed from honoring human nature and its Creator, and Tobit’s predicament now belongs to those who refuse vaccines made from aborted children. How is this so?
“It is best to set aside sterilizing semantics to look at the plain truth. A child is torn from its mother’s womb, and then immediately dissected, if possible alive, with beating heart, so that the sample is fresh. A piece of the child’s organ is then taken to a laboratory, immersed in an enzyme to break the tissue down into individual cells, and when a continually reproducing “immortal” cell line has been obtained after many such abortions, it is patented and the cells industrially multiplied in vats to become viral factories.
“When a sufficient amount of the infectious virus is grown in the cells, the brew is processed in a way which destroys the whole cells but leaves behind the virus along with significant amounts of the child’s DNA and cellular protein. In the various states and territories, parents are required to administer this into the bodies of their children for the sake of the public good even though the vaccine could be produced in an alternative and ethical manner.
“Those who refuse it are banned from the public square. Any healthy conscience has a natural revulsion to this ghoulish process and closer moral analysis certainly justifies that reaction. In determining the moral liceity of using vaccines derived from abortion, an assessment of cooperation with evil in terms of distance from the original abortion is a necessary but ultimately insufficient criterion because there is another distinct and more immediate category of sin involved.
“To conclude, as some have, that there is only mediate remote material cooperation in abortion by the vaccine recipient is a red herring. It shifts emphasis away from the specific moral character of possessing and using the cell line itself toward “historical association” with the original abortion, obscuring the central problem while even causing it to go unnamed.
“The recipient is an immediate participant in the commission of continuous theft of human remains obtained through deliberate killing, their desecration through exploitation and trafficking, as well as ultimate omission to respectfully bury them. While the original killing establishes the illicit character of using the remains, their possession and use becomes a distinct evil in itself, the circumstances of which do not cease as a form of theft, desecration, exploitation, and refusal to bury, regardless of the consumer’s distance in time from the abortion, or the number of cell divisions, or the merely sub-cellular fragmentary inclusion of the child’s DNA and protein in the final dose.
“Two sanitizing mischaracterizations contribute to this unwarranted shift in emphasis away from immediate continuing theft toward “historic” completed abortion. Firstly, the broadness of labelling human remains obtained through violence as ‘illicit biological material’ is not only insufficient but dehumanizing and offensive. Although the vast majority if not all of the cells currently used did not physically constitute part of the child’s original body, these cells still belong to the child.
“They are a living remnant of the child’s life in this world. If they are not the child’s cells then whose cell’s are they? Is it possible to stretch jargon so far as to say that these are no one’s cells? No person donating their tissue for cell culture and knowingly encountering the resultant cells in a lab would identify them as anything other than “my DNA, my cells.”
“The child has been silenced, the parents have forfeited by abortion any right of consent to respectful scientific use of the body, the scientists and patent holders have no right to possess or use the cells: these human remains belong to God, must be respectfully reposed, and it is not for Caesar to say otherwise. Secondly, “historical distance” from the abortion does not distance us from the possession of something stolen.
“If I am the beneficiary of a violent bank robbery where the clerk was murdered to secure funds, my personal distance from the robbery does not make it licit to possess or spend those funds or even other monies made playing the stock market with them.
“If this is the case with lifeless currency, how much more with the body of an innocent human being. If a copyrighted film is captured, reproduced, and sold through the internet, it does not somehow become licit to possess and use it simply because it has been copied many times over from the original, even if I have provided the means of copying, storage, and playback. The copyright protected item is the original artistic creation.
“Our artist is the Divine Author of human nature who produces a unique biological and spiritual work in His own image and likeness. It is absurd to say to public consumers that everyone must indefinitely use stolen work to help lessen the likelihood of a potential future problem even though a perfectly fine substitute can be easily and ethically provided. How much more with cannibalizing human remains obtained through violence. No one is bound to participate in one sin in order to avoid another.
“It is never permissible to do evil for a good purpose. For those who argue that participation becomes licit if receiving the vaccine is looked at as a temporary solution to a significant public health danger, they should know that it is not temporary but expanding and that it will be forced regardless of whether it helps public health or not. Public authorities who support public murder cannot be taken seriously as guarantors of public health.
“If immortality through medicine is the new religion then the insurance card is our baptismal certificate, psychiatry its confession, doctors its priests, the medical bureaucracy its hierarchy, research its contemplation, euthanasia its anointing, and its eucharist is the pharmaceutical solution, particularly vaccination.
“One person is sacrificed that the nation might live, their body multiplied and distributed by the priests. ‘Those who do not eat the flesh and drink the blood of this sacrifice will not have life in them.’ So we are told. It seems there is little more than a lab coat between this and human sacrifice as medicinal witchcraft. And there is an inquisition coming for those who contradict the new dogma.
“In one Washington Post article, we are put on notice: ‘The initial steps we have taken are essential: prohibit non-vaccinated children from public spaces, including schools; promote educational efforts; and, in extreme cases, force isolation on pockets of populations…Viewed through the lens of public safety, it is the parents who should be punished. Why not make them pay for the harms they are causing?…Fines for the increased public safety burdens put on these communities by a few ought not to be the responsibility of all. In many states, when hikers ignore warnings that certain trails are too dangerous and then have to be rescued, the fees for the rescue must be paid by the hikers. It’s a fine for making a self-centered decision that placed an unreasonable burden on a larger community. Measles should be no different…In the same way we have created sex-offenders lists to protect our children, communities can inventory families that choose not to be vaccinated, notifying employers of these parents as well as neighbors who may choose not to expose their children.’
“Isolation, fines, public humiliation, and blacklisting. There is historic precedent as to where this leads. Despite the public threat in his own day, Tobit proceeded in his work under the command that he be slain, obeying the law of God rather than the unjust law of men while risking his life to do so. God made him an example of faithfulness amidst hardship. When he was mocked by his kinsmen for adherence to these good works and told that his deeds were hopeless, he rebuked them: ‘Speak not so. For we are the children of saints, and look for that life which God will give to those that never change their faith from Him.’3
“I remind all those who imitate Tobit’s naysayers and persecutors that the God of heaven and earth is very much alive and very much offended, that He loves each of these murdered and exploited children as His particular creatures, that He will restore life to their bodies in the Resurrection on the last day, rejoining body and soul in these innocents who were denied baptism and the chance to live based on the whim of tinkerers trying to extend our finite years, that He will restore
this “biological material” to its rightful place and its rightful owner on that day, and we will all meet these children face to face.”
Aborted Fetal Material Used in Vaccines and Medicines:
Children of God for Life has provided the following science evidence which is recorded in the vaccine manufacturer package inserts, science publications and patents.
As early as 1936, forced abortions were performed under the US “Model Eugenic Sterilization Law” of 1922
and used in polio research. (Forsaking God for the Sake of Science) Quoting and referencing as follows:
Albert Sabin:
“A new approach was made by the use of 3- to 4-months-old human embryos, obtained aseptically by Cesarean
section…The brain and cord, the lungs, kidneys, liver, and spleen were stored in the refrigerator, fragments of
these tissues being taken for the preparation of media at 3-day intervals.” 1
Drs. Thicke, Duncan, Rhodes:
“Human embryos of two and one-half to five months gestation were obtained from the gynaecological
department of the Toronto General Hospital…No macerated specimens were used and in many of the embryos
the heart was still beating at the time of receipt in the virus laboratory.” 2
Dr Enders, Weller, et al Nobel Prize for polio research:
“Embryos of between 12-18 weeks gestation have been utilized. Rarely tissues were obtained from stillborn
fetuses, or from premature infants at autopsy…In the experiments 3 sorts of embryonic materials were used:
elements of skin, connective tissue, muscle; intestinal tissue; brain tissue…Whenever possible the embryo was
removed from the amniotic sac.., transferred to a sterile towel and kept at 5 C until dissected.”3
———————————————————————————–
RA273: Rubella Virus used in Rubella and MMR vaccines 4
– R=Rubella, A=Abortion, 27=27th aborted baby, 3=3rd Tissue where virus was isolated
– 6 weeks gestation; sex not recorded
– Isolated from kidney by Dr. Stanley Plotkin
– 40 more elective abortions for rubella virus isolation by T.H. Chang, 5
(67 total) *
WI-38: Wistar Institute, Specimen No. 38, 32nd Abortion
6,7- Abortion performed in Sweden and shipped to Leonard Hayflick, Wistar Institute, Philadelphia
– Lung tissue 3 months gestation female
– Used to culture RA273 for rubella and MMR vaccines *
* NOTE: 67 abortions to produce rubella virus plus 32 abortions to produce the cell line for cultivation means
there was a total of at least 99 elective abortions to create the rubella vaccine alone.
WI-26: Wistar Institute, Specimen No. 26, 20th Abortion 8
– Abortion performed in Sweden and shipped to Leonard Hayflick, Wistar Institute, Philadelphia
– 3 months gestation male
– Lung Tissue
– Used in recombinant DNA for Enbrel
This is an amazing video about what happened to kids:
Children of God for Life is calling on all prolife individuals to join them in congratulating President Donald Trump for his decisive action to end all government contracts involving aborted fetal research.
“We are deeply grateful to President Trump for standing up in defense of those who have no voice,” noted Children of God for Life founder, Debi Vinnedge whose organization for the past 20 years has sought to end the gross exploitation of aborted fetal remains for profit by scientists and the pharmaceutical industry in particular.
When the matter was exposed in a 2018 investigation, NIH Director Francis Collins tried to defend the use of tissue harvested from late-term aborted babies, stating, “There is strong evidence that scientific benefits can come from fetal tissue research.”
“We strongly disagree,” noted Vinnedge who has personally investigated the science journals involving vaccine research using aborted fetal remains dating back to the early 1900’s.
“In every experiment, every tissue procurement used, for over 100 years scientists also noted the use of morally obtained human, animal and even plant cells that worked just as well.”
In one such journal scientist Leonard Hayflick noted the reasoning for using aborted fetal tissue was because it was “economic and plentiful.”
And in a PBS article in 2015 Planned Parenthood and scientists involved with aborted fetal research tried to defend their actions by claiming such research was essential.
Dr Paul Offit, a pediatrician who has made millions of dollars in the pharmaceutical industry made the ridiculous assertion that, “Rubella caused 5,000 spontaneous abortions a year prior to the vaccine. We wouldn’t have saved all those lives had it not been for those fetal cells.”
A little fact-checking on his outrageous claims actually revealed that the first rubella vaccines licensed in 1969 used MDCK (canine) cells, duck and rabbit cells. The aborted fetal version of rubella vaccine not licensed until 1979. And according to the CDC statistics, there was a TOTAL of 1,064 confirmed cases of CRS (Congenital Rubella Syndrome) from 1970-1979, not 5,000 per year. In addition, actual spontaneous abortions from CRS declined from 69 cases in 1970 to 22 cases in 1976 with no confirmed data for 1977-1979.
In response to these and other outrageous allegations Children of God for Life issued a press release in August 2015 noting that not only has there never been a cure for any disease whatsoever using aborted fetal material, the true motive lies in the millions of dollars in federal grants that have been used for aborted fetal research.
From 2011 through 2014 alone, 97 research institutions – mostly universities and hospitals – received a total of $280 million in federal grants for fetal tissue research from the National Institutes of Health.
And while Planned Parenthood tried to justify the need for aborted fetal research by noting the use of the cell lines in vaccines, what they failed to admit is that there are morally produced versions for every vaccine except chickenpox. And even that did not have to be produced with aborted fetal material.
“The fact of the matter is that aborted fetal tissue is absolutely unnecessary for vaccine production or any medical research. There are numerous FDA approved moral cell lines and if human cells are desired, they can be obtained from a plethora of non-objectionable sources including umbilical cord, cord blood and other adult stem cells,” stated Mrs. Vinnedge.
When the matter was brought to light in 2018, the Catholic Medical Association condemned the use of late term aborted babies to humanize mice for vaccine research.
“The use of unborn human life for experimentation by the United States government is unconscionable. We are calling for an immediate stop to this practice urging the Trump administration to revoke the contracts.”
Vinnedge says she is grateful for the action of the CMA which helped alert Trump to the situation. “It is time people learned the truth of what has been going on in the abortion industry for over 100 years,” she stated. “At the same time the holocaust of the Jews was happening in Nazi Germany, our own holocaust of aborted babies was taking place right here in the US with polio vaccine research, something very few people are aware of.”
(More on the history of the abortions and fetal research dating back to the early 1900’s can be found in the article, Forsaking God for the Sake of Science.)
Letters may be sent to President Trump via their contact form on the White House website:
https://akastg-www.whitehouse.gov/get-involved/write-or-call/ or via US Mail to:
Donald J. Trump, President of the United States
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
More links on this issue:
Catholic Medical Association weighs in
USCCB Prolife Office statement
References for first article:
1 Albert B Sabin, Peter K. Olitsky, Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Biology and medicine, Cultivation of Poliomyelitis
Virus in vitro in human embryonic tissue. Proc Soc Exp Biol Med 1936, 34:357-359
2
Joan C. Thicke, Darline Duncan, William Wood, A. E. Franklin and A. J. Rhodes; Cultivation of Poliomyelitis Virus in Tissue
Culture; Growth of the Lansing Strain in Human Embryonic Tissue, Canadian Journal of Medical Science, Vol. 30, pg 231-245
3 Thomas H. Weller, John F. Enders, Studies on the Cultivation of Poliomyelitis Viruses in Tissue Culture : I. The Propagation of Poliomyelitis Viruses in Suspended Cell Cultures of Various Human Tissue; Journal of Immunology 1952;69;645-671
4 Plotkin et al, Attenuation of RA 2713 Rubella Virus in WI-38 Human Diploid Cell, American Journal of Diseases of Children, Vol. 118, pp 178-179, August 1969
5 T. H. Chang et al., “Chromosome Studies of Human Cells Infected in Utero and In Vitro with Rubella Virus,” Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine 122.1 (May 1966): 237–238
6 L. Hayflick and P.S. Moorhead, The Serial Cultivation of Human Diploid Cell Strains, Experimental Cell Research Vol 25, pp 585- 621, 1961
7
L. Hayflick, The Limited In Vitro Lifetime of Human Diploid Cell Strains, Experimental Cell Research, Vol 37, pp 614-636 1964
8
L. Hayflick, The Limited In Vitro Lifetime of Human Diploid Cell Strains, Experimental Cell Research, Vol 37, pp 614-636 1964 WI-44: Wistar Institute, Specimen No. 44, 38th Abortion 9
– Abortion performed in Sweden and shipped to Leonard Hayflick, Wistar Institute, Philadelphia
– 3 months gestation female
– Lung tissue
Dr Stanley Plotkin – open testimony on use of 76 aborted fetuses, 10
MRC-5: Medical Research Council, Abortion No. 5 11
– Abortion performed in UK for “psychiatric reasons”
– Lung Tissue, 14 weeks gestation male
– Used in (some) Polio, Rabies, Chickenpox, Hepatitis-A, Zostavax for shingles vaccines
HEK-293: Human Embryonic Kidney, Specimen No. 293 12
– Abortion performed in Netherlands
– Kidney Tissue; Gestation age not recorded
– Used in drugs, Pulmozyme, Repro, Eloctate, rhFVI, Nuwiq and Ebola vaccines under development
IMR-90: Abortion in US; Coriell Cell Repository, 13
– Designer cell line to replace WI-38
– 16 weeks gestation female
– Lung Tissue
IMR-91: Abortion in US; Coriell Cell Repository, 14
– Designer cell line to replace MRC-5
– 12 weeks gestation male
– Lung Tissue
Lambda.hE1: Abortion in US for “psychosocial indications” 15
– Second Trimester abortion
– Liver Tissue
– Used in drugs Procrit, Epoetin alfa, Epogen, Aranesp, Darbepoetin alfa
PER C6: Abortion in Netherlands, “mother wanted to get rid of the fetus, father unknown” 16
– 18 weeks gestation
– Retinal tissue
– Designed specifically for the pharmaceutical industry; Used in Ebola vaccines under development
WALVAX2: Abortion in China, 9th Abortion 17
– 3 months gestation female
– Lung tissue
– Designed specifically to replace depleting supply of WI-38 and MRC-5
9
L. Hayflick, The Limited In Vitro Lifetime of Human Diploid Cell Strains, Experimental Cell Research, Vol 37, pp 614-636 1964
10 Plotkin et al, Cytological and Chromosomal Studies of Cell Strains from Aborted Human Fetuses, Exp Biology, Vol 122, 1966
11 Jacobs et al, Nature, Vol 227, pp 168 -170, 1970 Characteristics of a human diploid cell designated MRC-5.
12 https://wayback.archive-it.org/7993/20170404095417/https://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/ac/01/transcripts/3750t1_01.pdf
13 https://cogforlife.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/imr90CoriellFullReport.pdf
14 https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/not93-196.html
15 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC350439/pdf/pnas00499-0116.pdf
16 https://wayback.archive-it.org/7993/20170404095417/https://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/ac/01/transcripts/3750t1_01.pdf
17 Walvax Biotechnology Co. Ltd.; Kunming, Yunnan, PR China Characteristics and viral propagation properties of a new human
diploid cell line, walvax-2, and its suitability as a candidate cell substrate for vaccine production, Apr 2015