A friend of mine told me he has heard that various vaccines are made from aborted baby cells. I’m trying to find the straight dope on this, so to speak.
Tell me if I’m wrong. It looks like they do have some cells from babies aborted 40 years ago(why would these exist?). And, they have used some of those cells to grow cultures or something to make vaccines like Hepatitis A vaccines.
Uh, I’m far from a scientist, by the way.
Anyway, it sounds extremist to me to get all worried about it. I don’t like abortion, but it does not sound like we are aborting babies to make vaccines for ourselves, something some of these right wingy articles want to make it sound like.
No. Nobody is using aborted fetuses to make vaccines, unless you include chickens - some vaccines are made in chicken eggs. Apart from anything else, do you seriously think that would fly for one minute politically?
Smeg, you don’t have to insult people with things like, “do you seriously think…” and so forth.
I mean, I’m intelligent. I don’t need you rubbing things in by sounding smug. At the same time, and get ready for this, I don’t accept your “no” as authority. You aren’t Cecil, who provides cites for his answers anyway.
I’m asking for the Straight Dope on this. I’ll rephrase it, then.
Where does this idea of “vaccines from fetuses” originate? What kernel of truth, if any, has been warped to make an extreme statement?
Am I wrong then that some vaccines, perhaps in the past, used fetal cells from aborted women, most of which occurred a long time ago? If I’m wrong(I probably am), where does that idea come from?
By the way, I’m curious what logical fallacies specifically are being used in my friend’s statement. I want to tell him to run it through the “baloney detector”, but I’m not sure myself which “baloney” tactics are being used.
I agree That apparently he’d be conflating use of stem cells for research, with the actual making of vaccines. I believe most commonly used vaccines were developed w/o using stem cells anyway?
Yes, cell culture from aborted foetuses were used to create vaccines.
"The report was quick to point to foetal tissue’s role in development of vaccines against polio, rubella and, possibly. rabies. Similarly, the eventual report of the governmental Peel enquiry. issued in 1972. listed benefits derived from foetal tissue research, and noted that use of foetal parts was often unavoidable: viruses for vaccines would often not grow in animal hosts, which was a far more publicly controversial practice than the use of foetal tissue anyway. "
Whether this is still the case I don’t know. A quick Google Scholar search on the most common foetal cell line suggests that it is still is being used in vaccine research trials at the very least, so I’m guessing it is still in use as a source of vaccines.
Yes, it’s true to a point. There are some “lines” or dishes full of cells, which were harvested from aborted fetuses decades ago, that are used in the development of vaccines.
There aren’t any more being collected now that I know of, because those old lines are still growing fine in the lab, and their characteristics are now well known and predictable, and that’s a good thing in laboratory work.
This is not the same stuff of the embryonic stem cell debate, but the science is similar.
As Blake’s link points out, this was done because some viruses don’t grow in animals or other growth medium. The alternative would be infecting healthy people with viruses to grow more of them to research and make vaccines against them.
Anyhow, yes, if one is so anti-abortion that benefiting from science made possible by donation of aborted fetal cells is abhorrent, then some vaccines are best avoided.
I think the problem they have with using fetal cell lines is the thought that women got pregnant with the sole intention of aborting the baby (i.e. that they were paid by the “government/researchers” to get pregnant and then to abort the baby to obtain the cells) or that these cells come from fetuses that were deliberately aborted.
They do not consider the fact that babies can be aborted in a natural way, a “spontaneous abortion” in the medical community. Non-medical people call it "miscarriage’ or “lost the baby”, more PC terms to avoid that horrible word abortion.
The nonsense about “vaccines made from aborted babies” has a twofold purpose - to amplify the scare tactic about “toxins” in vaccines, and as an attempt by antivaxers to gain support among anti-abortion rights activists. Actually there’s another element in this as well - the claim that “aborted baby” parts in vaccines are causing autism.
The truth of the matter is a lot more prosaic than what the antivax hysteria warns us about. Some vaccines are in fact prepared from viruses grown in human fetal lung cell cultures (MRC-5 and WI-38):
These cells were derived from aborted fetuses back in the 1960s and 1970s and have been propagated in cell culture continuously ever since. It’s a huge difference between the famous lie of the anti-vaccine movement, parroted by Jenny McCarthy, that there are “aborted fetal parts” in vaccines. As I have pointed out, even the Roman Catholic Church, although disturbed by this fact, does not advocate foregoing vaccination for this reason.
The author of the above article is an oncologic surgeon and researcher who has written widely on vaccines and antivaxers.
So - even the Catholic Church doesn’t preach against vaccination on this score, and we don’t have (and have never had) mothers obtain abortions for the purpose of vaccine development or production.
Using human cell lines to replicate viruses for vaccine production does not pose health risks for vaccine recipients. It’s part of a very well-studied and safe procedure for making vaccines that’s been ongoing for decades.
The true ethical issue connected to vaccination is this: is it legitimate for antivaxers to promulgate misinformation and lies in order to scare people away from life-saving vaccines?
Every time I think the antivax crowd has sunk to its lowest point ever and can go no lower, they surprise me by descending further. The good thing, however, is that the shrill extremism of antivaxers, coupled with ever-expanding scientific evidence for the safety and efficacy of vaccines, does seem to be getting the attention of responsible media and helping to stiffen resistance against antivax scaremongering.
Personally, I don’t care where the cell lines came from (I think the fetus becomes a living child when it takes it’s first breath. In the “old days” that is one of the ways they determined if a baby was stillborn or died at birth-did the baby’s lungs have air in them or not. No air in the lungs= not a “live birth”. Many parts of the body can be removed after the heart stops beating, not every cell dies the instant the heart stops. Are they against organ donation too?
. But it might make these people more comfortable to think the cells did not come from deliberately aborted babies.
Indeed; when the controversy about government support for embryonic stem-cell research was heated up, I would ocassionally run into some of the more hardcore members of the opposition talking as if it would somehow promote or foment more people getting abortions. Now, I could understand someone saying they don’t want to benefit from something immoral, but that’s different than implying people would set out deliberately to arrange for abortion-for-harvest.
It might indeed. But I can’t answer that question with any certainty, was my point. I won’t offer false reassurances.
(I see I inadvertently left out a word in that last post. I meant it to read, “Sure…but do you *know *whether or not these cell lines were from natural miscarriages or intentional abortions? I don’t.” But if it was “Sure…but do you *care *whether or not these cell lines were from natural miscarriages or intentional abortions? I don’t.” it would still be true.)
