The Great Debate

Oh boy. It's been a day. Dh and I went to Skittle's one year well baby appt (3 weeks late-their fault, not mine) today. I like her new pedi well enough. He actually took a lot of time with us, which surprised me. She's dropped to the 7th percentile for weight (18lbs 5 oz) but holding steady at the 65th percentile for height (29 3/4 inches) and 17th percentile for head circ. She's a little string bean (too bad she won't eat them...maybe that would help!) and mighty cute. She's walking everywhere and into everything (isn't that the way it should be!?). She's full of energy and full of life. She had to have her iron and lead levels checked too. They actually had to take two vials of blood from her little arm! She watched everything and didn't make a peep until they were done and bandaging her up (notice her arm in the above pic). Then she cried just until we left the room. And then-we walked to immunizations.

I know everyone has an opinion on vaccinations. Let's call them vax for short. Most people are either very FOR or very AGAINST. I am against all that use aborted fetuses. Yes, you read that right. There are several vax that use ABORTED FETUS. MMR is one of them. When I brought that fact up to my new pedi, he said that there was no way the FDA could approve the use of human tissue/cells in vaccines. Well, they did.

This is from the Merck package insert on the M-M-R II rubella section,"the Wistar RA 27/3 strain of live attenuated rubella virus propagated in WI-38 human diploid lung fibroblasts.1,2
1. Plotkin, S.A.; Cornfeld, D.; Ingalls, T.H.: Studies of immunization with living rubella virus: Trials in children with a strain cultured
from an aborted fetus, Am. J. Dis. Child. 110: 381-389, 1965.
2. Plotkin, S.A.; Farquhar, J.; Katz, M.; Ingalls, T.H.: A new attenuated rubella virus grown in human fibroblasts: Evidence for
reduced nasopharyngeal excretion, Am. J. Epidemiol. 86: 468-477, 1967.

Bold emphasis is mine.

(I just have to add that the vaccine is called RA 27/3 because the rubella virus was isolated from the 27th aborted fetus sent to the Wistar Institute in the 1964 rubella outbreak. The first 26 fetuses sent to Wistar had been aborted by doctors because the mothers had rubella during pregnancy.)

I have a very serious problem with that. Other articles I've been reading make a correlation between the use of human DNA in vax and that of autism. Now, am I saying that the MMR vax CAUSES autism, NO but could there be correlation between the two, YES. From former drug company scientist Helen Ratajczak, "An additional increased spike in incidence of autism occured in 1995 when the chicken pox vaccine was grown in human fetal tissue." (Ratajczak, page 70, Theoretical Aspects of Autism: Causes-A Review)

I am still trying to find hard evidence (other than the say so of other articles) of the use of aborted embryos in other vax. According to Dr. Mercola from Mercola.com, not only does MMR have them, Varicella, Hepatitis A and Rabies do too. You all have no idea how much that disturbs me. It shakes me up. This might sound harsh but I have to agree, "How can a person be pro life and NOT object to the use of these vaccines? For someone who is pro life to discover that a vaccine contains DNA from aborted fetuses is like a Muslim finding out that a vaccine is derived from pork" (Mercola, page 3, July 10, 2011) Any other Christians out there seem to find issue with this as much as I do!?!?

Skittle ended up getting a fourth round of Hep B (the clinic in AZ messed up her schedule-so she had to have it again-isn't that nice), Pneumococcal PCV-13, Hib, and Hep A. I insisted that we wait for the MMR and I refused the Chicken pox vax. The pedi actually said he wasn't even going to bring up the Flu vax cause he said we'd deny that one too. He was right.

What I don't understand is why do some vax have to use human cells, while others like Hep B are prepared with yeast cells. To quote Mercola once more, "So, why don't manufacturers avoid using human cells altogether and instead opt for less controversial methods? I suspect there is little incentive for vaccine manufacturers to develop and test new vaccines when they are already profiting from existing ones." Makes sense to me.

So, Christians, what are you going to do about it?