May 4, 2015 2:00pm by David Farrar

Glorivavale

The Press reports:

“Did you know”, Hopeful Christian whispers, “that some medical vaccines contain the embryos of aborted fetuses? Did you know that? Aborted fetuses. That’s what they put in them. Right? Now, tell me this: why on earth would anyone want to vaccinate their children?”

Can’t you just imagine huge factories of aborted fetuses, turning them into vaccines!

ABC News reports what the case actually is:

A small but growing number of parents who object to vaccinating their children on religious grounds say they do so because many common vaccines are the product of cells that once belonged to aborted fetuses.

There is a grain of truth to this statement. But even religious leaders, including a future pope, have said that shouldn’t deter parents from vaccinating their children.

Some childhood vaccines, including the one against rubella — which is part of the MMR vaccine given to millions of children worldwide for measles, mumps and rubella — is cultured in “WI-38 human diploid lung fibroblasts,” according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s fact sheet on the vaccine’s ingredients.

Merck, the vaccine’s manufacturer, acknowledged that those cells were originally obtained from an electively aborted fetus. They were used to start a cell line, which is a cell multiplied over and over again to produce cells that are of a consistent genetic makeup. The WI-38 cell line is used as a culture to grow live viruses that are used in vaccines.

Vaccines Developed Using Human Cell Strains

“Merck, as well as other vaccine manufacturers, uses two well-established human cell lines to grow the virus for selected vaccines,” Merck said in a statement to ABC News. “The FDA has approved the use of these cell lines for the production of these Merck vaccines.”

Other common vaccines, including those for chicken pox, hepatitis and rabies, are also propagated in cells originating from legally aborted human fetuses, according to the FDA.

“These abortions, which occurred decades ago, were not undertaken with the intent of producing vaccines,” said a spokeswoman for the U.S. Centers Disease Control and Prevention.

The original cells were obtained more than 50 years ago and have been maintained under strict federal guidelines by the American Type Culture Collection, according to Merck.

“These cell lines are now more than three generations removed from their origin, and we have not used any new tissue to produce these vaccines,” the company added in its statement.

To say that the vaccines contain a significant amount of human fetal tissue, as some objectors to the vaccines claim, is misleading, stressed Dr. Paul Offit, the director of the vaccine education center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

“There are perhaps nanograms of DNA fragments still found in the vaccine, perhaps billionths of a gram,” he said. “You would find as much if you analyzed the fruits and vegetables you eat.”

Anyway back to Gloriavale:

“Living out there in the world, you don’t really know how selfish you are,” he tells me, before asking whether I’m married and have children. Not yet, I tell him. Christian turns away, looking visibly aghast. He glances around the room at the faces of other Gloriavale leaders. There is awkward silence. The other men look away too. Eventually, Christian muses: “But why not? You’re over the age of 16, aren’t you?”

Heh, I should visit there!