![]() ![]() Just so we know what we’re actually discussing here let’s group the covid vaccines currently in circulation and see how each one is affected by the fetal cell debate. (Research with such lines is not covered by US regulations governing the use of fresh fetal cells and tissue nor captured in the NIH database.) In the past 25 years, fetal cell lines have been used in a roster of medical advances, including the production of a blockbuster arthritis drug and therapeutic proteins that fight cystic fibrosis and hemophilia. Viruses multiply readily in these cells, and they are used to manufacture many globally important vaccines, including those against measles, rubella, rabies, chickenpox, shingles, and hepatitis A.Īn estimated 5.8 billion people have received vaccines produced on these two cell lines which, with others, have become standard laboratory tools in studies of aging and drug toxicity. Comparing Apples with ApplesĪccording to Nature, 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. When it was time to make a vaccine, they continued growing the viruses in the cells that worked best during these earlier studies. Our ability to maintain cells at very low temperatures in liquid nitrogen has enabled scientists to continue using the same fetal cell lines- almost 60 years later – that were first isolated in the 1960s.Īs scientists studied these viruses in the lab, they found that the best cells to use were the fetal cells mentioned above. For most cell lines, including fetal cells, it is around 50 divisions however, because fetal cells have not divided as many times as other cell types, they can be used longer. Almost all cells die after they have divided a certain number of times scientifically, this number is known as the Hayflick limit.Viruses need cells to grow and tend to grow better in cells from humans than animals (because they infect humans).No further sources of fetal cells are needed to make these vaccines.įetal cells are particularly suited to the task of growing vaccines. These same fetal cells have continued to grow in the laboratory and are used to make vaccines today. The fetal fibroblast cells used to grow vaccine viruses were first obtained from elective termination of two pregnancies in the early 1960s. Fibroblast cells hold skin and other connective tissue together. The preferred type of fetal cell to culture vaccines in is called a fibroblast. None of the COVID-19 vaccines in development use fetal cells taken from recent abortions. Challenges associated with the isolation of these stem cells are (1) they can be obtained only from 8- to 9-week-old fetuses and (2) EG cells have limited proliferation capacity, so they cannot be kept viable for an extended period. Embryonic germ (EG) cells isolated from them are found to be pluripotent. ![]() These cells known as primordial germ cells are the precursors of eggs and sperms and were isolated from the gonadal ridges and mesenteries of 5–9-week fetuses obtained by therapeutic abortion. The cells we’re discussing shouldn’t be confused with fetal stem cells either, which were first isolated and cultured by John Gearhart and his team at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1998 (Shamblott et al., 1998). Although not relevant to this discussion, readers may gain insight from this article about the importance of fetal cell cultures and stem cells to research and scientific advances. Vaccine development relies on these fetal cell lines. They do not contain any tissue from a fetus. Those individual cells have since multiplied into many new cells over the past four or five decades, creating fetal cell lines.Ĭurrent fetal cell lines are thousands of generations removed from the original fetal tissue. They descend from cells taken from elective abortions in the 1970s and 1980s. Fetal cell lines are cells that grow in a laboratory. ![]() Where do these claims come from, do they have any basis in fact, or are they simply scare tactics latched onto by the anti-vaxx community to scare you off using vaccines? We’ll examine the exact mechanisms of how vaccines are developed and produced to explain this misinterpreted construct.įirst of all, it’s important to draw a strong distinction between the older lines of cultured fetal lung cells and other organ cells, referred to below (the cells we’re discussing in this article), and freshly harvested tissue required for the extraction of stem cells for murine experimentation. Vaccines contain fetal cells from aborted fetuses. If you follow the anti-vaxx crowd then you will have heard the claims being bandied about on social media. ![]()
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