For any who may not be aware that some of the vaccines you are urged to give your children are made from cell lines from aborted babies, Doug Wilson has a post trying to feel out the issue here:
He has opened the comments there and is asking for feedback.
I posted the below, there. It may seem harsh; I hope it is kind.
The thing that brought clarity to the issue for my wife and me was that the continued demand for vaccines and other products, even though made using flesh of babies selected and murdered, is driving a huge system of research money that is using more and more murdered babies for more and more uses. I say it again: itâs not âjustâ two murdered babies decades ago. Itâs more and more babies and more and more uses. From a section titled The Need for Further Fetal Tissue in a very helpful Children of God for Life paper:
âAnother key debate that has been used by some theologians and ethicists in determining the moral complicity of using these vaccines has been based on a misconceived idea that the aborted fetal cell lines are âimmortalâ and hence, no further fetal tissue would be needed to create new vaccines. The term âimmortalâ is deceivingly misleading and was deliberately presented to the public by the pharmaceutical industry as a means of covering up the fact that from the time these cell lines were first used, they knew fully well that one day further fetal tissue would be required to continue producing these vaccines.â
The implication that more fetal tissue would be sought has proven true, as there are now new cell lines being used and more being researched (each cell line a âuseâ of a new murdered baby).
Christians are chief among those driving the demand.
And as for âwell the babies would have been killed anywayâ â the very âgood usesâ we defend weaken our leadersâ hands when it comes to recriminalizing and stopping abortion. We want abortion. We need abortion. Abortion is good. It helps us. It helps our kids. We would be sick without these abortions and the good things they brought us. Our kids would be sick without these abortions and the good things they brought us. It would be evil to stop abortion. Abortion is our help, it is our need, it is our salvation! We trust in no other. Can it be that this is our Christian confession? Yet look at the hardheartedness toward the least of these. We hate the weak ones, the little ones, and we are greedy for their blood. But Jesus had the little children come to HimâŚ
I would urge people not to use the tainted MMR, chicken pox, polio, and Hepatitis A vaccines, and to teach their children why they do what they do.
Thanks Daniel for bringing up this topic, my awareness of which is only just dawning. I read DWâs piece this morning as well. I grew up taking âshotsâ for granted; just a routine part of life with only an upside (beyond the light and momentary affliction). Thus far, my wife and I have vaccinated all our children in a similar manner, that is, unquestioningly. Our 4th child is on the way. Yes, weâve been dimly aware of the vaccination debates happening in various quarters, but have largely just ignored it all. However, complicity in abortion is not something we can ignore. You urge people not to use the tainted vaccines, and that brings to mind a few questions.
Are there alternatives to the tainted vaccines you mentioned?
If so, how would one be sure one was getting the untainted vs. the tainted?
Or is this a place where Christians must simply be willing to accept the (small, but not non-existent) risks of having unvaccinated children, for the sake of those little ones who wonât even see the light of day?
Thanks for helping me think through this. I can only assume there are others like me who now have some researching and thinking and praying to do in light of new knowledge we didnât have before.
Generally, no. Or rather, they often exist but arenât available in the US. Some are combined with others that are not problematic, but you cannot get them separately (again, in the US). Anyway, as for distinguishing them, you can find more info here.
Thus, if you live in the US, following Danielâs counsel means you cannot get all of the recommended vaccines, including some of the âimportantâ ones.
Another consequence is that it has become increasingly difficult to find a family physician that will accept your children as patients as vaccines have become a more charged topic, recently.
I read it and am inclined to say I wish I didnât know. Fearing for the health of my children is a deep-seated sin of mine that Iâve confessed elsewhere before. My first two are vaccinated. With the third on the way⌠well, my wife and I are going to have to make a hard choice.
Thanks for sharing. I donât normally listen to The Briefing - does Dr. Mohler make any points worth visiting if I have read Wilsonâs post?
Creepy. I have been operating under the assumption that the fetal remains had been used in the past for the development of these vaccines but didnât realize they are used the ongoing production.
I know a lot of MCB research uses cell lines initially obtained via an aborted child. And those cell lines are not fetuses or âpotential people.â And I think they hypothetically could have been obtained from a child who died in miscarriage.
My children are unvaccinated for the most part, and since we moved here to the quad cities, we canât find a pediatrician who will take them.
Back in our home town, the primary care physician we used was a Catholic woman who had seen my family for over a decade. She is due to retire in a year or two, and then after that I donât know what we will do.
I would add that I donât believe it is enough to simply try to discern which specific vaccines utilized aborted fetal cells in their direct origins. It must be understood that vaccine research in general has depended upon aborted fetal tissue. Just because aborted cells werenât used in the final manufacture doesnât mean that they werenât used to get to that point.
My main concern with he present vaccination debate has more to do with the ethics of society forcing medical procedures upon people. Itâs part of a larger assault on the family and parental rights, but I canât comment in detail right now.
Helpful article. I left a message on Pastor Wilsonâs page:
Pastor Wilson, thank you for this helpful article, and for the opportunity to interact a bit. I have a few thoughts.
First, Iâd like to simply and non-controversially affirm that we should fear God more than we fear rubella. In the interest of erring on the side of caution, and in viewing our lives through an eternal lens, we ought to fear the one who has the power to kill not only the body (e.g. rubella), but also the soul in hell. While I understand the nuance of the discussion, and all this talk of secondary, tertiary, quaternary culpability, etc., I guess Iâd just want to exhort Christians to have a bit of faith-empowered backbone at the end of the day. Yes, measles and rubella are really bad, and I donât desire them to fall upon any household. But if we would behave and think like Christians, will we not affirm that it is better to suffer rubella for doing good than to be complicit in sin (1 Peter 3:17)?
Second, I appreciate your thoughts about how we cannot âunknowâ the knowledge that has been gained through the heinous things man has done in history. You mentioned tests conducted by the Nazis, and I was also reminded of Japanâs Unit 731, and how the United States gave immunity to some of the campâs workers in exchange for information about the findings of their experiments. Your comments really helped me process that. I especially appreciated your conclusion, ââŚwhile the knowledge of a particular truth is itself uncorrupted, you want to make sure that you never use such knowledge in a way that incentivizes researchers to go get more of it in that way.â
The only problem I see with this conclusion â as it relates to the subject matter at hand â is that I am skeptical that vaccine research actually can be seperated from the corrupt nature of their development. Something that is very crucial to keep in view here is that while we may only be discussing a handful of specific vaccines that were manufactured using aborted fetal cells, there have been hundreds if not thousands of aborted fetal organs used in the research and development of other vaccines. Researchers like Stanley Plotkins have been plainly vocal on this fact. Admittedly, I am not knowledgeable enough to know why these scientists choose aborted fetal cultures as their preferred test subjects. Perhaps it has to do with the controlled nature and âpurityâ of the specimens, as opposed to using an adult cadaver. Perhaps it has to do with being unable to duplicate variables in animal flesh. Iâm not sure. But it would appear to me that it could almost be said that vaccine research is virtually predicated on the use of aborted fetal remains. And if thatâs the case, then I think we ought to conclude that the whole of the effort needs to be rejected. Not just these two vaccines in question.
The last thing Iâd want to discuss â and Iâll just make passing mention of it, and let you decide if itâs something youâd be willing to explore further in another post â has to do with whether or not it is just for the civil magistrate to force its citizens to receive vaccines to begin with. In your article, if I am following your Russian roulette analogy, you seem to have painted the person who doesnât vaccinate to be the person playing Russian roulette. However, I would argue that both the vaxxer and the non-vaxxer are both playing Russian roulette. The chamber allocations just happen to vary depending on your circumstances. For example, in the United States, in the year 2019, you are more likely to die from a measles vaccine than you are to (EDIT) die from contracting measles. Setting aside the reason for those statistics (which are disputed within the pro-vax/anti-vax debate), these are simply the numbers. This means that parents â whose primary charge is the safety and well-being of their own children â may reasonably conclude that it may be in the best interest of their child not to vaccinate.
Notice, I am being deliberate when I say their child. I am not talking about society as a whole. I understand that the counter-argument to this will always be âherd immunity.â I get it. And I understand what you mean about it being in the civil authorityâs interest to have an inoculated populace. The government cares about the forest, not the trees. But I question whether or not Christians should be so quick to accept the civil magistrateâs mandate that they vaccinate their children. I would contend that this is merely another front being opened up on secularismâs war against the family and the authority of parents.
âAll things being equal,â I believe that parents will generally always act in what they believe to be for the best interest of their children. Jesus affirms that we, though being evil, still know how to give good gifts to our children. Most parents are not dead-beat parents. I would far rather trust parents, in any given generation and society, to weigh the risks of making informed choices about their childrenâs health risks, than cede control to the state to tell us what we must inject into our children. And that has implications that reach much further than vaccines.
Before going down the rabbit hole on this, does anyone know if there are nations where aborted fetal tissue is not used in current vaccines? Medical tourism is sort of a growing industry; this might just be one more procedure to add to the list.
Same here. Some of my kids are vaccinated, some are partially vaxed, I think the youngest isnâtâŚto be honest I canât remember (is that bad? haha), but I do know most of the kids donât have all of the vaccines. And we noticed how increasingly difficult itâs been to get a primary care doc. At first we had to sign a waver. Then after a while they refused to give us care if we continued to reject.
You can always find someone, but the hardest part is finding someone close (and who also is covered by your insurance!). Currently our primary is a nurse practitioner (I didnât even know they could be a primary). She works in an office that allows each caregiver the personal choice to care for kids without or with partial vax. I guess she was the only one who does.
When we moved to Indy the first pediatrician we went to wouldnât take us. I remember how she went on about how important vaccinations are, and the health benefits, the very duty of taking part for the good of our kids and societyâand then at some point she broke with that and said something like, âBesides, my husband is a medical malpractice lawyer, thereâs no way Iâd take on the liability of having kids that potentially might have measles in my waiting room.â
Any path other than âdo what the doctor saysâ was a fearful thing for my wife at the time, but she was so disgusted with that doctor that day that it strengthened her to be a help to me in the work of independently determining what we should do. It was humiliating that day, with our kids there, in that doctor office. Now we laugh!
Edited to add: The next pediatrician we tried said upfront heâd grudgingly let us delay vaccinations, but he promised heâd continually badger us about it. We moved on.
May God raise up God-fearing doctors and help us find the ones that are out there now.
This thread is the first Iâve heard that aborted baby cell lines are used in the production of vaccines. I have a 13 month old who I think already got all his, but with another baby due in two months my wife and I are going to have some serious things to consider.
For our first, we decided to do a delayed vaccination schedule since the number of shots on the normal schedule seems excessive. We werenât against getting any of the vaccines, but just wanted to spread them out over a longer period of time. The pediatrician we had was great! She worked with us and spent almost 45 minutes talking with my wife about her concerns and mapping out a vaccination schedule that she was happy with. The rule was no more than 2 pokes per visit.
But when it actually came to the appointments to get the immunizations, the scheduling clerks and other staff totally disregarded the doctorâs instructions, defaulting to the normal schedule. More than once my wife had to stop the nurse from administering more shots than were scheduled.
At the time we werenât even remotely anti-vax. It was just a matter of the timing. But if we had been inclined that way, our experience with this peds office would have validated every suspicion about the medical establishment trying to get away with something nefarious.
And unfortunately, this pediatrician is moving away, so we have to find another.
Jordan Wilson is a close friend, I can confirm that he has done his research thoroughly. His pastor also recently did a sermon addressing the topic. He elsewhere, I think rightly, noted that this is going to soon become a hot button issue in the church as civil authorizes become more and more controlling on this issues and church leaders are forced to shepherded the sheep through the issue.
Sermons on vaccination? Not getting âethically sourcedâ vaccines because you object to the production of others?
From grave robbers to Nazis to the Tuskegee syphilis experiments the history of scientific and technological advancement is filled with wickedness. I donât think thereâs any easy way to navigate or take advantage of any industry without feeling sullied.
Iâm still not sure what the right Christian practice should be regarding Rubella, Hep A, and Zoster vaccines is. I wish those vaccines were grown in cell cultures from miscarried children or adult pluripotent stem cells but they werenât. And unless we have a massive revival and reform of research funding I canât see any companies âreinventing the wheel.â
I donât know if anyone posted about this already, but Randy Alcorn has been sounding this alarm for years. Heâs done a very detailed research and has written it up in his epm.org website, as he has done for the abortificient properties of the pill.
Do you have direct links for what youâre talking about from Randy Alcorn, @Steve_Chu ? I did search on his website, but am not sure I found everything.