Vaccine Education Center: Vaccines Made Using Fetal Cells (470 hits)
Parents PACK Newsletter, Ask the VEC – Vaccines Made Using Fetal Cells
Q. Which vaccines are made using cell lines from prematurely terminated pregnancies?
A. The vaccines made using cell lines originally isolated from two elective abortions performed in the early 1960s include:
•Rubella •Chickenpox •Hepatitis A •Rabies The cell lines are maintained in laboratories so that no further abortions need to be performed to make these vaccines. The reasons that fetal cells were originally used included:
•Viruses need cells to grow and tend to grow better in cells from humans than animals (because they infect humans)
•Almost all cells die after they have divided a certain number of times; scientifically, this number is known as the Hayflick number and for most cell lines it is around 50 divisions; however, fetal cells can go through many more divisions before dying So, as scientists studied these viruses in the lab, they found that the best cells to use were the fetal cells mentioned above. When it was time to make a vaccine, they continued growing the viruses in the cells that worked best during these earlier studies. http://www.chop.edu/newsletters/parents-pa...
