[MD Expat in PA]

That's debatable:

Yes, yes it is:

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/anti-vaccine-propaganda-from-sharyl-attkisson-of-cbs-news-2/

As far as the trafficking of fetal body parts from abortions for profit, that’s criminal and immoral on every level and Federal law prohibits it and the law should be enforced without question and unethical companies and people skirting the law, punished. I do not disagree with you there.

However it should be mentioned that not all fetal tissues used in medical research come from abortions and some parents do choose to voluntarily and without payment, donate tissues from spontaneously aborted babies (i.e. miscarriages) for the purposes of medical research. That is perhaps a moral grey area for many (and on some levels for me as well) but then some parents believe that donating their brain dead children’s organs such as of the result of an accident and traumatic brain injury in order to save the life of another child is the right and moral thing to do, that out of great tragedy can come some good. I myself have considered donating my body after death for medical research and I am an organ and tissue donor as well as someone who regularly donates blood. That of course is my choice, not to be confused with “choice” as it comes to abortion, something that I am absolutely and unequivocally against.

But it should also be understood that if all abortions were outlawed today, if anyone engaging in the use of fetal tissues for medical research from this day forward were outlawed, that would not bring back to life the two babies aborted in the early 1960’s nor negate the untold lives saved due to the vaccinations that resulted in using those two cell lines. And if the use of those two cell lines were outlawed today and all vaccinations that are derived from growing viruses in those cell lines were prohibited, under current law, it would do nothing to stop or reduce the number of abortions.

As far as your other post claiming a supposed correlation (the old correlation automatically equals causation myth) between vaccinations and “That virus-laden DNA of aborted babies could be wreaking havoc on the DNA of healthy children is completely plausible.” First of all vaccinations that contain live or inactivated virus that was cultivated in human cells would at the very most contain such a minute and trace amount of any DNA from the cell line it was cultivated in as to be negligible if there is any at all, that is unless you proscribe to homeopathy (another junk science). And in those miniscule and fragmented amounts, there is no serious study that confirms this is at all harmful. If this was true, catching the common cold from another person, if say that sneezed on you and passed a bit of their DNA along with the virus, should also cause Autism, but it doesn’t.

Also the timelines for “increases” in the instances of Autism and vaccinations also very closely syncs to the increased awareness and diagnosis of Autism and the recognition of many cognitive and developmental and that were never clearly diagnosed or blamed on other factors and even “socialization” disorders such as Aspersers are now classified as on the Autism spectrum. Based on the new diagnosis protocols for diagnosing “Autism” many great minds would probably be diagnosed as having been somewhere on the Autism spectrum such as Aspersers – Albert Einstein for instance and he to my knowledge ever received any modern vaccinations as a child.

Autism’s cause is still a medical mystery and one I’m hoping will be solved and perhaps prevented in my lifetime due to sound medical research and not “junk science”. BTW ¬- I’m old enough to remember when Autism was blamed on “cold, unfeeling and “emotionally distant” mothers”. Mothers of truly Autistic children were made to feel as if they were to blame for their children’s condition. Now we are blaming mothers (and fathers) who and rightly so, vaccinate their children against potentially lethal diseases.

When the “cold mothers are to blame” was proved untrue, vaccinations containing mercury was blamed but when mercury was no longer used in vaccinations and the rates of Autism still increased, the anti-vax crowd looked to yet some other boogie man, some currently blaming it on the supposed and specious danger of the DNA from aborted “babies” in vaccinations as the cause. Next week, who knows? Some have now moved on to TV and video games and cell phone towers as this week’s boogie man. Some even think that GMO’s and hormones in milk and beef are to blame.

The bottom line is that vaccinations have save far more lives than the very small number of people harmed by rare and actually proven but unfortunate instances of side effects. Again, I’m old enough to remember when pregnant women lived in fear of contracting Rubella while pregnant and saw firsthand the horrific results of that disease in a cousin of mine just as my mother saw the horrific results of Polio in her day.

[Brian Kopp DPM]

The bottom line is that vaccinations have save far more lives than the very small number of people harmed by rare and actually proven but unfortunate instances of side effects.

I agree.

My whole point in posting to this thread is to point out that vaccines are not a violation of Natural Law or basic Christian morality and therefore are not intrinsically immoral, and neither are they intrinsically dangerous. They alleviate by orders of magnitude far more suffering and death than the known (and unfortunate) complications caused by them and/or their ingredients over the years.

On the other hand, IF a causation is proven between any vaccine and autism, the first place to look for a cause is in immoral experimentation or production practices, because violation of Natural Law ALWAYS causes temporal and spiritual consequences, without exception.

If a link between vaccines and autism is ever proven, it will likely be due to the use of fetal cell lines obtained from abortion.

On the other hand, as I've said elsewhere:

Saturday, June 5, 2010

Rise in Autism: Aborted Fetal DNA in Vaccines Versus Cable TV?

I am a 100% skeptic when it comes to claims of a link between autism and vaccines. There is far more correlation between television viewing and autism rates than any other link. See

Does Watching TV Cause Autism? - TIME

Does Watching Television Trigger Autism? - National Bureau of Economic Research

TV might cause autism. - By Gregg Easterbrook - Slate Magazine

Daily Kos: Early Television Viewing Is Correlated With Autism

Rainfall + cable TV = autism?

However, the following theory must be fully explored:

Thursday June 3, 2010

---

Study: Rise in Autism and introduction of Aborted Fetal DNA in Vaccines Correlate

By James Tillman

PHILADELPHIA, PA, June 3, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) -- Dr. Theresa Deisher, founder of the pro-life Sound Choice Pharmaceutical Institute, presented a study revealing the link between autism and aborted fetal DNA in vaccinations at the International Meeting for Autism Research in May.

"The temporal connection between the introduction of aborted fetal DNA and autism rises is found over decades and across continents," Dr. Deisher told LifeSiteNews. "This temporal connection is more compelling than any mercury connection," which, she said, had no temporal connection to rising rates of autism.

As the abstract of the study indicates, autism rates in the US and the UK began to increase around the same time that the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine switched from using animal cells to using human cells that had been derived from aborted fetuses.

The use of such cells means that the vaccine might contain residual human DNA fragments. Dr. Deisher told LSN that "short fragments of human DNA residuals in vaccines present two well-documented potential physiological dangers" and "the possibility for auto-immune reactions." While the immune system recognizes the DNA as foreign, its similarity to an individual’s own DNA can cause the immune system to attack parts of the individual's own body.

Another danger springs from the length of the DNA fragments. Residual DNA fragments consisting of less than 250 base pairs (bp) have been shown to have a higher probability of entering the nucleus of human cells. Once inside the nucleus, short DNA fragments can integrate with the genome of the cell. The probability of integration is 1 billion times greater with DNA from the same species than with DNA from another species, according to the abstract.

The study explained that, as the average human DNA fragment length in the rubella vaccine is 220bp, it would be especially likely to enter the nucleus of a cell. Moreover, 25 of the "recombination hotspots" where the DNA fragment could likely combine are located in some of the autism-associated genes (AAG). Thus, such recombination could be one of the causes of autism.

According to SCPI, before children received many vaccinations and before vaccines contained aborted fetal DNA, only about 1 of 10,000 children was diagnosed with autism, whereas now 1 of 150 is diagnosed.

Sound Choice is working to provide further evidence of a causal association between residual human DNA and autism. "In order to definitively prove the connection, one would want to see these vaccines all replaced and autism rates go down immediately," Dr. Deisher told LSN.

Sound Choice also plans to look at historical databases for more evidence of correlation, to evaluate a mouse model of autism using mouse DNA fragments, and to attempt to determine the exact location where human DNA fragments enter the human genome.

The pro-life organization Children of God for Life praised Sound Choice and its companion organization Ave Maria Biotechnology for their crucial research.

"Until the advent of AVM Biotechnology and their non-profit arm SCPI we had little hope that anyone would invest the time and money to do this study", stated Children of God for Life founder Debi Vinnedge.

"Dr. Deisher's work is a blessing to hundreds of thousands of families, if not millions worldwide," Vinnedge continued. "She is a direct answer to our prayers for a biotech company focused solely on moral research and ethically produced vaccines and therapeutics."

Related links:

Sound Choice Pharmaceutical Institute

Ave Maria Biotechnology

Children of God for Life

See related stories on LifeSiteNews.com:

Is Aborted Fetal DNA in Vaccines Linked to Autism?
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/jul/09072106.html

Posted by Brian Kopp

[Brian Kopp DPM]

A lot of anti-vaccine propagandists point to the Amish as evidence that vaccines cause autism. They claim the Amish do not vaccinate, and the Amish have lower autism rates.

However, in general the Amish do vaccinate, but there are subsets of Amish who do not.

On the other hand, Amish do not watch television. No one wants to even look at that.

TV’s Relationship to Mental Retardation and Autism

Freakonomics
02/03/2012 | 1:32 pm

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(Photo: Library of Congress)

TV is bad for children.  Wait, no it’s not.  Yes, it is!   And it’s really bad for their hearts!

Here’s the latest paper on the topic, from Michael Waldman, Sean Nicholson, and Nodir Adilov.  Using a natural experiment to rule out the possibility of reverse causation, the authors find “a strong negative correlation between average county-level cable subscription rates when a birth cohort is below three and subsequent mental retardation diagnosis rates, but a strong positive correlation between the same cable subscription rates and subsequent autism diagnosis rates.”  

In other words, TV watching decreases the rate of mental retardation but increases the rate of autism.  The authors hypothesize that, consistent with earlier research, “for the typical child television watching at age two improves cognitive development and decreases diagnoses of mental retardation.”

In contrast, TV might be particularly bad news for kids vulnerable to autism:

[W]e believe the most likely explanation is that there is a genetically vulnerable group for which early childhood television watching serves as a trigger for autism. It has long been known that autism has a strong genetic component (see e.g., Rimland (1964) and Folstein and Rutter (1977)). So one explanation for our autism results is that at least for some children diagnosed with autism it is not the genetics alone which triggers the condition, but rather the genes create a vulnerability to autism that is sometimes triggered by early childhood television watching.