Vatican Condemns Vaccines Made with Tissue Obtained by Abortion

LARGO, FL, July 18, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Pontifical Academy for Life under the direction of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has issued an "approved" study regarding vaccines derived from aborted fetal cell lines. The study was undertaken in response to a US group called Children of God for Life, which has for years fought for the creation of ethical vaccines which are not 'tainted' by abortion.

In the document published in Medicina e Morale by the Center for Bioethics of Catholic University in Rome and titled, Moral Reflections On Vaccines Prepared From Cells Derived From Aborted Human Foetuses, Vatican officials put the burden of guilt 100% on the pharmaceutical industry, comparing their moral complicity to that of the abortionists themselves.

The 8-page document, which has been anxiously awaited for several years by pro-life parents and physicians nationwide states that, doctors and families "have a duty to take recourse to alternatives, putting pressure on political authorities and health systems...They should use conscientious objection and oppose by all means " in writing, through various associations, mass media, etc, - the vaccines which do not yet have morally acceptable alternatives, creating pressure so that alternative vaccines are prepared, which are not connected with the abortion of a human foetus..."

The document, which can be viewed in full at http://www.cogforlife.org/vaticanresponse.htm also supports parents who refuse to use the vaccines, citing that those who have been forced to vaccinate experience "a moral coercion of the conscience ... an unjust alternative choice which must be eliminated as soon as possible."

Debi Vinnedge, Executive Director of Children of God for Life Executive Director, who has battled this issue for years and received the document and letter directly from Bishop Elio Sgreccia, President of the Pontifical Academy for Life.

"We brought the matter to Canon lawyers at the St. Joseph Foundation prior to sending an appeal on to the Vatican," Vinnedge said. "There is a serious problem when parents are denied the right to abstain from these vaccines in accord with State law, simply because there was nothing from the Vatican directly addressing it."

Vinnedge says the Vatican document, which calls for "rigorous legal control of the pharmaceutical industry producers" should also spur action on their Fair Labeling and Informed Consent Act, introduced to members of Congress earlier this year. The legislation requires that pharmaceutical companies give full disclosure whenever aborted fetal or embryonic cell lines are used in their products.

Dr Steven White, President of the Catholic Medical Association agreed. "We must demand that the pharmaceutical industry provide accurate information on the origin of all vaccines so that we are able to make informed decisions in accord with our moral conscience - and we must mobilize to support development of ethical alternatives," he said.

You are presuming a lot when you lecture me on what my child eats. That is between her doctor and me.

YOU are presuming a lot when YOU lecture that all allergic people should be kept behind closed doors and the school should banish any children who interfere with your child's desires. I was NOT lecturing you -- just offering some honest advice through hard earned experience.

Personally I have never heard of a pediatrician who recommended that a child eat no protein but peanut butter. But keep in mind that most MDs had only a week of nutritianal training in Medical School. The wonderful thing about our universe is that there are many forms of delicious and healthy proteins readily available in our food supply. Try your library, or the Internet. You may be amazed! You will also find this same peanut prohibition if you get out and about in other places too. I know a Sunday school near here that designates peanut free zones in their Sunday morning religious programs. Are you suggesting that the minister should just banish all of the peanut-allergic children from church?

What are you going to do if your child DEVELOPS an allergy to peanut butter some day? That happens, you know. Humans develop various allergies throughout their lives, and sometimes they overcome them, as well.

>>Personally I have never heard of a pediatrician who recommended that a child eat no protein but peanut butter. But keep in mind that most MDs had only a week of nutritianal training in Medical School.<<

I have a degree in Naturopathic Medicine. I do what is right for their nutritional needs. Many people are vegetarian and get their protein from nuts and seeds. This is not a matter of my child's desires. It is a matter of her health.

I am saying that if my child had the constant threat of death that you state from a peanut allergy, I would not put her into that situation. If I risked my child's life on another child's judgment i.e. bringing peanut butter to lunch by mistake (kids do pack their own sometimes).

If a mother wants to risk that for whatever reason, it's her right. I personally think that the case is either overstated because of liability of the school or the mother wants the world to change for her child.

>>What are you going to do if your child DEVELOPS an allergy to peanut butter some day? That happens, you know. Humans develop various allergies throughout their lives, and sometimes they overcome them, as well.<<

Homeschool my children, just like I do now.
It's strange how this whole peanut problem got huge when the trial lawyers came along.
I've talked to many about this connected with classes for my degree. Not a single person I have spoken to over many different states remember peanut allergies as a child taking over their cafeterias. Hmmmmm.

Many children have autism, and the immunization shots are suspected. They blame it on the mercury, but who knows?

And the government and pharmaceutical companies will ensure that neither you, nor I will ever know. I'm old enough to remember the introduction of the polio vaccine and the others that followed. Odd ... none of my classmates suffered from autism or ADHD or any of these other 'neurological' diseases. Not a one! Back then boys could be boys. It was expected that they would use recess to settle scores in the school yard. Now, boys are expected to sit quietly behind their desks, hands folded, just like the girls. May God have mercy on us all.

No they didn't, and our school offered government-provided, surplus peanut butter with which they made 5 cent sandwiches. However, that does not mean that the problem wasn't there. They just didn't know what caused the kids to be sick. My cousin died from previously undiagnosed diabetes during that era, and she was under the doctor's care in a hospital at the time! Medical personnel are much more knowledgeable these days.

My little granddaughter spent several days in the hospital last winter because well-meaning friends brought dinner to the family that included brownies that had no visible nuts. Her mother was restricted to bed with a strained back. The brownies were Little Debbie's and had been removed from the wrapper and placed on a pretty dish before they arrived at the home. My son served them to the kids after checking them over carefully, but there were invisible ground nuts in them. Poor little Lydia wound up in the ER, unable to breathe, and spent a couple of days on oxygen. This was a case where the brownie had been baked in a facility that also baked items that included nuts, and they are not always as careful as they should be about cleaning everything between recipes. It's those pesky oils and essences again. They just linger. (And nobody got sued over this incident.)

With all your background in nutrition, I'm sure that you could come up with a suitable substitute protein for your child's lunch. Or, you can continue to keep your child home and continue to blame the "unfair" folks who run the schools who are "distriminating" against your child who is on the self-imposed limited diet. It's your choice, and you have made it. I'm glad you are happy with it, but it may limit your child's experiences in the future.

I can assure you that no one with severe allergies wants the world to change for them. They just want to stay out of the hospital and out of the grave. To use your own words, "This is not a matter of [my] the child's desires. It is a matter of her health"

>>Or, you can continue to keep your child home and continue to blame the "unfair" folks who run the schools who are "distriminating" against your child who is on the self-imposed limited diet. It's your choice, and you have made it. I'm glad you are happy with it, but it may limit your child's experiences in the future.<<

Oh my sure there is many a homeschooling mother on this board who will disagree with "limiting a child's experiences in the future".

I never used your words in quotations above, you did. Seems like a little projection going on there. And my daughter is not on a "self-imposed" limited diet. That is a presumption you are making again.

I never said that there were unfair folks, I stated that sending a child to school who is in as much danger as you portray is reckless. Many of the school districts today go to the extreme and many a parent plays on it. We must restrict the many instead of restricting the child in danger.

I have friends with children who have dietary restrictions. They feed their children their own food and do not inflict their problems on others. I'm sorry that your Granddaughter ended up in a hospital, but that is the boundries one must take with a sick child. Nothing in the mouth execpt what a parent provides.

The danger from those nuts would still exist in a school situation. No visable nuts right. What parent would know that they were there and what six year old might not offer a goodie to her friend.

Sending that child to a school is simply putting her in harms way.

Both of my daughters are allergic to mosquito bites and will die from bee stings. Do I send them out into a field unprotected without an Epi-kit close by? My daughters have the same risk of death, but do I put them into the situation? I don't think so. And neither do I tell the school that no child may go on a field trip to a local pond to catch tadpoles because mine can't go. We ran into that when she was in school and she did not go.

Some degree of reason is needed here.

Parent-imposed restricted diet? Is that more accurate?

Yes, I had a child allergic to bee stings too. However, she went to school, camp, etc. She's now a mom with 2 of her own and is an avid gardener, and they do everything anybody else does. She's also allergic to pine tree pollen. Do you think I could protect her from that? No, it interferes with her beautiful singing voice during pollen season, but she still has ample opportunities to use her God-given talent at church and in her studio.

Unfortunately, you cannot see yourself and your own unreasonable demands on the rest of the world. Your child is not in danger of dying because of peanut butter in the environment, but all children who have that problem must stay cloistered so that your kid can eat their peanut butter in public without regard for the health of others because YOU don't want your children to consume any other kind of protein. What's more, I really don't think that it matters to you what the school says about PB sandwiches. You would be homeschooling anyway. I'm sure that PB not the primary reason you keep your children home. Of course, according to you, the whole PB allergy is a scam perpetrated by the trial lawyers!

The schools and churches and airlines have made reasonable accomocdations for the handicapped -- just like handicapped parking places -- until the kids are old enough to take care of themselves. Some folks, like my son in law's visiting editor, never seem to reach the level of caring for themselves, however. And the enclosed environment on a plane (with the recirculated air) makes the peanut essences dangerous to anyone aboard who suffers from this allergy. The story about my granddaughter was simply to illustrate that there is a real danger, a fact which you want to deny.

I can assure you that her parents are VERY careful and always bring their own food, but accidents happen. It is just incumbant on me to remove nuts from my home when she is here. I am happy to do that and am not complaining, although you might think that it is a great inconvenience. The offending brownie was from a trusted friend from their church as part of a meal to help out my son's family in a crisis when my daughter in law was incapacitated from a back injury. It was offered in good faith with no intent to harm anybody.

I am so happy that you are able to home school your kids, and I hope they grow up strong and healthy and even learn to be considerate of other people along the way. Jesus taught that the Golden Rule was above all other laws and it is good to pass that concept on to our children. i.e., *I won't put your child's life in danger because I wouldn't like it if you put my child's life in danger*

Enjoy your kids while they are young.

>>Unfortunately, you cannot see yourself and your own unreasonable demands on the rest of the world.<<

For one child with a peanut allergy, no child in a school of hundreds can bring peanut butter?
Why is this reasonable?
When the good of one outweighs the good of many, the results are always unjustified. By that thinking, we have gotten abortion on demand (what if a woman is raped, should she not be able to end the pregnancy?), partial birth abortion (very few cases are for the life of the mother), and No Parental Consent laws for abortion. (what if a girl is impregnated by her father).
The COMMON good should always reign.

This is not about my daughter, but about the common good. It doesn't matter at all whether or not the airline industry CHOOSES not to serve peanuts. It is about single parents, with trial lawyers behind them, and school districts being frightened by the lawsuits, demanding that one of the nutritionally perfect lunches (peanut oil is mono-unsaturated fat which cleans the arteries, pure fruit spread give anti-oxidents and whole grain bread provides fiber) must be banned from the lunch program and denied to all children who pack a lunch. Instead of addressing the problem with some common sense, they have the responsibility fall on everyone instead of the parents of the child in danger. If you have grandchildren, you lived through a time when people did things for themselves and didn't expect others to do it for them. Now things are looked at from a socialist point of view. It's very sad.

My children came of school age just as New York state was requiring the chickenpox vaccine for entrance into school. I loudly resisted having my children vaccinated for chickenpox, insisiting that getting childhood chickenpox was FAR less dangerous than possibly contracting it in adulthood.

When I asked the Catholic school that my children would be attending their policy on the chickenpox vaccine, they told me that the diocese (Rockville Centre) adhered to the same rules as New York state. To wit, the kids needed to be vaccinated. I finally allowed the vaccine, but I DID NOT KNOW that this vaccine was derived from aborted babies! In fact, I didn't know it until YEARS later, and when I asked the doctor for the name of the vaccine given to my kids, he told me it was the Varivax vaccine.

Well! I hit the proverbial roof! "How can you give this shot to kids without telling their parents where it comes from?" I asked. "Why do you even bother to to ask your patients' religion if you don't mean to tell them when a treatment might be in direct opposition to their beliefs?"

I honestly don't think the doctor had even thought about any of these questions, but promised me that in the future, he would tell the patients' parents about the vaccine's origins. He believes in them, though, so I don't think he will ever refuse to give them.

The Diocese of Rockville Centre is another matter, though. I would really like to know if THEY know where these vaccines come from, and if they did, would they still demand that their students be vaccinated by them?

I still feel guilty to this day about allowing my kids to be immunized against a disease I KNOW they should get in childhood (if they're going to get it at all). I should have listened to my own instincts and fought this in court. Had I known about the origins of the medication, I NEVER would have allowed it.

Regards,

I'm not at all arguing the point on the aborted fetal stem cell lines (I wasn't even aware of that; thanks for posting).

Of all of the children's vaccines that we give in our clinic, the only one that has Thimerosal is the flu vaccine for 3 years and older that comes in a multi-dose vial (dependant on manufacturer). All of the other vaccines are mercury free. In fact, we are running into storage problems, as the vaccines are now coming in pre-filled syringes, which takes up much more room than the vials, and they need to be refrigerated.

I'll try to find a link for you.

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