‘A lot of aborted fetus debris’

This man is responsible not only for YOUR health - he's responsible for the health of everyone in this country. He manages preventive medicine. He manages disease control. He manages medical research.

He's a crank. He'll kill a lot of people.

He's the most unqualified person for his post. Courtesy of Trump. ☹️

He's the most unqualified person for his post.

I don't know about that.  Remember he hired Rick Perry who was completely misinformed of what his position of Secretary of Energy was.

Fair point. 

This man is responsible not only for YOUR health - he's responsible for the health of everyone in this country

No, not really.

Everyone is responsible for their own health. No one but you and your medical team should rely on someone else to keep you healthy. 

It's called personal responsibility rather than "I need someone to tell me" bullshit that seems so prevalent in some circles. And people wonder why healthcare costs are so high. A sniffle isn't pneumonia...............

I sincerely hope you never need heart surgery. Doing that on yourself is gonna be tough.

Everyone is responsible for their own health.

So next time you need a colonoscopy please send pictures of you doing it to yourself.

Possibly you do not understand the meaning of "responsible for your own health" and where I specifically stated 

"No one but you and your medical team "

Those that do colonoscopies are part of that medical team.

Bad fail at a gotcha..

I sincerely hope you never need heart surgery. Doing that on yourself is gonna be tough.

1.2.4 is for you too, especially the last sentence.

Possibly you do not understand the meaning of "responsible for your own health" and where I specifically stated  "No one but you and your medical team "

So you opinion is that you are responsible for your own health unless you're not.  2 sentences with diametrically opposed statements.

You're trying to eat your cake and have it too.....

ou're trying to eat your cake and have it too.

Still not getting it. Let me go a little more simple.

YOU are responsible to get your annual

YOU are responsible to get your colonoscopy and any other procedure your doctor recommends you get. No one os going to hold your hand to get these things done.

YOU are responsible for what you eat.

YOU are responsible to take the medication prescribed to you

Hope this makes it more clear to you.

Then why bother having doctors, hospitals, or medicine on general?

1.2.4 is for you too.

#1 & 1.2.8 is for you. 

And I responded accordingly.

Another fail at a gotcha

As did I. No gotcha involved.

Still not getting it. Let me go a little more simple.

LOL!

You keep saying the same 2 contradictory things, just in different ways.

No, I am saying you and your medical team are responsible for your health.

NO ONE ELSE!! ESPECIALLY SOMEONE IN THE GOVERNMENT

Get it now?????

Get it now?????

They get it. They just hate rational discussions and prefer memes. 

Seems like some here rely on the government to tell them how to manage their health.

Cradle to the grave is a real thing for some. 

Seems like some here rely on the government to tell them how to manage their health.

To be honest, although Bob overstated the reality, the government does have quite a bit to say about our health. They approve or disapprove drugs and treatment regimens, for instance, which can affect you personally. It isn't the case, though, that Kennedy is deciding who gets treatment and what kind. 

Cradle to the grave is a real thing for some.

Unfortunately, true. I think the public education system is tending towards creating mindless consumers who think responsibility is the government's job, not theirs. Some seem to want a system designed to provide their preferred life so all they have to do is enjoy it. They believe in a laundry list of rights that they are born with and it's up to the government to provide it. 

I still can't get over how unbelievably stupid it was to appoint a dedicated anti-vaxer whose health-care and medicine views are so twisted to be in control of the health of the nation.  God help all you Americans.

Information about how these vaccines are produced. 

NOTE TO READERS

The information on this page addresses vaccines available in the U.S. If a vaccine is available in the U.S. and not discussed on this page, it does not employ the use of fetal cells in production. For example, no influenza vaccine available in the U.S. requires the use of fetal cells for production.

Vaccines for  varicella (chickenpox) ,  rubella  (the “R” in the MMR vaccine),  hepatitis A ,  rabies  (one version, called Imovax) and  COVID-19  (Johnson & Johnson (J&J)/Janssen, which is no longer used in the U.S.) are all made by growing the viruses in fetal cells.

Why are fetal cells used to make some vaccines?

Viruses reproduce in cells, so to grow viruses for a vaccine, one of the necessary “tools” is a type of cell in which the virus will grow. Viruses will not grow in just any cell type, so one of the first things a scientist needs to do is to figure out what cells the virus will infect in the lab. Because viruses infect people, human cells are a good place to start checking.

The most important benefit offered by using fetal cells was that they were isolated from the sterile environment of the womb. This meant the cells would not be infected with other viruses, and the vaccine produced in these cells would not inadvertently introduce any other viruses.

To find out more about the decision to use fetal cells to grow vaccine viruses, check out the video,  Stanley Plotkin: Pioneering the use of fetal cells to make rubella vaccine .

What types of fetal cells are used?

All vaccines made using fetal cells, except the COVID-19 vaccine, are made using fibroblast cells. The COVID-19 vaccine (J&J/Janssen) is made using fetal retinal cells.

Fibroblast cell history

Fibroblast cells are the cells needed to hold skin and other connective tissue together. The fetal fibroblast cells used to grow vaccine viruses were first obtained from elective termination of two pregnancies in the early 1960s. These same fetal cells obtained from the early 1960s have continued to grow in the laboratory and are used to make vaccines today. No further sources of fetal cells are needed 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 limit. 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. In addition, because of the ability to maintain cells at very low temperatures, such as in liquid nitrogen, scientists are able to continue using the same fetal cell lines that were isolated in the 1960s.

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.

Retinal cell history

The retinal cells used to make the COVID-19 adenovirus vaccine (J&J/Janssen) were isolated from a terminated fetus in 1985 and adapted for use in growing adenovirus-based vaccines in the late 1990s.

Adenovirus-based vaccines that cannot replicate when administered to people need to be produced in cells that have the necessary gene to allow for large quantities of the virus to be made. The retinal cell line, called PER.C6, was adapted to enable production of these altered viruses.

Find out more in this  Vaccine Update  article.

Other questions you may have about the use of fetal cells and vaccines

Can vaccines made using fetal cells alter a person’s DNA?

Even though fetal cells are used to grow vaccine viruses, vaccines do not contain these cells or pieces of DNA that are recognizable as human DNA. People can be reassured by the following:

• When viruses grow in cells, the cells are killed because in most cases the new viruses burst the cells to be released.
• Once the vaccine virus is grown, it is purified, so that cellular debris and growth reagents are removed.
• During this process of purification, any remaining cellular DNA is also broken down. To learn more about DNA and vaccine, visit the  “Vaccine ingredients – DNA” page .

Do vaccines contain parts of fetuses or fetal cells?

In order to grow viruses in the lab, cells need to be made into single cell suspensions, meaning they can no longer be grouped together in the form of tissues or organs. As such, vaccines do not contain “parts of fetuses.”

Vaccines also do not contain fetal cells. Once the vaccine viruses are grown in the cells, the next step in the manufacturing process is to purify the vaccine viruses away from the cells and substances used to help cells grow. If you have ever picked blueberries, you can think of this part of the process as similar. While you are picking, you might get some of the blueberry plant — stems, leaves and even branches — in your berry bucket, but to use the berries, you remove all of those things, so your pie contains only the blueberries (and any other ingredients you choose to add).

This purification part of the process is important for two reasons. The first, and perhaps most obvious, is the manufacturing reason. From a manufacturer’s perspective, an efficient process that results in the purest possible product makes the final product easier to characterize. However, as consumers, the second, and more important, reason matters more. A pure product will not introduce unnecessary components that could trigger immune responses or affect us in other ways.

How can cells from the 1960s still be used today?

Cells grown in a laboratory setting are provided with an environment conducive to growth. As the cells reproduce and fill the container in which they are grown, researchers care for them by putting them in new containers and giving them additional nutrients to enable continued growth. As a result, the cells are able to replicate exponentially. Periodically, a portion of the cells will be frozen in liquid nitrogen for long-term storage. The extremely cold temperatures of liquid nitrogen freezers, around -200° C, cause biological activity to cease without killing the cells. Decades later, the cells, if thawed and provided with the appropriate nutrients and environment, will begin to grow again. As the cells grow, the newly produced cells can also be frozen, and the process extended again.

To read more about how this process is done in the laboratory,  check out the article about Dr. Plotkin’s work on the Hilleman Film website .

Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia

More information from a link in my previous post.

DNA can be a concern related to vaccines in two ways — because it is the vaccine’s active ingredient, such as in adenovirus-based vaccines, or as a manufacturing byproduct following growth of vaccine virus cells (animal or human fetal cells) or in organisms, like bacteria or yeast, using plasmids.

DNA-based vaccines

Because adenoviruses are DNA viruses, when they are used as a delivery vehicle during vaccination, the active ingredient is also DNA. This causes some to wonder whether the DNA delivered during vaccination can alter a person’s DNA. In short, the answer is no. The reason that a person’s DNA cannot be changed is that a necessary enzyme, called integrase, is not present.

We can be further reassured by the fact that when people get a cold from an adenovirus infection, the adenovirus cannot alter their DNA. As a family of viruses, this is not a role they can play.

DNA from growth in cells

Because viruses need cells to grow, viral vaccines typically require cells during the production process. Most vaccines are grown in animal cells, but some are grown in human fetal cells.

Some people wonder whether the vaccines made using cells could cause harm if DNA from the production process “mixes” with the vaccine recipient’s DNA. This is not likely to happen:

• Stability of DNA - Because DNA is not stable when exposed to certain chemicals, much of it is destroyed in the process of making the vaccine. Therefore, the amount of DNA in the final vaccine preparation is minimal (billionths or trillionths of a gram) and highly fragmented. Because the DNA is fragmented, it cannot possibly create a whole protein that could be harmful.
• Opportunity – DNA from the vaccine is not able to incorporate itself into cellular DNA. In fact, if this could be accomplished, gene therapy would be much easier than it has been.

The vaccines made using human fetal cells include  chickenpox ,  rubella ,  hepatitis A , one version of the  rabies vaccine , and one version of the  COVID-19 vaccine  (adenovirus-based version).  Read more about the use of human fetal cells.

For additional information, check out the printable Q&A: “DNA, Fetal Cells & Vaccines,”  English  |  Spanish .

DNA from plasmids

Some vaccines are made using plasmids. Plasmids are small circular pieces of DNA that reside in and reproduce when bacteria or yeast cells reproduce. These plasmids can be altered to include a piece of DNA that will produce a protein of interest, such as is done to make the hepatitis B vaccine. After production of large quantities, the protein is purified and most of the plasmid DNA is either removed or destroyed to the point that only minute quantities of small DNA fragments remain, meaning quantities only detectable at the level of nanograms or picograms (billions or trillionths of a gram).

COVID-19 mRNA vaccines are also produced using plasmids; however, in this instance, the product of interest is the DNA plasmids (not a protein produced by the DNA). This is because the DNA is used as a roadmap to create the mRNA. Even in this scenario, the quantities of DNA fragments that could be found after purification are minimal, meaning nanogram (billions of a gram) or picogram quantities (trillionths of a gram).  Watch this video in which Dr. Paul Offit describes why DNA fragments are not a safety concern for the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines.

In both cases, the fragmentation and the small quantities render the DNA incapable of causing damage.

While Kennedy's "aborted fetus debris" comment is, to my mind, highly misleading, he's not completely wrong, apparently. When I first read this, the first thing I wondered was how did they separate the vaccine from the cell in which it was produced? I could not imagine that they could remove 100% of it, considering the microscopic scale of the issue. If the above information is correct, it was about what I imagined it would be. Fragments in the billionths or less without the ability to affect anything, according to researchers. 

What difference does it make if fetal tissue is used? Who cares? It's the vaccine that is important. 

What difference does it make if fetal tissue is used?

I don't know. You ask that as if someone raised the question. I haven't seen it, if so.

It's the vaccine that is important.

Yes. You state the obvious. Is there a point you wish to make beyond that? 

What's the point of bringing up fetal tissue in relation to vaccines? 

What's the point of bringing up fetal tissue in relation to vaccines? 

I did not bring it up. It was an integral part of the seed. I provided presumably scientific information for informational purposes in order to help people form an informed opinion.