Life after death

Getting an abortion in Sweden in 1962 was a matter of finding the right medical excuse. With the approval of two doctors, a Swedish woman could obtain an abortion on the basis of “expected weakness”—where having a baby would allegedly threaten her future physical or mental well-being.

That summer, a married woman decided she couldn’t handle any more children. After gestating a baby girl for about four months, she underwent an abortion at a Swedish hospital. Just 8 inches long, the girl had already developed ears, fingers, toes, and a miniature set of lungs she would never use.

Millions of other people would use those lungs instead.

After the abortion, a technician in Stockholm dissected the baby, removed the lungs, and shipped them, on ice, to the Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology in Philadelphia. There, scientist Leonard Hayflick had spent months trying to develop a human cell line that could be used for basic research and vaccine development. This aborted baby was one of many he had used for the work.

When the lungs arrived, Hayflick dissolved them in chemicals and poured the resulting cellular brew into flasks, where the disassembled cells began to divide and multiply. This line of cells, named WI-38 (“Wistar Institute No. 38”), would replicate by the millions and live on for decades—frozen, thawed, multiplied, frozen again—becoming some of the most-studied cells in the world.

Most significantly, WI-38 cells have assisted in the production of hundreds of millions of vaccines that have saved countless lives, including vaccines against rubella, measles, rabies, chickenpox, and polio.

Today, fetal-tissue-based vaccines are controversial among pro-life parents. Some won’t give them to their children, arguing the shots are morally tainted by their connection to the Swedish abortion that occurred 53 years ago. Others argue the relationship to abortion is too remote to warrant withholding lifesaving vaccines from children.

To make vaccines, scientists grow viruses inside host cells—oftentimes, in chicken eggs. Depending on the vaccine, they may use host cell cultures derived from insects, monkeys, rabbits, or human fetuses.

Even after the manufacturing process destroys the host cells, some vaccines grown in human cell lines may retain fragments of human DNA, protein, and cellular material, according to package inserts.

WI-38 is one of several fetal cell lines used in the vaccine industry. Others include MRC-5, taken in 1966 from a 14-week unborn child “removed for psychiatric reasons from a 27-year-old woman”; HEK-293, taken in 1972 from the kidney of an aborted baby; and PER.C6, taken in 1985 from the retinas of an aborted baby.

Scientists can still buy flasks of these cells for research projects today. The Coriell Institute in Camden, N.J., sells WI-38 cells for $55, and MRC-5 cells for $250.

New fetal cell lines appear to be in the works: This year a group of Chinese researchers reported in Human Vaccines & Immunotherapeutics they had created a new cell line ideal for vaccine research, derived “from a fetal lung tissue … obtained from a 3-month-old female fetus aborted because of the presence of a uterine scar from a previous caesarean birth by a 27-year-old healthy woman.”

Some pro-life advocates “have a deep aversion” to using vaccines that may contain “the remains of an aborted child,” says Debi Vinnedge, founder of Children of God for Life. Her organization tracks the handful of U.S. and Canadian vaccine brands that use aborted fetal cell lines: Among them are vaccines for chickenpox, hepatitis A and B, rabies, shingles, polio, and combination shots for measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR).

But Gene Rudd, the senior vice president of the Christian Medical & Dental Associations, believes since the manufacturing of such vaccines does not require ongoing abortions, it’s permissible for Christians to use them until alternatives are available.

“We do have a clear mandate to protect our children and seek positive health for them,” he says. “That to me is much more important than this abstract linkage to [a] historical event a long time ago.”

The Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission earlier this year concurred in an online commentary: “We should not risk the lives of our children in order to avoid a remote connection that is tangentially related to an evil act.” The Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Life wrote in 2005 it was permissible for families to use such vaccines “on a temporary basis” if no animal-based alternatives were available.

Some alternatives are available, though not in every case. For example, one vaccine for hepatitis A and B is produced using yeast cells, and one rabies vaccine uses chicken eggs. One MMR alternative uses chicken and rabbit cells, but that vaccine is only available in Japan. (Merck discontinued animal-based measles and mumps vaccines in the United States in 2010.) There’s no animal-based vaccine available for chickenpox or shingles.

Whatever their view on using the shots themselves, Christians agree they should discourage pharmaceutical companies from developing new vaccines using aborted fetal cell lines.

Two Ebola vaccines that underwent clinical trials in Kenya and Liberia this year are timely examples of new fetal-based vaccines. One is made by Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies (owned by Johnson & Johnson) using the PER.C6 cell line, and the other is made by GlaxoSmithKline (with assistance from U.S. National Institutes of Health) using the HEK-293 cell line.

At least two other Ebola vaccines undergoing testing don’t use fetal cells. A Merck spokeswoman confirmed her company’s Ebola vaccine is produced using a cell line from the kidney of an African green monkey: In July Merck reported the vaccine was fully effective in preventing Ebola during a human trial in Guinea.

Another company, Novavax, this summer said its Ebola vaccine had successfully completed first-stage human trials. Its vaccine is produced using cells from a caterpillar called a “fall armyworm,” a crop pest in the southern United States.

Vinnedge says the alternate approaches prove it’s unnecessary to use fetal tissue. “Let’s go to a moral cell line. We can do it—we know we don’t have to use human cells,” she says. “Certainly not aborted fetal cells.”