Vaccines & Ethical Issues

Source: AJC1

"For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful,
I know that full well."
Psalm 139:13 & 14 (The Holy Bible)

This morning I took our son to get some vaccinations and as a result felt prompted to do a post on that subject. Before you read any further, let me just say that I know that the whole vaccination thing is a huge controversial subject and I am not against vaccinating children. What I am against is using aborted babies to make those vaccinations and being uneducated about health related issues.

About 2 months ago, my sister and I were talking about vaccinating our sons and I was horrified when she told me that a number of the vaccinations come from aborted fetal tissue. It literally about made me sick! I realized that too often we are so uninformed about things.

Basically, there are a number of vaccines, including some adult ones, that are made from aborted fetal tissue. Most of them have alternatives that you can get but you need to ask for them, otherwise you may receive the strain that uses aborted fetal tissue. There are three vaccines that have no ethical alternative in the US and they are the vaccines for Hepatitis A, Chickenpox and MMR (measles, mumps and rubella), all of which are very rarely life threatening.

Below are some links that give a lot of helpful information about the whole fetal tissue/immunization subject. If you read nothing else or feel like you will get bogged down in all the details, I highly encourage you to at least look at the Vaccine Sources Chart. It is an easy to read chart that give you all the ethical alternatives for vaccinations.

* National Network for Immunization Information

* Catholic Education Resource Center

* Children of God for Life

* Vaccine Sources Chart (click the link on the left side)
- this is a handy little chart that you can print out and take with you to your doctor's office

If you have questions I will be glad to try to tell you what I know and understand. You can leave a comment here or simply email me by using the link under "About Me."