By Ahmed Aboulenein and Nancy Lapid
Washington (Reuters) -US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has taken up various deceptive statements on vaccines this week, including the measles vaccine contains aborted fetus cells and that mirror vaccination does not work.
Kennedy's comments come while the United States is fighting among its worst measles epidemics in 25 years. Scientists have warned that the United States is at a tilting point for the return of endemic measles, declared eradicated nationally in 2000 and say that US public health officials and Kennedy should provide urgent approval of very effective vaccines.
Two children died and hundreds of others were infected with the Texas epidemic, which is centered in a Mennonite community and spread to neighboring states, including New Mexico, Oklahoma and Kansas.
Kennedy, who became the highest health official in the country in February, helped decades to sow doubts about the security and efficiency of vaccines, contributing to a drop in vaccination rates.
Kennedy says that he is not opposed to vaccines, but has started to revive some of the unproven or demystified theories that he has promoted as a lawyer and public figure, now of his perch in the American Department of Health and Social Services.
“There are populations in our country, such as Texas' mennonites, (which) were the most afflicted, and they have religious objections to vaccination, because the MMR vaccine contains many debris of aborted fetus and DNA particles, so they do not want to bear it” in an interview with news nations.
Kennedy referred to the combined vaccine of measles, mumps and rubella. Vaccines do not contain “fetal debris” from intact abortions or fetal cells, vaccine experts said.
The rubella part of the vaccine is produced from a fetal cellular line from an abortion which took place in the 1960s. The MMR vaccine does not contain cells in its final form.
The cells are derived from fetal cells which have been reproduced for decades in laboratory test tubes, thousands of times eliminated from the originals.
“The virus is cultivated in these cells, then this virus is purified, which means that any other than the virus is filtered, and all that remains is this attenuated virus that cannot make you sick,” said Dr. Miriam Laufer, acting director of the Center for the Development of Vaccines and Global Health at the University of Maryland.
According to an information sheet on how vaccines are made from the Philadelphia children's hospital at the University of Pennsylvania, the amount of DNA involved in the final preparation of the vaccines is minimal; billions or billions of billions of grams.
“Although final vaccines do not contain intact fetal cells, they may contain traces of cells derived from cells, such as DNA fragments,” said Dr. Paulo Verardi, professor of virology and vaccinology and the University of Connecticut.
The Ministry of Health and Social Services did not respond to a request for comments.
Kennedy also said this week that the pumping part of the vaccine did not work and that there were security problems on this subject.
“The problem is really with the bumpy part of the vaccine and the combination. This combination was never tested safely,” he said on a live television event on Monday organized by the television host, Dr. Phil.
According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, two doses of the ROR vaccine offer a protection of approximately 86% against mumps.
If it is true that protection against vaccines can decline over time, the rate varies depending on the disease and the vaccine, said Verardi and other vaccine experts.
“For mumps in particular, immunity can decrease, so that adults vaccinated in childhood can become sensitive again. However, vaccinated individuals generally suffer from a softer disease if it is infected, which is always a key advantage of vaccination,” he said.
(Report by Ahmed Aboulenein to Washington and Nancy Lapid in Tucson; additional report by Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago; Edition by Caroline Humer and Stephen Coates)
