Page 79 - Fall2020

worrisome gene therapy trial in which four out Health and Epidemiology in 2014, Deisher and Autism spiked
of nine boys developed mutations and cancer. colleagues examined publicly available vacci-
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Deisher’s conclusion: “It is therefore possible nation records of children in the U.S., Western in 1981,
that the HERVK gene fragment present in the Australia, the UK and Denmark born after 1969 1988 and
MMR vaccine. . . has the potential to induce and who later received an autism diagnosis. 1996, and
gene insertion, fostering insertional mutagen- The authors found that three observed change
esis and autoimmunity.” 38 points—dates when a substantial rise in autism each spike
Dr. Deisher suggests splitting the MMR occurred—corresponded with the introduction coincided
into three individual vaccines and also recom- or increased doses of three vaccines manufac- with
mends that lawmakers and the public pressure tured with human fetal cell lines: the MMR,
manufacturers to follow Japan’s lead and pro- varicella and hepatitis A vaccines. Specifically, increased
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duce vaccines derived from animal instead of autism spiked in 1981, 1988 and 1996, and each exposure
human cell lines. Because vaccines produced spike coincided with increased exposure to hu- to human
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with human fetal cell lines contain cellular man fetal-cell-line-produced vaccines.
debris and residual human DNA contaminants Deisher points out that thimerosal, which fetal-cell-line-
that may not be fully eliminated when a virus is contains mercury, can also cause DNA breaks, produced
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purified, Deisher views animal cell lines as a and more thimerosal-containing vaccines were vaccines.
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safer method, suggesting that our immune sys- added to the childhood vaccine schedule begin-
tems can more easily recognize animal-derived ning around the second change point in 1988.
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contaminants as foreign and eliminate them. In the early 2000s, thimerosal was reportedly
She observes, for example, that it is impossible removed from most childhood vaccines, but it
for chicken DNA fragments to incorporate into is still used in the manufacturing process and
human DNA. remains in high quantities in influenza vac-
cines, which the CDC recommends annually
FETAL DNA CONTAMINANTS for both children and adults. Dovetailing with
AND AUTISM Dr. Deisher’s findings, former drug company
Since the early 1980s, there has been an scientist Helen Ratajczak has pointed out—in a
astronomical rise in autism. Whereas autism comprehensive review of autism research—that
was observed in fewer than three in ten thousand around the same time that vaccine manufactur-
children in the 1970s, the current U.S. rate is ers removed thimerosal from most vaccines,
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estimated at one in thirty-six children between they began making more vaccines using human
the ages of three and seventeen. In New Jersey, tissue. 23
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which has the highest autism prevalence in the In 2015, another study by Dr. Deisher
nation, one in twenty boys (5 percent) born in (published in Issues in Law and Medicine)
2008 and assessed in 2016 were on the autism combined laboratory and ecological methods
spectrum. to examine the relationship between human
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Many studies have established that regres- fetal-cell-line-manufactured vaccines and the
sive autism is an immune-driven “whole body autism epidemics in Norway, Sweden and the
disorder” triggered largely by environmental UK. In the three countries, the researchers
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factors. External triggers are capable of creat- observed that during a short-lived decline in
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ing the hundreds of different DNA breaks and MMR vaccination rates in the late 1990s, the
mutations observed in persons with autism. It prevalence of autism also fell and then climbed
is also known that the DNA and retroviral con- as MMR vaccination rates again surged. The
taminants present in some vaccines can cause study concluded that the human fetal cell lines
DNA breaks and mutations. used to make the MMR and hepatitis A vaccines
Dr. Deisher has described a “strong change- create final products with “unacceptably high
point correlation” between the rise of autism in levels of fetal DNA fragment contaminants”
the early 1980s and the increased use of aborted capable of being delivered to the cell nucleus
fetal tissue to grow vaccine viruses. In a large and integrating into the genome. Moreover the
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cohort study published in the Journal of Public amounts of residual fragments detected sig-

FALL 2020 Wise Traditions 77