The FDA Shuts Down Common Infant Vaccine After Startling Discovery

 

Posted by Dr. Mercola | April 17 2010 | 181,351 views

 

“U.S. federal health authorities recommended … that doctors suspend using Rotarix, one of two vaccines licensed in the U.S. against rotavirus, saying the vaccine is contaminated with material from a pig virus,” CNN reports.

 

The Rotarix vaccine, which is made by GlaxoSmithKline and was approved by the FDA in 2008, has already been given to about 1 million U.S. children along with 30 million worldwide. The vaccine was found to contain DNA from porcine circovirus 1.

 

“The FDA learned about the contamination after an academic research team using a novel technique to look for viruses in a range of vaccines found the material in GlaxoSmithKline's product and told the company,” FDA Commissioner Dr. Margaret Hamburg told CNN.

 

It is actually common for vaccines to contain various animal matter, including foreign animal tissues containing genetic material (DNA/RNA), but even FDA Commissioner Dr. Margaret Hamburg told CNN:

 

"It [Pig virus DNA] should not be in this vaccine product and we want to understand how it got there.

 

It's not an easy call and we spent many long hours debating the pros and cons but, because we have an alternative product and because the background rates of this disease are not so severe in this country, we felt that the judicious thing to do was to take a pause, to really ask the critical questions about what this material was doing in the vaccine, how it got there."

 

Animal Ingredients Common in Vaccines:

 

You should know that it is very common for vaccine manufacturers to use cells from animals and birds in their manufacturing process. To put this in perspective, Barbara Loe Fisher has explained what animal material is par for the course in manufacturing the Rotarix vaccine for your children:

 

“Rotarix is a genetically engineered vaccine that GSK created by isolating human rotavirus strain infecting a child in Cincinnati and using African Green monkey kidney cells to produce the original viral seed stock from which all Rotarix vaccine has been made.

 

In the FDA licensing process, Rotarix had to meet certain FDA standards, that included demonstrating the vaccine was not contaminated with, for example TSE (Transmissable Spongiform Encephalopathy or “mad cow” disease, a brain wasting disease) or with cow viruses because bovine (cow) serum was used to prepare the original viral seed stock. 

 

Porcine trypsin, an enzyme in the pancreatic juice of a pig, was also used to make the viral seed stock.”