Covid-19 Vaccines and Christian Ethics

[Soloist]

Again, this is not my area of expertise. But the article you linked to above says that Hayflick's 1964 research used ordinary differentiated fetal cells, not undifferentiated stem cells when he compared replication rates of fetal and adult cells. It says he used fetal lung tissue, which are not stem cells.

AS I understand it, the three characteristics that make stem cells unique (and uniquely important to researchers) are: (1) they are self-replicating. Most body cells can go through a limited number of divisions and then die. Stem cells can continue to divide indefinitely, (2) they are undifferentiated which means that they do not have any of the specialized features associated with most of the cells in the body -- such as muscle, nerves, fat, and (3) they can divide and develop (or differentiate) into cells of other types.

You referenced HEK-293, so I assumed you were misunderstanding the science. HEK-293 is already differentiated.

HEK-293 cells were derived from fetal kidney cells in 1973 which is 48 years ago, not 20. And any cells currently in use today are thousands of generations removed from those original cells. Orders of magnitude more generations removed than say Abraham or Moses are from the present day. If we average 4 generations per century and Moses lived in the 14th century BC then that is only about 136 generations removed from the present day (34 centuries x 4).

This is what prompted my question to you about cell lines. Do you admit that the fetal cell lines are finite?

[Ken]

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4526020/

Due to the diminishing supply of WI-38 cells, the MRC-5 line has become the most widely used cell strain in the production of HDCS-derived human vaccines. China consequently confronts 2 key challenges for the production of viral vaccines from MRC-5 cells (which are mainly obtained from abroad): concerns about influences of limited passages, and the policies of the countries from which the cells are imported. More specifically, the numbers of passages of the imported MRC-5 cells are generally higher, generally later than the 20th passage, resulting in restricted mass production due to decreased growth vitality. Additionally, according to the standard for the Pharmacopoeia of the People's Republic of China (2010), Volume III, the use of the HDCSs is limited to generations within 2-thirds of the primary cell lifespan for the manufacture of vaccines. Due to the scarce HDCSs resources, the research and production of viral HDCVs in China are substantially restricted. For example, human diploid cell rabies vaccine, which is considered to be the gold standard for rabies vaccines, is not currently available in China.16 Furthermore, the productive cell generations for the OKA-HDC on the Chinese market from 3 manufactures are MRC-5 cells in the 32nd and 33rd passages,17 which have therefore already reached the limit required as described above in Chinese Pharmacopeia (the 33rd passage is the last cell doubling that could be used in the production for the MRC-5). Relying on imported HDCSs, may lead to unstable supply as well as unpredictable costs. Therefore the intention of this study is to develop a completely new HDCS of Chinese origin that could be used in manufacturing viral vaccines.

Obviously China, but the same logic is being followed by major vaccine production companies.

The MRC-5 stem cell line was cultured in England in 1966 or 1967 which is about 55 years ago. What is your understanding of how frequently the cells in a stem cell culture subdivide and replicate? Hourly? daily? weekly? monthly? annually?

And by the way, from what I understand, the term "passage" does not refer to how many time a cell has divided since the original cells were cultured. Stem cells within a culture or colony are continually replicating. It refers to how many times a new colony of stem cells has been mechanically split off from the parent colony. It refers to replication of colonies, not replication of individual cells. Extracting stem cells from an existing colony to create a new colony or culture is stressful on the cells.

[Soloist]

The MRC-5 stem cell line was cultured in England in 1966 or 1967 which is about 55 years ago. What is your understanding of how frequently the cells in a stem cell culture subdivide and replicate? Hourly? daily? weekly? monthly? annually?

And by the way, from what I understand, the term "passage" does not refer to how many time a cell has divided since the original cells were cultured. Stem cells within a culture or colony are continually replicating. It refers to how many times a new colony of stem cells has been mechanically split off from the parent colony. It refers to replication of colonies, not replication of individual cells. Extracting stem cells from an existing colony to create a new colony or culture is stressful on the cells.

Its not a stem cell line by how you describe stem cells...

[Soloist]

Care to present some research articles on the limitless replication rate of these stem cells that are used for vaccines?

[Ken]

Care to present some research articles on the limitless replication rate of these stem cells that are used for vaccines?

You are the one making the argument about limited replication of stem cells. I'm just asking if you have any idea how fast the stem cells are replicating (dividing) within a culture of HEK-293 or MRC-5 cells?

I'm not asking how many time the culture itself is duplicated, which is what is referred to as "passages." I'm asking how frequently the cells within a single culture are dividing. Or how many times they have divided since being isolated 50+ years ago.

[Valerie]

Is there a way to find out # of deaths due to the vaccines? That can be trusted,?

[Ken]

Is there a way to find out # of deaths due to the vaccines? That can be trusted,?

Short answer? No.

Reports of vaccine side effects are collected by the government here: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/ensur ... index.html

But you can't use that information to answer your question because they don't have a systematic way of attributing deaths to the vaccine. Linking a specific death to the vaccine is problematic, especially if the patient had other co-morbidities. If you give the vaccine to a 90 year old patient with a heart condition and chronic respiratory problems and they die 2-weeks later was that due to the vaccine? Also most deaths are not systematically autopsied. I think the actual autopsy rate is only about 5%.

[silentreader]

Is there a way to find out # of deaths due to the vaccines? That can be trusted,?

This is the version covering EU nations. It will also not supply vaccine deaths verified by autopsy.

https://www.adrreports.eu/en/index.html

[Soloist]

Care to present some research articles on the limitless replication rate of these stem cells that are used for vaccines?

You are the one making the argument about limited replication of stem cells. I'm just asking if you have any idea how fast the stem cells are replicating (dividing) within a culture of HEK-293 or MRC-5 cells?

I'm not asking how many time the culture itself is duplicated, which is what is referred to as "passages." I'm asking how frequently the cells within a single culture are dividing. Or how many times they have divided since being isolated 50+ years ago.

No I don't know the actual replication rate. Studies I've seen suggest the rate takes longer then 24 hours after 30 replications. This passages that you are referring to is something else. They have a finite replication (cellular division) of the Hayflick limit. A gram of cells is roughly 1billion cells. The argument is that it is immortal is not supported by science.

Looks like about 33 hours for a doubling of population of cells. https://www.sigmaaldrich.com/deepweb/as ... 5/r022.pdf

What is passaging https://www.allevi3d.com/passaging-cells-protocol/ it is not the number of replications.
and as referenced below, each time he did a subculture that is considered passaging.

In his 1964 experiment, Hayflick further examined the mechanisms that could cause the fetal cells to stop dividing. He created subcultures from fetal lung cell lines and adult lung tissue and named the cultures after the Wistar Institute and by number order. Hayflick cultured fetal lung tissues which he had received from male and female fetuses, and which he named the male derived cells WI-26 and the female derived cells WI-38 and WI-44. He extracted the fetal lung tissue from fetuses aborted at about three months gestation, he generated the adult strains from lung tissue of dead adults, and froze all of the tissues in a container with liquid nitrogen to preserve them. Each subculture split in a two-to-one ratio, which means that each cell in the samples divided once, producing two more cells.

Hayflick's results indicated that in a two-to-one split ratio, the average number of times a fetal cell could divide was between forty to sixty times. In adult cells, the average number of times a cell would multiply was twenty. That data indicated that in adult cells, numerous cell duplications had already occurred, as their number of duplications in the lab setting were less in comparison to the number of cell divisions in the fetal cell strains. In the experiment, Hayflick called the phase when the cell ceases to divide phase III, with phase I and II being periods in which a cell rapidly proliferates.

Hayflick investigated whether fifty was the average number of divisions for every fetal cell within the same population, or if it was just a randomly occurring number. To test his hypothesis, Hayflick randomly selected and cloned three samples of the fetal cell line, WI-38, and he recorded when each population stopped dividing. The resulting range for each clone was from fifty to fifty-four divisions. That data lead Hayflick to hold that something in cells limited the amount of times a cell can double. From the results, Hayflick concluded that cellular aging is based on the amount of times a cell doubles.

https://blog.genofab.com/hek293-cell-line

This continuity and reproducibility has made cell lines integral to many endeavors and is in sharp contrast to the usual behavior of mammalian cells, namely a growth arrest after a set number of divisions imposed by the Hayflick limit. Methods to generate immortalized cell lines differ and include starting from already immortalized cancer cells (such as HeLa cells) as well as introducing viral or mammalian genes such as telomerase to effect an indefinite proliferation. As the method of immortalization influences the resulting cell line, the origin of a widely used cell line such as HEK293 can be illuminating for working with it.

So... to recap, HEK-293 cells are not specifically stem cells. Some strains are immortal due to mutation with SV-40 virus or cancer.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12463478/

This link explains that stem cells also are subject to the Hayflick limit however, it varies much more as it differentiates.

[Soloist]

3.2.3 Fetal Stem Cells
Fetal stem cells were first isolated and cultured by John Gearhart and his team at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1998 (Shamblott et al., 1998). These cells known as primordial germ cells are the precursors of eggs and sperms and were isolated from the gonadal ridges and mesenteries of 5–9-week fetuses obtained by therapeutic abortion. Embryonic germ (EG) cells isolated from them are found to be pluripotent. Problems associated with isolation of these stem cells are (1) they can be obtained only from 8- to 9-week-old fetuses and (2) EG cells have limited proliferation capacity.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/me ... -stem-cell

The three most reliable sources to date of abundant fetal stem cells are the placenta, amniotic fluid, and umbilical cord blood. These sources are also attractive in that their stem cells are obtained in a minimally invasive manner from the fetus.

Clearly we can acquire "stem cells" from ethical routes...