Free Republic

(Largo) Due to dwindling capacity for existing aborted fetal cell lines to self-replicate, scientists in China have developed a new aborted fetal cell line, WALVAX 2 that will be used for viral vaccine production. The existing cell lines, MRC-5 and WI-38 are currently used in MMR, Varicella, Hepatitis-A, Shingles, some rabies and some polio vaccines. WALVAX 2 is taken from the lung tissue of a 3 month gestation female who was ultimately selected from among 9 aborted babies. The scientists noted how they followed specific guidelines to mimic WI-38 and MRC-5 in selecting the aborted babies, ranging from 2-4 months...

An experimental vaccine can reduce both the incidence and the severity of shingles by more than half, doctors reported yesterday, in a development that could spare hundreds of thousands of elderly Americans from an extremely painful disease. The effectiveness of the vaccine was determined in an unusually large clinical trial involving more than 38,500 people over the age of 60, the group most prone to shingles, a skin and nerve infection. "I think the results are quite clinically significant," said Dr. Michael N. Oxman, the leader of the study, which is being published today in The New England Journal of...

TUESDAY, Aug. 10 (HealthDayNews) -- Like all vaccines, the one for chicken pox isn't foolproof, but a new study finds that when vaccinated children still get the disease, they are only half as contagious as unvaccinated kids. Their cases are also typically much less severe, said study author Dr. Jean F. Seward, of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "In the average case, there are 200 to 400 lesions," she said, referring to the blister-like rash that occurs with the disease. "A bad case is up to 1,000 lesions. These 'breakthrough' cases get typically less than 50 lesions,...

Medical texts describe chickenpox, or varicella, as a highly contagious but rather mild childhood disease that only rarely results in serious complications, a fact that has set off decades of controversy over whether the vaccine to prevent chickenpox is warranted. Had anyone asked me, I would have said absolutely. Although I had none of the characteristics associated with more severe cases, at age 8 I had what my pediatrician called the "worst case of chickenpox" he had ever seen — more than 1,000 intensely itchy blisters all over my body. Sick for three weeks, I spent hours each day in...