A clip of The Tucker Carlson show featuring ICAN Attorney Aaron Siri has gone viral. The clip discusses the use of aborted fetuses in vaccine research. This has sparked a debate about how frequently aborted fetal tissue is used in vaccines and other pharmaceutical drug research, development, and manufacture. There is also debate among commenters on social media regarding whether fetal organ cells are in the final vaccine product given to the public.

“In every single dose of an MMR shot, there are literally millions of pieces from the cultured cell line of an aborted fetus,” Siri said. “In every single injection. Now, again, that might sound crazy, but I could literally pull up right now the CDC’s own ingredient list for the MMR vaccine.”

The MMR vaccine insert on the FDA’s website states that the mumps and measles viruses were attenuated in “chick embryo cell culture.” The insert says the rubella virus was attenuated in “WI-38 human diploid lung fibroblasts.” The FDA’s approval for the Varivax chickenpox vaccine by Merck states ,”This isolate was serially passaged through primary human embryonic lung culture, followed by guinea pig fibroblasts and WI-38 cells. Subsequent passage of the virus is in MRC-5 cells.”

WI-38 is derived from the lung tissue of a three-month female fetus from an elective abortion in 1963. MRC-5 is derived from the lung tissue of a 14-week old Caucasian male fetus from an aborted fetus in 1966.

“You have to grow viruses in a cell,” Siri said. “Viruses won’t just grow. That’s how they replicate, they take over the machinery of a cell. So, you have to grow it on a cellular substrate.”

The MMR and Merck chickenpox vaccines are developed with cultured cell-lines of aborted fetuses from the 1960s. Siri said that many people try to say that vaccines that utilize fetal tissue only use cultured cell lines from aborted fetuses from over half a century ago. Siri said this is false as there is evidence from Dr. Stanley Plotkin’s deposition, studies, and the fetal procurement industry that……

“A lot of times they like to say they only involved a few babies way back when,” Siri said. “So I have a whole series in these depositions showing it’s not a few babies way back when. it was a lot of babies and it’s still ongoing. And this industry has only grown.”

President Donald Trump’s NIH canceled a contract in 2018 with Advanced Bioscience Resources, a company that was providing human fetal tissue for government experiments. That accompanied a temporary pause and began a 9-month review before ultimately deciding that the government could no longer conduct research while using human fetal tissue.

In that announcement, HHS said “Promoting the dignity of human life from conception to natural death is one of the very top priorities of President Trump’s administration.”

In April 2021, President Biden’s administration and HHS led by Secretary Xavier Becerra overturned the regulations preventing government research with human fetal tissue. Secretary Becerra determined there “are no new ethical issues that require special review.”

During a portion of Siri’s deposition of Dr. Plotkin, he asked Dr. Plotkin how many fetuses have been part of his work related to vaccines. Dr. Plotkin answered two and Siri presented him with a study in which Dr. Plotkin was a listed author. After directing Plotkin to flip to a specific page, Dr. Plotkin admitted that there were 76 fetuses involved in this single research study.

Siri asked if all of the fetuses were three months or older when aborted. Dr. Plotkin confirmed that they were. When prompted by Siri to disclose the number of fetuses he has used throughout his career, Dr. Plotkin said he didn’t know but said there were “quite a few.”

During the interview on Tucker Carlson’s show, Carlson said he watched clips of Dr. Plotkin’s deposition. Carlson said it was “one of the most shocking things I’ve ever seen in my life.” In response to the revelations about aborted fetuses being procured for vaccine research, he said “This is tampering with the secret sauce of nature. This will not end well.”

Dr. Theresa Deisher, president and founder of Sound Choice Pharmaceutical Institute, has appeared on The HighWire and has spoken about the process of procuring fetuses and utilizing the tissue for scientific research. She said MMR, chickenpox, Zostavax (Merck’s shingles vaccine), all Hepatitis A vaccines, polio, and one of the rabies vaccines have “human fetal DNA fragments and cellular debris, and in quite high levels.”

“What you have are procurement companies, who are working side by side literally with the abortionist, typically right in the building,” Dr. Deisher said. “What happens with the heart is that it will actually go into this contracture, and once that happens, you can’t get good data from it. So the tissue really becomes useless. It has to be flushed. It has to be put into a preservative that stops the heart within two minutes. The baby has to be born alive, or they’re not going to be able to get the heart and get it rushed and get it in the blocked solution so they can preserve it for processing.”

“A fetus born intact is definitely dead when they cut its heart out,” Dr. Deisher said. “They’re not given any anesthetic. I would never do this to a mouse or a rat. I would not be surprised that we might get some hard numbers not in the so distant future that abortions are delayed later and later so that the scientists and the procurement companies can get better late-term tissue.”

In the Tucker Carlson interview, Siri also briefly mentioned the concept of “humanized mice” being used for scientific experimentation. In April 2021, Judicial Watch received 575 pages of records from the FDA showing tens of thousands of tax-payer dollars were used to purchase human fetal tissue from Advanced Bioscience Resources. According to the emails obtained, the FDA arranged for regular deliveries of aborted fetal tissue between the gestational ages of 16-24 weeks. This tissue was procured for the purpose of “humanizing rats” for scientific experiments.

The Center for Medical Progress released an undercover video in 2015 alleging that Planned Parenthood was making money selling aborted fetal tissue to procurement companies like Stem Express. Congressional investigations didn’t lead to any criminal or civil action against Planned Parenthood or the procurement companies. Stem Express filed a lawsuit against CMS, but later dropped the suit.

Dr. Deisher has been vocal about the issue of using fetuses in medical research, but also potential health concerns related to vaccines that are developed with cultured-cell lines. Dr. Deisher has written an open letter describing the potential harms to children.

In a video she shot with The HighWire, Dr. Deisher said, “We absolutely know that the levels of DNA in these vaccines get into our children’s bloodstream at levels that are above sometimes 100-fold higher than levels of fetal DNA that has been demonstrated to massively activate the immune response causing a general cytokine release and cytokines are toxins. And we are giving children 10 to 100-fold higher concentrations we absolutely know toll-like receptor 9 will be activated. The pharmaceutical companies have never measured cytokine release and they’ve never measured that acute auto-immune response.”

Jim Meehan also discussed the use of aborted fetuses in vaccines on The HighWire in 2023.