By Hilary White

July 6, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Increased rates of regressive autism in children in the US and UK can be historically associated with the switch by pharmaceutical companies from the use of animal cells to produce vaccines to the use of aborted human fetal cells, a campaign group is claiming.

“Now when we vaccinate our children, some vaccines also deliver contaminating aborted human fetal DNA. The safety of this has never been tested,” says Dr. Theresa Deisher, President of the Sound Choice Pharmaceutical Institute (SCPI).

SCPI, a group that educates the public on the use of aborted human fetal material for drug production, warns that the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccines introduced to the US and UK in 1979 and 1988 respectively, were produced using aborted fetal cells, while previous versions were made using only animal cells. This switch coincides with what SCPI says are “dramatic” increases in the rates of regressive autism in children, in which the child’s social and verbal development halts.

The warning comes in response to the recommendation in June by the National Vaccine Advisory Committee (NVAC) of the US Department of Health and Human Services for further study into vaccine safety with relation to autism. Some concerned parents of children with autism maintain that there is a link between childhood vaccinations and autism.

Despite assurances from health agencies and the scientific community disputing this, a growing number of parents have opted out of national vaccination programs. This has prompted the Centers for Disease Control to convene a Vaccine Safety Working Subgroup. A report by the NVAC recommended further study of the potential for vaccines to contribute to regressive autism in children.

SCPI points to studies showing an environmental factor, “a trigger,” that brings on the disorder. But while scientists pointed to the presence of mercury in the MMR vaccines, SCPI says that autism continued to rise after mercury was removed.

“The early vaccines produced using aborted fetal cells, such as MMRII, don’t even inform consumers that residual aborted fetal DNA is injected with each vaccine,” SCPI said in a media release. More recently introduced vaccines, the group says, do inform consumers that they contain contaminating residual DNA from the “human diploid cell” but do not say that this cell is from an aborted human fetus.

“The safety of injecting our children with aborted human fetal DNA has been debated for over 40 years, but has never been studied,” SCPI said.