How Vaccines are Made

First off, you must know that vaccinations contain animal base ingredients. I am not a vegetarian and I do eat animal products. However, digesting an animal and having one injected directly into your blood stream are two totally different things. There are two processes in which animal based ingredients are used to mass produce vaccines. One is using animal cells as "nurseries". In simple terms, the animal cell houses the virus that doctors want to reproduce. This will be the main ingredient in the vaccine. The animal cell allow the virus to divide and reproduce itself indefinitely. These immortal cells come from a variety of sources, including monkeys, hamsters, or human fetuses. For example, the flu virus is grown within chick fetuses.

These animal cells need energy to continue growing the viruses and are given glucose and other chemicals to help with this. Here comes the second process that uses animal based ingredients. This process is a special "soup".

"The cells are bathed in a "soup" made up of these ingredients, and frequently include other organic chemicals such as growth factors, which can help the cells to develop" (BBC News Health). And just so you know, human growth factors, are rarely used since it doesn't provide reliable result, instead fetal calf serum is the popular choice (which has recently caused a scare).

Once the desirable amount of viruses are replicated the manufacture uses a filtration and purification process to TRY and remove everything but the virus from the vaccine. Okay, now to the fetal calf serum scare. Recently the Department of Health (UK) "told doctors not to use the Medeva brand of polio vaccine after it found the maker had breached CJD safety guidance"(BBC News Health). In lay terms, they were afraid that traces of MAD COW DISEASE may have leaked into the vaccination through the use of beef products! They tried to downplay it by saying it was just a "precaution." However, this sucks for the "hundreds of thousands" of children who already received the vaccine before it was pulled from the shelves.