Christian media need to step up and report on these developments. Christian leaders are involved in a public health catastrophe and there is little coverage of it. Biologos and other Christians in science organizations need to be more vocal and engage the media as well.

How in the world do we reach these people?

Deisher has come out against vaccines and Barton’s decision to give her a platform and deceive his audience is enough for me. I don’t give him any space here. He is contributing to a public health nightmare that may turn into a crisis.

“we can give those like the Bartons and Dr. Deisher the benefit of the doubt that they are not necessarily against vaccines per se”

When you deliberately deceive in order to get others to take your view on something, then yes, it is reasonable to say you are against that “something” (vaccines in this particular case).

Someone forwarded to me this 2014 study that was published in 2015, that indicates that new cell lines have been developed from aborted fetuses, in China, within the past few years:

https://cogforlife.org/wp-content/uploads/walvaxScienceDoc.pdf

It would appear that this is the type of information that Dr. Deisher is publicizing. Even if studies like these prove to be legitimate, they do not clearly indicate that abortions were performed for the purpose of obtaining material to make vaccines. I do not know how the ethical and legal issues regarding abortion/vaccines work in China, versus the U.S.

Perhaps I am delusional, but I would hope that we can give those like the Bartons and Dr. Deisher the benefit of the doubt that they are not necessarily against vaccines per se, but merely that they are against the unethical methods for developing vaccines. It would be better to develop cell lines that do not trace back to abortions. I can surely support that.

However, this is not a sufficient moral reason to deny vaccination, that could possibly save the lives of children of concerned parents, and their neighbors’ children, or anyone else, for that matter.

It might be good to find someone who has expertise in vaccines who can comment on studies like these, in order to straighten this mess out.

The current outbreaks of measles appear to be relatively confined to communities of Ultra Orthodox Jews, but if the contagion spreads further out, it could become an even worse mess.

Jay Wile, a Young Earth Creationist scientist, has been an outspoken critic of the anti-vax movement. We need more folks like him to step up and reach out into those communities of Christians, who are so distrustful of mainstream science:

http://www.drwile.com/lnkpages/render.asp?vac_abortion