"Hayflick explains that, contrary to common practice in 1962, he had not laced the cells with antibiotics at the outset because vaccine manufacturers feared allergic reactions to the drugs. Shortly before the Science article was published, Hayflick sued the NIH. He argued that the agency had violated the 1974 Privacy Act by making his name and the allegations against him available under the FOIA without including his rebuttal. He also sued for title to WI-38 and its proceeds. By then, Hayflick was also facing a criminal investigation: Stanford University had alerted local prosecutors that the case could be one of criminal theft of government property. (The prosecutors subsequently found no grounds for criminal investigation and dropped the case.) Meanwhile, some vaccine manufacturers, fearing that there would not be enough stock of WI-38 to meet future needs, switched much of their work to an alternative fetal cell strain, MRC-5."

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Added on April 10, 2026
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Original Language: English

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p.424-425

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Use_of_fetal_tissue_in_vaccine_development