Covid19 vaccine, will we know how it's made

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Hi everyone.
I am posting this in the morality section for obvious reasons.
My apologies if this has been done.

There is of course a global effort to develop a vaccine for C19. My understanding of this is a bit sketchy. My question is, will the upcoming C19 vaccine most likely be made with fetal tissue / cells? Is it possible that a vaccine might come along that isn’t, and will we know ahead of time?

People are free to discuss the morality of taking a vaccine made with fetal tissue, but personally I would lean against taking such a vaccine.
Thanks.
 
Is it established that existing vaccines rely on immoral acts invoking a human fetus? Which vaccines?
 
esieffe said:
Hi everyone.
I am posting this in the morality section for obvious reasons.
My apologies if this has been done.

There is of course a global effort to develop a vaccine for C19. My understanding of this is a bit sketchy. My question is, will the upcoming C19 vaccine most likely be made with fetal tissue / cells? Is it possible that a vaccine might come along that isn’t, and will we know ahead of time?

People are free to discuss the morality of taking a vaccine made with fetal tissue, but personally I would lean against taking such a vaccine.
Thanks.
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I am sure, due to people having allergies to all manner of things these days if for no other reason, manufacturers would have to be upfront about exactly how vaccines are produced.
 
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The vaccine being made by Moderna uses fetal tissue. That vaccine has been in the news recently, as it has successfully produced antibodies to COVID 19 in the people involved in the trial.
 
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esieffe said:
My question is, will the upcoming C19 vaccine most likely be made with fetal tissue / cells?
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A good question that hadn’t occurred to me until you mentioned it.
Is it possible that a vaccine might come along that isn’t, and will we know ahead of time?
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Since the virus also affects other mammals (bats originally, lions and tigers in a zoo, possibly others), I imagine that animal cell cultures could be used, but if those cell lines haven’t already been discovered and developed previously for other vaccines or other purposes, that would delay their eventual application to the production of covid-19 vaccine.
 
We’ll have to wait and see which, if any, vaccines make it to market. At that point the one(s) that do will have papers explaining the process and what was used. I’m sure the church will explain if any are unethical. Until then, we just won’t know. The process of developing the vaccine is a closely guarded secret but once in production, the process will be available.

For now, patience is all we can have.
 
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Do you think the church will announce any problems if they deem the vaccine unethical? I realize it’s not a black and white situation but they have issued guidance before so I assume they would again if there was a serious issue. Thanks…
 
There was something on youtube that brought it to my attention. It was an insomnia night so I am afraid I didn’t save the link. But that got me thinking. There there was something from Fr Mark Goring making references to it.

What little I could find from a Catholic perspective suggested that several modern vaccines may have had origins from aborted fetal tissue. It said that tissue from miscarriages had been used but was “more risky” to use.

I also remember reading that vaccines can and have been created without the use of fetal tissue at all, but took much longer to create. That is all I found on a bing.com search that late night.

I am in a risk group and I don’t really cherish the idea of getting C19 … at all, but I think for myself, a vaccine from an aborted fetus, is a red line I won’t be able to cross. If somebody like Fr Rippenger broke it down and said it was ok, because of this, this and this happened… I would consider it.

Till then, I’ll wait for one that is tissue free.
 
ZemD said:
The vaccine being made by Moderna uses fetal tissue. That vaccine has been in the news recently, as it has successfully produced antibodies to COVID 19 in the people involved in the trial.
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From my understanding, this is incorrect. What it is using is a replicating cell line (which has already been used in other vaccines) that was originally derived from fetal tissue decades ago. There is no “fetal tissue” in these cells, the cells used now aren’t even the original cells anyway, and they’re used in production of the vaccine rather than being in the vaccine themselves. This site explains it here, even making a note of what the National Catholic Bioethics Center said about it:
https://vaxopedia.org/2018/04/08/which-vaccines-contain-aborted-baby-parts/

Moderna’s vaccine, from what I can tell, is simply using those cell lines. Which, again, is not fetal tissue. I suppose someone can question the morality of using those cell lines (though as noted above, the Catholic Church appears to have said it is moral to use them), but to say vaccines made with those cell lines “use” fetal tissue seems inaccurate.
 
The Church answered this issue a while ago with an encylical that hopefully someone here who remembers it can pull up, but it’s not a simple binary ‘yes’ and ‘no’. Honestly, if a vaccine comes for COVID-19, I will use it and I would pray that all of us use it so we can actually get back to normal. I am strongly pro-life and I still find the objections over using vaccines because of these ingredients to be rather trivial or silly.
 
esieffe said:
Hi everyone.
I am posting this in the morality section for obvious reasons.
My apologies if this has been done.

There is of course a global effort to develop a vaccine for C19. My understanding of this is a bit sketchy. My question is, will the upcoming C19 vaccine most likely be made with fetal tissue / cells? Is it possible that a vaccine might come along that isn’t, and will we know ahead of time?

People are free to discuss the morality of taking a vaccine made with fetal tissue, but personally I would lean against taking such a vaccine.
Thanks.
Click to expand...
We don’t know but if it is and there is no alternative the Church allows Catholics to get such a vaccination. As the Church allows it then I don’t have to get into morality discussions and I would be fine getting the vaccination.
 
I apologize for my poor word choice.

I do think the argument is a bit convoluted though. If one is against using aborted fetal cells for research or to grow vaccines, why would it matter if the fetus was aborted 40 years ago or 4 hours ago? Yes the cells used now are essentially copies made in a lab over and over again, not the original cells anymore, but again decades ago a baby was aborted to get those original cells.

I know the church has said “this is fine”, I don’t think I know better than the church, I personally think the justification given is poor. Is it justified in any other area of catholic teaching to permitt an objective evil for the potential, not even guarentee, to prevent suffering in others? Particularly when there are many other ethical avenues to develop vaccines.
 
ZemD said:
Is it justified in any other area of catholic teaching to permitt an objective evil
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In determining that accepting such a vaccination is not immoral, the original evil (Eg the abortion if that’s what happened) is not being sanctioned. Not at all.
 
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