A lot of ink is being spilled these days about the COVID-19 pandemic, and whether you agree or disagree with the response to the disease, one thing is certain: at least one vaccine will soon be making its appearance on the scene, and with it will come a number of ethical issues, from how the vaccine is derived, to the conscience rights of individuals to refuse it.
Both will be hotly contested, so let’s start with the more pressing issue, the manufacturing of vaccines.
LifeCanada recently held a webinar with medical researcher Debi Vinnedge, founder of Children of God for Life, a pro-life organization that focuses on human cloning and embryonic and fetal tissue research.
Vinnedge made it clear that cells from aborted babies are used in vaccines and that the complicity of people who use these vaccines without seeking alternatives or sharing their concerns with health authorities is considerable.
Let’s begin with the history. The rubella vaccine initially used stem cells from aborted babies, then was lumped together with measles and mumps in the commonly known MMR vaccine.
Vinnedge said beginning in 1964, doctors began advising women who contracted rubella to abort their babies, concerned that it would affect the unborn child. The aborted babies were sent to the science labs of Dr. Stanley Plotkin who used them to isolate a virus called RA273 – for Rubella, Abortion, 27th baby, 3rd tissue containing the live rubella virus.
In all, at least 67 babies were electively aborted just to obtain the virus for the rubella vaccine,” said Vinnedge.
That was not the only cell line developed. Dr. Leonard Hayflick used aborted babies shipped from Sweden to his labs in Philadelphia in the development of the polio vaccine.
In a 2012 article Forsaking God for the Sake of Science, Vinnedge exposed the forced sterilizations and abortions that acclaimed polio scientists were involved in for their research in the early 1900s under the Eugenic Sterilization Act. In one research paper, doctors graphically describe their work: “Human embryos of two and one-half to five months gestation were obtained from the gynaecological department of the Toronto General Hospital.”
One of the myths about this issue is that only two abortions in 1960s were involved in developing cell lines. “This is probably one of the biggest falsehoods that has been propagated on an unsuspecting American public for decades,” said Vinnedge, who lists the names of cell lines from hundreds of abortions that are used in vaccines and medicines today. A complete list can be found at cogforlife.org.
The research was not only “deplorable,” said Vinnedge, but “completely unnecessary” because from the 1930s to the 1960s, “from polio to rubella, scientists noted there were several other moral sources that could be used as well.”
Are aborted babies still used in the manufacture of vaccines today? Yes. Despite ethical alternatives the trend has not abated and human DNA debris is found in almost all vaccines as well as drugs.
But there is good news. Today many researchers are working to produce ethical vaccines, and although Canada still buys non-ethically produced vaccines, it has agreed to purchase millions of ethically produced doses from Novavax.
How does this affect Catholics? Father Tad Pacholczyk, director of education at the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia directs Catholics to Dignitas Personae (The Dignity of the Person), which says there are “differing degrees of responsibility” and there may be “grave reasons” that are “morally proportionate to justify the use of such ‘biological material,’” such as parents allowing their children to be vaccinated using a vaccine with an unethical background.
At the same time, “everyone has the duty to make known their disagreement and to ask that their health-care system make other types of vaccines available, says Dignitas Personae.
It’s crucial that governments also respect our rights as individuals to conscientiously object to the COVID-19 vaccine or any other medicine. Penalties such as the denial of entry into schools, offices, places of worship, stores or even the inability to travel without proof of vaccination should not be used as a means to force citizens to comply.
Already this summer a bill in New Brunswick would have removed religious and philosophical exemptions from mandatory vaccinations. In a submission to the government before the bill was voted down, constitutional lawyer James Kitchen argued, “It is a serious intrusion by the state to demand that a person inject a set of substances into their body or the body of their child they do not want or need in order to access basic public benefits.”
LifeCanada has a petition calling on the federal government to produce ethical vaccines and to uphold conscience protections against forced vaccinations. Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms not only guarantees life, liberty, and the security of person, but must protect Canadians from being coerced by government to make choices they do not want.
Natalie Sonnen is the Executive Director of LifeCanada.