NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana — Coronavirus vaccines are making headlines, not only because they offer life-saving protection against the virus that's killed nearly one and a half million people worldwide, but also because of religious and ethical considerations on how they are made.
Catholic clergy such as Bishop Joseph Brennan of the Fresno Diocese said this in previous reports:
"I must tell you that there's some very serious problems with a number of the vaccines. I won't be able to take a vaccine. I just won't, brothers and sisters, and I encourage you not to, if it was developed with material derived from stem cells of a baby who was aborted."
The injected coronavirus vaccines do not contain human fetal cells.
There are, however, many vaccines and medications for other diseases that use cells grown in a lab during development. Those cell lines, as they are called, were originally created from human fetal tissue from 50 or so years ago. Some, but not all, of the coronavirus vaccines have used these cell lines in the lab to help grow viruses. The viruses are then inactivated and used to carry coronavirus genes in some of the vaccines.
Our review from other Catholic scholars found this:
The Vatican's Pontifical Academy for Life, as recently as 2017, said that in the absence of alternatives, Catholics could, in good conscience, receive vaccines made using historical human fetal cell lines.
Now for a local review: The Archdiocese of New Orleans says it goes by the guidelines of the National Catholic Bioethics Center. On that website, a spokesperson notes which coronavirus vaccines did, and which ones did not, use the cell lines in their research and development. Pfizer and Moderna did not. AstraZeneca did. That site will help those who have questions about which vaccine they want.
