Covid-19 Vaccines and Christian Ethics

[Bootstrap]

There is nothing "unclear". The established science and consensus for the past several decades was that HEK-293 came from an aborted fetus, and no further details were shared. That's unethical and immoral.

The original paper did not say where the cells came from, it speaks of an "embryo" without saying more:

Characteristics of a Human Cell Line Transformed by DNA from Human Adenovirus Type 5

I don't think that the ethical question is particularly different unless we know with certainty that it was not an abortion. My own view is that it's too late to save this one life, either way, but we can save many more lives today by taking the vaccine. But I also understand your argument in the opposite direction.

That's why I asked "suppose we knew for certain" that it came from a miscarriage. I don't think we do know that, but I wanted to know how it would change the ethics for people like you and Soloist if we did.

[Josh]

Finding out for certain would be a real relief, because the Soloist and I could try to find HEK-293 based therapies.

But we would still need assurances future stem cell research won’t use newer lines. Unfortunately that cat seems to be out of the bag.

[Soloist]

There is nothing "unclear". The established science and consensus for the past several decades was that HEK-293 came from an aborted fetus, and no further details were shared. That's unethical and immoral.

The original paper did not say where the cells came from, it speaks of an "embryo" without saying more:

Characteristics of a Human Cell Line Transformed by DNA from Human Adenovirus Type 5

I don't think that the ethical question is particularly different unless we know with certainty that it was not an abortion. My own view is that it's too late to save this one life, either way, but we can save many more lives today by taking the vaccine. But I also understand your argument in the opposite direction.

That's why I asked "suppose we knew for certain" that it came from a miscarriage. I don't think we do know that, but I wanted to know how it would change the ethics for people like you and Soloist if we did.

The theory that it came from a miscarriage is false. They are basing this on chromosomal abnormalities that are present (as far as I know) from a mutation introduced by the virus attempting to immortalize the cell line. The HEK-293 has more versions then most if not all cell lines and some are with normal chromosomes and some are not. During a congressional investigation the developer himself said the baby was perfectly healthy female fetus.
Medicine does not use miscarriage because of rapid cellular decay and unclear (ie safety reasons) cause of death.

To clarify, I have no problem using a cell line developed from natural death. Far more reasonable would be cord blood or pre-birth donation from multiple lab tests that already occur.
It would be trivial (for the scientists) to produce a cell line that was ethical if someone actually funded it...

As for all the other vaccines out there... I have to admit I am extremely uncomfortable about this whole thing with the testing side and would rather not know if those were tested for development... the logical conclusion if they were compromised is to stop using them. Vaccines, unlike medication do go through some changes over time and don't always have extensive testing on the new renditions. When Thimerosal was removed from several child vaccines, it didn't go through extensive testing and most updated versions do not either. Some effectivity has actually substantially reduced in at least the Mono vaccine and the pertussis vaccine since some changes.

A thought exercise:
I've thought often of the early church refusal to say "hail Caesar" or offer incense to the gods and wondered about the parallels.

Your own child, a baby lies dying in front of you of a disease that is very treatable according to the "doctors" in the Roman times but before they will treat your child, you must offer incense to the gods. Offering incense is such a little thing to save a baby, its wrong yes, but do the ends justify the means? God would forgive you.

Now replace the scenario with a modern day rendition. You believe the use of fetal cells is wrong and your own baby lies dying of Covid in China. the cure the "doctors" say is to let us infuse a monoclonal antibody developed from the 2005 abortion (the Walvax-2) and your baby will live. The aborted baby is already dead, no one needs to know and its such a small thing. You are a child abuser if you don't, besides God will forgive you.

Is the moral compromise equivalent? Why? why not?

[Bootstrap]

A thought exercise:
I've thought often of the early church refusal to say "hail Caesar" or offer incense to the gods and wondered about the parallels.

Your own child, a baby lies dying in front of you of a disease that is very treatable according to the "doctors" in the Roman times but before they will treat your child, you must offer incense to the gods. Offering incense is such a little thing to save a baby, its wrong yes, but do the ends justify the means? God would forgive you.

Now replace the scenario with a modern day rendition. You believe the use of fetal cells is wrong and your own baby lies dying of Covid in China. the cure the "doctors" say is to let us infuse a monoclonal antibody developed from the 2005 abortion (the Walvax-2) and your baby will live. The aborted baby is already dead, no one needs to know and its such a small thing. You are a child abuser if you don't, besides God will forgive you.

Is the moral compromise equivalent? Why? why not?

Let me be clear about a few places where my view and yours differ.

1. To me, abortion is wrong, but using fetal cells is not wrong unless it encourages abortion. An analogy: murder is wrong, but I would be willing to accept a kidney from someone who was murdered, as long as I knew it would not encourage future murders.
2. Nobody is asking me to do anything to approve of the death of the child, whether by abortion or miscarriage.

Also, if the goal is to get more ethical alternative vaccines, I wonder if there are ways to be more active about it. For instance, what if millions of people signed something saying they want the vaccine but can't take the ones currently on offer? That might get more attention.

[Soloist]

A thought exercise:
I've thought often of the early church refusal to say "hail Caesar" or offer incense to the gods and wondered about the parallels.

Your own child, a baby lies dying in front of you of a disease that is very treatable according to the "doctors" in the Roman times but before they will treat your child, you must offer incense to the gods. Offering incense is such a little thing to save a baby, its wrong yes, but do the ends justify the means? God would forgive you.

Now replace the scenario with a modern day rendition. You believe the use of fetal cells is wrong and your own baby lies dying of Covid in China. the cure the "doctors" say is to let us infuse a monoclonal antibody developed from the 2005 abortion (the Walvax-2) and your baby will live. The aborted baby is already dead, no one needs to know and its such a small thing. You are a child abuser if you don't, besides God will forgive you.

Is the moral compromise equivalent? Why? why not?

Let me be clear about a few places where my view and yours differ.

1. To me, abortion is wrong, but using fetal cells is not wrong unless it encourages abortion. An analogy: murder is wrong, but I would be willing to accept a kidney from someone who was murdered, as long as I knew it would not encourage future murders.
2. Nobody is asking me to do anything to approve of the death of the child, whether by abortion or miscarriage.

Also, if the goal is to get more ethical alternative vaccines, I wonder if there are ways to be more active about it. For instance, what if millions of people signed something saying they want the vaccine but can't take the ones currently on offer? That might get more attention.

Sure I understand your view and both of our views have been repeated in several locations. What do you have to say about the actual question?

[Josh]

(1) I wouldn’t accept a donor kidney from a murder victim who had not previously consented to be an organ donor:

(2) Yes it would be good to have an organised movement expressing its desire for non fetal stem cell vaccines and medicines. That is in fact exactly what COG for Life is.

[Bootstrap]

Sure I understand your view and both of our views have been repeated in several locations. What do you have to say about the actual question?

Given my understanding, I don't see a "hail, Caesar!" here. Given your understanding, I can see why you would. I think that difference follows logically from the difference in the way we understand the basic ethical question.

[Ernie]

I'm not asking for a formal position paper. I'm just asking generally which branch of the Mennonite church opposes vaccines as a matter of doctrine. Apparently the answer is none of them. Conservative churches are willing to take positions on a bazillion different issues from the color and shape of head coverings and dress codes to jewelry, car colors, internet use, social security, etc. etc. But vaccines doesn't appear to be one of them.

I wasn't asking whether some bishop and his family in a particular church happens to have a position on stem cell research. Every church I have ever encountered has members with a wide variety of opinions on a wide variety of topics.

There are many Anabaptist churches that take a position against using vaccines that are derived from fetal cell tissue or cell lines. The Washington/Franklin conference is one of those that I know about.

[Soloist]

I'm not asking for a formal position paper. I'm just asking generally which branch of the Mennonite church opposes vaccines as a matter of doctrine. Apparently the answer is none of them. Conservative churches are willing to take positions on a bazillion different issues from the color and shape of head coverings and dress codes to jewelry, car colors, internet use, social security, etc. etc. But vaccines doesn't appear to be one of them.

I wasn't asking whether some bishop and his family in a particular church happens to have a position on stem cell research. Every church I have ever encountered has members with a wide variety of opinions on a wide variety of topics.

There are many Anabaptist churches that take a position against using vaccines that are derived from fetal cell tissue or cell lines. The Washington/Franklin conference is one of those that I know about.

I would be curious as to how they phrase it. Do you happen to have a copy or a contact I could talk to? I don't know anyone from that group. Do you know if they took input from Dr Miggiani?

[Ernie]

It looks like Novavax is now approved in Canada for emergency use.
I hope USA will soon follow suit.

Unfortunately Novavax gave into foetal tissue testing too.

Yes, I wish vaccine makers would just avoid all connection to aborted fetuses, but at least it is not injecting "ground up babies" (to use your term) into one's body.