Covid-19 Vaccines and Christian Ethics

[Bootstrap]

Here's the basic question I want to discuss: As a Christian, should I get the Covid-19 vaccine? Does it matter which one I get? I think this has been addressed somewhat in various threads, but I don't think we've discussed the ethical questions in enough depth.

To me, the tradeoff involves:

1. The use of stem cells during development or testing of vaccines, versus
2. The dangers we may cause others if we choose not to be vaccinated.

Are there other basic ethical questions that need to be considered? When I look at this, I see this as more or less equivalent to:

1. Will more babies be killed if I take the vaccine? versus
2. Could other people die if I don't take the vaccine? Or could I die without good reason, leaving my wife and family without me?

Do we mostly agree that those are the right questions, even if we might disagree about the answers to these questions? Imagine we all knew that each shot of Covid-19 vaccine resulted in a baby getting killed, I'm pretty sure none of us would take that shot. Imagine we all knew that failure to get a Covid-19 vaccine would result in our parents or grandparents getting Covid-19 and dying, I'm pretty sure we would all get that shot. So does answering the two questions above answer the basic ethical questions?

Let's see if we can have a respectful dialog about the ethics of Covid-19 vaccinations. I assume people on both sides of this are wrestling with the same ethical questions, can we please try to discuss the issue without pointing fingers?

[Sudsy]

Pray about it and do as you sense what God leads you to do. Some things can be argued forever and not result in satisfactory answers for everyone. We have the Holy Spirit to guide us and regardless of how others determine what they chose to do, we all will account for what we did with the guidance we believed came from the Holy Spirit. That is what I'm going with.

[nett]

Vaccines developed using aborted fetal tissue are a complete no-go for me, and my family.

The other question you've asked essentially comes down to how far we should go to protect our neighbor

Getting a vaccine to prevent transmission is almost impossible to justify with data. The delta variant may even be more likely to be spread by the vaccinated.

If we're get into that fine-grained of a differences, we have to look at a lot of our actions.

Heart disease is still the #1 killer, and mostly preventable.

[Josh]

1. The use of stem cells during development or testing of vaccines, versus
2. The dangers we may cause others if we choose not to be vaccinated.

Agreed.

1. Will more babies be killed if I take the vaccine? versus

Disagree. I think a bright line needs drawn in the sand that "0 babies killed" is the only acceptable number to benefit either myself, or society at large.

If we declared a moratorium on absolutely NO new stem cell lines, I would be okay with fetal stem cell research. But that isn't happening, and therapies are being developed that rely on a supply of fresh, new stem cells. Overall, we just don't live in a society that has any consensus that using aborted baby stem cells is bad.

2. Could other people die if I don't take the vaccine? Or could I die without good reason, leaving my wife and family without me?

Agreed, but this is an area where very honest, sincere, and well-informed people can have wildly different opinions.

Do we mostly agree that those are the right questions, even if we might disagree about the answers to these questions? Imagine we all knew that each shot of Covid-19 vaccine resulted in a baby getting killed, I'm pretty sure none of us would take that shot. Imagine we all knew that failure to get a Covid-19 vaccine would result in our parents or grandparents getting Covid-19 and dying, I'm pretty sure we would all get that shot. So does answering the two questions above answer the basic ethical questions?

I disagree. If we knew the vaccine was derived from aborted baby stem cells, my parents would beg me NOT to get the shot.

Let's see if we can have a respectful dialog about the ethics of Covid-19 vaccinations. I assume people on both sides of this are wrestling with the same ethical questions, can we please try to discuss the issue without pointing fingers?

I agree, but I think we first have to face the fact that several frequent posters on MennoNet do not agree that abortion is even bad. I don't see how we have a good-faith discussion with those participants. Perhaps we could respectfully ask them not to participate in this thread?

[Bootstrap]

I agree, but I think we first have to face the fact that several frequent posters on MennoNet do not agree that abortion is even bad. I don't see how we have a good-faith discussion with those participants. Perhaps we could respectfully ask them not to participate in this thread?

Yes, I think that would be helpful for this thread. I would like a thread for those who agree abortion is wrong to discuss the ethics of the vaccine.

[Bootstrap]

As I understand it, the mRNA vaccines (including Pfizer and Moderna) contain no fetal cells and no fetal cell cultures are used to manufacture these vaccines. But when the vaccines were being developed, they did use one of these cell lines in a test used to confirm that the mRNA vaccines work.

Here's one place this was reported.

Bishop Kevin Rhoades of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Indiana, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee on Doctrine, and Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann of Kansas City, Kansas, chairman of the USCCB Committee on Pro-Life Activities, addressed the issue in a memo to their brother bishops.

A copy of the memo was obtained by Catholic News Service Nov. 24.

"Neither the Pfizer nor the Moderna vaccine involved the use of cell lines that originated in fetal tissue taken from the body of an aborted baby at any level of design, development or production," the two prelates said. "They are not completely free from any connection to abortion, however, as both Pfizer and Moderna made use of a tainted cell line for one of the confirmatory lab tests of their products.

"There is thus a connection, but it is relatively remote," they continued. "Some are asserting that if a vaccine is connected in any way with tainted cell lines, then it is immoral to be vaccinated with them. This is an inaccurate portrayal of Catholic moral teaching."

I believe this cell line was HEK-293, kidney cell line that was isolated from an aborted baby in 1972. I believe this cell line is not used in production testing, but was used in early research to validate what they had produced. I believe there are zero cells derived from this baby in the mRNA vaccines themselves.

First off, is this information accurate? If not, what part of this is wrong?

Sources:

https://lozierinstitute.org/update-covi ... ell-lines/

https://s27589.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploa ... int-46.pdf

[joshuabgood]

Many many medical interventions have been tested using fetal cell lines.

[Josh]

Many many medical interventions have been tested using fetal cell lines.

And my position is that that is wrong. The fact it's common doesn't make it okay. Abortion is really, really common - yet every single abortion is a murder of one of God's children.

Using one of those aborted babies for medical intervention seems to me to be identical to what Goebbels did when he experimented on unwilling human test subjects, often killing them. Sure, that made a lot of medical advancements - but it was still wrong and would be very wrong if we continued to do it today.

[joshuabgood]

Many many medical interventions have been tested using fetal cell lines.

And my position is that that is wrong. The fact it's common doesn't make it okay. Abortion is really, really common - yet every single abortion is a murder of one of God's children.

Using one of those aborted babies for medical intervention seems to me to be identical to what Goebbels did when he experimented on unwilling human test subjects, often killing them. Sure, that made a lot of medical advancements - but it was still wrong and would be very wrong if we continued to do it today.

Do you reject all medical interventions that were developed through testing on cell lines?

[Josh]

Do you reject all medical interventions that were developed through testing on cell lines?

Yes. (Developed on aborted baby cell lines, to be specific.)

I would add that I object to specific, manufactured therapies (like pharmaceuticals, biologics, vaccines, monoclonal antibodies, and so forth.)

Sometimes this information is very hard to get to find out if something can be used or not. I used to err on the side of not worrying about it. I feel that is not right anymore and that I should err on the side of the caution, as testing on aborted babies is becoming much, much more common.