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Johnson & Johnson vaccine ‘morally acceptable’ despite fetus origins March 5, 2021
The approval of Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine for use in Canada has heightened the discussion over whether Catholics should receive the vaccine, though Church teaching remains clear that it is “morally acceptable.”
The Johnson & Johnson vaccine is produced using cell lines derived from aborted fetuses, unlike the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, which are made using a synthetic messenger RNA. However, all the companies used abortion-derived cells during preliminary laboratory testing.
In a December statement, the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, while not endorsing the use of abortion-related cell lines, deemed the vaccines acceptable when “ethically irreproachable” vaccines are not available.
Many Catholics in Canada are facing a moral dilemma over COVID-19 vaccinations. Moira McQueen, director of the Canadian Catholic Bioethics Institute tells CityNews some of the vaccines being produced were developed by using products of cells that were initially taken from aborted fetuses. “The AstraZeneca and the Johnson & Johnson ones are both unethical vaccines […]
Michael O’Loughlin: Should Catholics feel comfortable being vaccinated against Covid-19?
Dr. Moira McQueen: I think they should feel very comfortable. Especially since these first vaccines that have been developed comply with what many of us are calling ethical vaccines. Some people have raised legitimate questions. As it happens, with Pfizer and Moderna being among the very first [vaccines approved], that relieves that particular problem for most people.
Could you briefly explain what some of those ethical concerns could have been and why they aren’t part of these two vaccines that are expected to be available pretty soon?
The main problem for many people is that so many pharmaceuticals and vaccines are made using either cells from aborted fetuses or from destroyed human embryos or from tissue from aborted fetuses. Since we feel so strongly about the importance of life from conception until natural death, to use products that are based on parts of human bodies that’s just t