Despite the global pandemic and the advent of over a year of lockdowns, President Biden and Big Pharma have a problem with vaccine hesitancy from a significant proportion of the US population. One of the issues that has caused vaccine hesitancy is due to the mixed messaging that has existed from public officials on everything from the efficacy of the vaccine, masking guidance that has yo-yo’ed throughout the pandemic, and lockdown policies that have been poorly calibrated to achieve a realistic and identifiable goal. However, even despite the issue of inconsistent public health messaging, there are generally two lines of objection.
The first line of objection
involves the safety of the vaccine. Many
question the safety of a novel mRNA vaccine which has yet to complete longitudinal
studies and is still released under emergency use authorization only by the
FDA. In the pharmaceutical industry the
burden of proof is on the pharmaceutical company to demonstrate the safety of
the product through rigorous studies, not on the public to demonstrate otherwise. People who raise this objection have a
point. I sympathize with this line of
reasoning even if it is not my main concern on a personal level.
The second objection involves the
medical ethics used in the development, production, and testing of the vaccines
currently on the market. It is this
argument made by some in the pro-life movement that I find more compelling on a
personal level, and that I wish to explore further. This is an objection that is not merely
restricted to the COVID vaccines, but also applies to vaccines more generally. It has caused hesitancy to a host of other vaccine
product lines currently available such as the MMR (Mumps, Measles, Rubella),
Chickenpox, Hepatitis A, and Shingles vaccines.
This objection involves the
widespread use of two cell lines descended from tissue obtained from elective
abortions. These two cell lines, HEK-293
and PER.C6, can be traced to elective abortions performed in the 1970’s and
1980’s. These cell lines are commonly
used in the pharmaceutical industry in the development, manufacture, and testing
of vaccines. The hesitancy to vaccines
that use these cells lines should be understandable. They were obtained in an unethical manner,
and the continued use of them is problematic to those who feel that we should
not incentivize the acquisition of cell tissue stemming from abortion procedures. For some, this means refusing to use product
lines in any way connected with such practices.
The simple fact is that Big Pharma
and even regulatory agencies such as the NIH and the FDA still engage in the
procurement of fetal tissue harvested from elective abortions for testing
purposes. As long as these practices are
condoned, fetal tissue harvesting from abortions will continue. There are logical, reasonable objections on
ethical grounds to vaccines produced by these means.
This objection applies to the
development of the COVID vaccines currently on the market. Currently there are four major vaccines approved
for emergency use in the United States and Europe: Moderna mRNA, Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA, Janssen
(Johnson & Johnson) viral vector, and the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. Of these, Janssen and Oxford used cell
cultures stemming from these two objectionable cell lines in the development
and production of their COVID vaccines.
And while Moderna and Pfizer did not use these cell lines in development
and production, they did use them to test the efficacy of their vaccines.
It is entirely understandable why
some would be hesitant to receive any of these products on ethical
grounds. This is particularly true when
other ethical means of obtaining fetal cells exist. Cord blood donation for example has long been
a viable means of obtaining fetal cells for research and development. Organ donation that does not involve the
intentional killing of a child through elective abortion is also
available. If the federal government and
Big Pharma are truly interested in removing objections to vaccines for public
health reasons and to broaden the market, they could use one of these means of
procurement to create ethically obtained cell lines for development, production,
and testing.
According to data from Pew
Research, 39% of Americans hold strong pro-life views on policy. That equates to roughly 128 million
people. And while that entire sample
size may not have the same hesitancy to use vaccines developed from these cell
lines, if even a substantial portion of that population holds this view, it is a significant segment of the US population that should be considered.
The Biden Administration and Big
Pharma would do well to take this cause of vaccine hesitancy into account and
develop policies and programs that consider the ethical implications involved
in research and development of medical treatments. There is both a financial and public health
incentive in doing so for pragmatic and ideological reasons. No pro-abortion advocate should have a
problem with vaccines or pharmaceutical therapies derived from ethically
obtained sources. But the opposite thesis,
that pro-life advocates should have no problem with vaccines and therapies
derived from unethically obtained sources, does not hold true.
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