Vaccine Ethics, Again

You may have seen Jim McCrea's email share of this article on the America site.  It discusses a statement by the archdiocese of New Orleans questioning the morality of accepting the Johnson and Johnson vaccine because of the use of a cell line derived from an abortion that occurred decades ago. Presumable their archbishop wrote the statement, though it was unsigned. 

From the article:  "On Feb. 26, the Archdiocese of New Orleans called the Johnson & Johnson vaccine “morally compromised as it uses the abortion-derived cell line in development and production of the vaccine as well as the testing” and urged Catholics to consider taking other vaccines if they are given a choice....Those statements seem to refer to debate over the use of what are referred to as HEK293 cells, which reportedly trace their origins to an aborted fetus from the 1970s. Scholars and ethicists have noted that HEK293 and similar cell lines are clones and are not the original fetal tissue....Anthony Egan, S.J., a Jesuit priest and lecturer in theology in South Africa, said church leaders publishing messages about hypothetical situations during a crisis is “unhelpful” as Catholics navigate life in a pandemic....Therese Lysaught, a professor of bioethics and health policy at the Stritch School of Medicine at Loyola University Chicago and a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life, said the church has been consistent in its approval of vaccines with ties to controversial cell lines for at least 15 years. “It’s always good to ask questions, but my position is, this question has been answered over and over and over again.” She said that the Vatican has been clear that receiving vaccines is morally just—and that was well before a global pandemic." 

We also discussed the issue of ethical vaccines on this site in November, on one of Jim Pauwels' threads.  Rather than rehash what has already been discussed, I would like to discuss the subject of cell lines and their origins a little more generally.  

You may have heard of the cell line known as HeLa. This cell line was actually the first successful so-called immortal cell line, and is still in extensive use today. Its origin was in 1951, from cancer patient, Henrietta Lacks. Among many other things, one of its uses was in the development of the Salk polio vaccine. It is safe to say that countless lives have been saved due to the research using the HeLa cell line.  

The situation of the HeLa line is somewhat parallel to the HEK293 line, which is the one from the aborted fetus in the 1970s.  Henrietta Lacks died from cervical cancer. Her life was short and full of tragedy. She was poor, and in many ways never had a chance. She was African American, and suffered from the aftermath of slavery, growing up in its shadow in the South, in the same location where her ancestors were enslaved.  Neither she nor her family gave consent for her tissue samples obtained in biopsy to be used in research. Of course that was the common practice at the time. Ms. Lacks was the subject of a book, "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks", by Rebecca Skloot.  

It is worth pointing out that there is nothing to suggest that obtaining cells for research was a motive in Ms. Lacks' treatment, which would be considered substandard today, but was all that was available then.  Similarly, there is nothing to suggest that the abortion from which the HEK293 line was obtained, was carried out on purpose for obtaining cells for research.  If that had been the case, it would give credence to the bishops' objections on to vaccines developed from it on ethical grounds. As it is, their objections seem to be an overly scrupulous slicing and dicing which has the potential for encouraging people not to be vaccinated.

In a way, we can look at the cell lines derived from tragedies as giving meaning to the short lives of the victims.

We have only to look at the dire situation in Brazil to understand that there is no time to be wasted in getting as many people as possible vaccinated in order to get ahead of the virus.