http://www.chausa.org/misssvcs/ethics/FetalTissue.asp
July 25, 2005
| TO: |
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Mission Leaders and Ethicists |
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| FROM: |
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Sr. Pat Talone, RSM, PhD
Ron Hamel, PhD |
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| SUBJECT: |
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Vatican Statement on Vaccines Derived from Aborted Fetal
Tissue |
A press release being circulated by a Florida-based organization called
Children of God for Life indicates that the Pontifical Academy for Life is in
the process of issuing a document that considers the moral implications of
creating and using vaccines derived from aborted fetal tissue. The document is
in response to a letter sent to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in June, 2003, by the
executive director of Children of God for Life. The Children of God for Life
statement contains a link to an English translation of a synthesis of the larger
Vatican document that will be published in the near future in Medicina e Morale,
a journal published by the Center for Bioethics of the Catholic University in
Rome. CHA will monitor for its publication in English.
In the meantime, the synthesis provided by the Pontifical Academy for Life
seems to provide the essentials of the larger document. In essence, it confirms
statements already made by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops
regarding this issue. Following is a summary of the recent Vatican synthesis
statement:
- Vaccines that effectively impede infection and eventually eradicate
particular viral diseases represent "a milestone in the secular fight of man
[sic.] against infective and contagious diseases.
- Some live-virus vaccines are created with cell lines that have their
origin in aborted fetal tissue. Included are certain vaccines for measles,
mumps, and rubella (often combined as the MMR vaccine), hepatitis A, chicken
pox, poliomyelitis, rabies, and smallpox. (There may be alternative vaccines
for some of these viruses.)
- Vaccines derived from aborted fetal-cell lines, despite their demonstrated
ability to fight diseases, pose ethical problems because they originate in
cells derived from voluntarily aborted fetuses.
- It is morally illicit for anyone to formally cooperate in a voluntary
abortion (that is, to approve of or intend direct abortions), including when
the intention for the abortion is vaccine production.
- It is also morally illicit for those who, although not formally
cooperating in the abortion, cooperate materially by producing, marketing, and
distributing vaccines derived from aborted fetal cell lines. This is because
their material cooperation could encourage "the performance of other voluntary
abortions" for the purpose of producing such vaccines.
- Doctors who prescribe and people who receive these vaccines, despite
knowing their origins, "carry out a form of very remote mediate material
cooperation" in relation to the original act of abortion (emphasis original).
However, their level of cooperation rises in relation to the continued use of
fetal cell lines and the marketing and continued use of these vaccines.
- Pharmaceutical companies are obliged to find morally licit means for
creating vaccines.
- Doctors, parents, and vaccine recipients are obliged to request and use
alternative vaccines if they exist. They should also put pressure on the
medical and scientific community to create alternative vaccines that do not
raise ethical problems. Hence, there is a grave responsibility to use
alternative vaccines and to conscientiously object to ethically problematic
vaccines.
- For the vaccines that currently have no alternative, their use is morally
lawful "on a temporary basis" and "insomuch as is necessary" to ensure the
health and safety of one's self and the community. This lawful use is
"justified as an extrema ratio [extreme reason]" that comes in the "context of
moral coercion" because no alternative exists for parents "who are forced to
choose to act against their conscience or otherwise, to put the health of
their children and of the population as a whole at risk.
- It is right to abstain from using morally problematic vaccines (for which
there are no alternatives) if it can be done without causing children, and
indirectly the population as a whole, significant risks to their health.
The following links may be helpful for further understanding this important
issue.