The Morality of Using Vaccines Derived From Aborted Fetal Tissue
"If
a man loses reverence for any part of life, he will lose reverence for all
life."
Albert Schweitzer, Nobel Peace Laureate, 1952
There are
currently six widely used vaccines in the United States that have been produced
using the cell lines from aborted babies. Three
of these offer alternatives; two more offer alternatives in other countries that
are not FDA approved for use in the United States and one offers absolutely no
alternative anywhere in the world. The morality of using these vaccines has been addressed
several times in the past and the general conclusion of those who believe it is
morally permissible have based those opinions on various factors which will be
discussed in the following pages.
Unfortunately,
many people in the secular world, who have their own personal agenda and
financial motivation to further both fetal tissue and embryonic stem cell
research, have used these previously published opinions to their own advantage.
Since the article, Vaccines from Aborted Fetal Cell Lines Judged
Morally Acceptable, was published in Feb, 2000 (Florida Catholic,
National Catholic Register, National Catholic Reporter) it has been used by:
·
The University of Nebraska to defend
their use of aborted fetal tissue in research
·
Senator Harry Reid to further the cause
for embryonic stem cell research
·
Merck to defend their use of fetal
tissue in the vaccines and deny the need for alternatives
·
State Prosecutors to define Catholic
Church teaching in court cases
·
State Child agencies to remove children
from parental custody
·
State Officials and Public Schools to
deny religious exemptions
·
Catholic Schools to deny religious
exemptions and the right to follow Moral Conscience teachings
·
President Bush to defend his own
embryonic stem cell decision
As Father
Edward Richard, one of the contributors to the article recently told Children of
God for Life, “It was never intended to do such damage!” And Dr. Edward Furton, the other ethicists quoted in the
publication, reiterated his exasperation in stating, “This is the opinion of
the National Catholic Bioethics Center – not Catholic Church teaching!” And while
these statements are most certainly true, the public has either failed to make
that distinction or has simply chosen not to do so.
Regardless of what opinion has been rendered by moralists, all have agreed that alternatives must be sought and used. Unfortunately, that will never happen as long as:
·
Hospitals and physicians continue to
order the tainted products rather than their alternatives, and
· Those who state their support of such a cause continue to deny the immorality of the issue.
The following pages will explore some of the different perspectives that have been offered, as well as new evidence that may dramatically alter past opinions of moral permissibility.
"The upright conscience
calls good and evil by their proper names: Whatever is opposed to life itself,
such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia, or willful
self-destruction; whatever violates the integrity of the human person,
such as mutilation, torture, attempts to coerce the will itself; whatever
insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary
imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and
children, as well as disgraceful working conditions, where people are treated
as mere tools for profit, rather than as free and responsible persons. All
these things and others of their kind are infamous indeed. They poison human
society and they do more harm to those who practice them, than to those who
suffer injury from them. Moreover, they are a supreme dishonor to the Creator of
us all."
The Church in the
Modern World,
2nd Vatican Council GS #27
The multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical industry that reaps huge profits from aborted fetal tissue vaccines exemplifies the most heinous insult to human dignity. It violates not only the integrity of the humans destroyed, but also the humans who are drawn into using them. And if ever there was a time that human beings could be exploited for profit, it is no more evident than this present age, where abortion, stem cell research and human cloning remind us of other past injustices: The holocaust and human slavery.
Historically, people who refused
to participate in this illicit treatment of humanity, did not own slaves.
Nor did they purchase products created by slave labor.
We do the same today in boycotting products from companies that employ
slave labor or “sweat shop” labor practices.
Other activists protest the use of products that are tested on animals.
So it should come as no surprise that a large number of pro-life people would object to using products derived from aborted babies. It is against every moral fiber deeply ingrained in their hearts. Exploiting the innocent unborn for personal gain is abhorrent and violates the inner conscience of those who have a profound respect for all human life.
This basic right to follow a
properly formed and upright conscience has been upheld by the Catholic Church
and lawmakers for years under the protection of religious freedom.
But today that freedom is being threatened by State officials and others
who are not graced with such deeply held moral convictions.
It is because of this threat that Children of God for Life has included
this most important teaching of the Catholic Church
with these documents. This absolute
right must be attested to and upheld by every ethicist and moral theologian, and
especially the Catholic Church. For if we lose this most basic privilege, the
right to follow the voice of God speaking in our hearts, we lose more than our
religious freedom – we lose our very soul.
"On some positions
cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it
politic?' Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there
comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic,
nor popular. But it is right."
Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Past Statements On Moral Acceptability
01)
Remote Material Cooperation
02)
Contributing to evil
03)
Moral Intention
04)
Complicity with the original act
05)
Comparison to donated organs
06)
Benefits in a fallen world
07)
Cell lines are immortal
08)
Scandal/hypocrisy
09)
Moral obligation/well being at risk
10)
No alternatives
11)
Good of society
12)
Abortions not done to create vaccines
13)
Relativity to knowledge of hypothermia
14)
Morally okay to use any good thing
15)
Catholic obligation regardless of source
16)
Burdening the Conscience
17)
Catholic schools responsibility
18)
Harm of supporting demand for alternatives
19) Embryonic stem cell research vs. vaccines
Responses to Past Statements (1-19)
Children of God for Life gratefully acknowledges the following moral theologians and ethicists who have contributed to these documents.
Father Albert Moraczewski, OPD, PhD
Founding President and Senior Consultant, National Catholic Bioethics Center
Don DeMarco, Philosophy Professor St. Jerome's University in Waterloo, Ontario, member of the American Bioethics Advisory Commission.
Steven Kellmeyer Associate Director for Evangelization at the Diocese of Peoria, Illinois; Master's Degree in Theology; Franciscan University; Master's Degree Modern European History; Bachelor's Degree Computer Science; Associate's Degree Medical Lab Technology with field experience in each
Father Stephen F. Torraco, Catholic
Theologian and Associate Professor of Moral Theology at Assumption College EWTN
consultant
Father Edward Richard, Associate.
Professor of Moral Theology, Kenrick Glennon Seminary, St. Louis
Edward Furton, MA, PhD, Editor
in Chief, National Catholic Bioethics Center Quarterly
Father Anthony Zimmerman,
STD, (retired) Professor of Moral Theology at the Divine Word Seminary of Nanzan
University, Nagoya, Japan
Father Phillip Wolfe, FSSP, Fraternity Apostolate, Kansas City, Kansas
The Arguments
Note: Original statements: (Red) Responses (Black) Children of God for Life (Blue)
The
Arguments
1)
Whether immunization is permissible depends on whether their use involves the
Catholic in cooperation with evil. Such
complicity is deemed to be remote material cooperation, making the use of these
vaccines morally licit.
“At
their general meeting in November 1994, the Catholic Bishops of the United
States approved a revised and expanded text of their Ethical and Religious
Directives, a document summarizing much of the Church's teaching regarding
health care. At the end of the Directives, in an appendix, the
bishops provide a statement intended to clarify the terms pertaining to
different degrees of cooperation in immoral acts.The first important distinction
they make is between the "action of the wrongdoer" (whom we might call
the "operator") and the "action of the cooperator". According
to the bishops, if the cooperator intends the object of the wrongdoer's
activity, he exemplifies formal cooperation (which is always morally
wrong), whereas if he does not, he exemplifies material cooperation
(which may or may not be morally wrong). With regard to the medically
indicated, private use of the vaccine in question, it is clearly not a case of formal
cooperation (explicit or implicit) where the agents (the users of the
vaccines) neither intend, approve, nor condone either the act of abortion or the
acts by which fetal tissue was used to generate the vaccines. Over
the years, Catholic moralists have employed a further refinement, dividing
mediate material cooperation into the proximate and remote. As
material cooperation becomes increasingly remote, it passes from cooperation to
increasingly diluted forms of involvement, through loose association to complete
disassociation.”
Don
DeMarco, ABAC
It is interesting to
note that moralists have never reduced the act of cooperation to “complete
disassociation”. Instead,
they consider the act of using vaccines derived from aborted fetal tissue to be
one of “remote material cooperation.” On
one end of the spectrum is “formal cooperation” which is mortal sin.
On the other end, “complete disassociation” would not be considered
sinful at all. In that “remote
material cooperation” falls somewhere between these two points leads one to
conclude there is some sort of sinfulness associated with using the vaccines.
Whether it be minor or not is irrelevant.
Some people bear this on their conscience as sin. It is also interesting
to note that the bishops stated “material cooperation” may or may not be
morally wrong. In the matter of the vaccines, the Magisterium of the Church has
NEVER made such a distinction.
“It is not morally permissible to reap the research benefits from a deliberately induced abortion without, in some sense, being an accomplice to that abortion. Benefiting from a fetal cell line like MRC-5 involves complicity with the induced abortion from which the cells were obtained. We could grant that the use of cell lines from induced abortions is several steps away from the abortion itself, but that doesn't break the chain of complicity” (1) Father Albert Moraczewski, OPD, PhD
“The circumstances which surround the MMR II
vaccination must now be considered. The circumstances are those things that
"stand around" an act, and qualify it in some manner.
There are 7 circumstances: who, what, where, by what aid, why, how and
when. (cf. St. Thomas
Aquinas, De Malo,q. 2, a. 6.) A
good act, attended by good circumstances, is said to have an integral cause, and
thus can be safely performed by Catholics; but however admirable an act may be
in other respects, if even one of the circumstances is gravely evil, the act
cannot be recommended to Catholics In this case, the circumstance of "by
what aid" is evil, and therefore the whole act of immunizing a child with
the MMR II vaccine, as originally considered, is evil:
Bonum ex integra causa, malum ex quocumque defectu.
(Goodness arises from an integral cause, evil arises from any defect
whatsoever.).” (2)
Father Phillip Wolfe, FSSP
“Immediate material cooperation, therefore,
should be defined as the performance of a morally good or indifferent action
which is inherently and intimately bound to the performance of an evil act on
the part of the principal agent, such that the evil action stands as a defining
or morally significant circumstance of the cooperator's act. Whenever this
occurs, the evil action of the principal agent corrupts the moral species of the
cooperator's act and renders it impermissible.” (3) Father Russell E. Smith, STD
"Immediate material
cooperation" is complicity in an action which one does not formally
approve, but in which one is so closely involved that one shares its evil. The
cell-line researchers were almost certainly immediate material cooperators.
Pharmaceutical researchers made no effort to avoid the morally problematic cell
line, and thereby spread the effect of the abortionists' evil intent. While
using the vaccine is not identical to attending the abortion, using products
derived from the living tissues of a murdered child is uncomfortably close to
immediate material cooperation with the vaccine generators.”
Steven
Kellmeyer, Moral Theologian
“The use of "remote material
cooperation" as an argument is problematic in that the very word
"cooperation" intimates association, regardless of how
"remote" it might be, and violates the inner conscience.
The faithful pro-life Catholic:
In short, faithful pro-life Catholics will
not even "remotely" support any organization or position that is
connected with the abortion industry. They do so because their conscience
directs them. Using products derived from abortion is in direct contradiction
with the above pro-life practices.”
2)
Catholic users of the vaccine do not cooperate or make an essential contribution
to the evil. It is impossible for
an individual to cooperate with an action that is now completed and is in the
past.
“The passage of time is morally irrelevant to the issue of cooperation
with evil. In the case of the vaccines, society’s adoption of a vaccine that
is dependent on abortion necessarily includes the consent of the will to the
abortion, even if only by an invisible and hidden act of the will (called an
elicited act of the will). Moreover, society’s adoption of such vaccines
(which adoption included that consent of the will) thereby institutionalizes
dependence on the culture of death within the very fabric
of society."
Father
Stephen Torraco, PhD
3)
Clearly use of the vaccine does not cause the one who is immunized to share in
the immoral intention of action of those who carried out the abortion in the
past
“To
say that a person receiving this vaccination derived from a fetus aborted long
ago, does not will the abortion that makes the vaccination possible, is patently
false. If I need the vaccine (and it is a need that can be satisfied only by an
aborted fetus) and if I defend my need, I will the abortion. The person
receiving the vaccination may well be living long after the fetus was actually
aborted, and had no involvement in and may even have no knowledge of the
particular and actual fetus that was aborted. However, the remoteness in time is
not sufficient for arguing that there is no act of the will on the part of the
recipient of the vaccine, even if, once again, only an elicited act of the will,
institutionalized within societal practice and within the habits of minds of its
members.”
Father
Stephen Torraco
“‘Quibus auxiliis’
is the Latin for the circumstance of a moral act which translated is "by
what means" In other words, the argument boils down to this: that the means
are intrinsically evil and this enters into the substance of the act, recalling
that for an act to be good, the moral object, the circumstances, and the end
each have to be good or at least indifferent for the act to be good.
If even one is bad,
the whole act is evil. And this is an evil circumstance - by what means
was the vaccine produced? By the
means of baby slaughtering...”
Father
Phillip Wolfe
4) A user of the vaccine
does not provide some circumstance essential to the commission of the past act.
The user of the vaccine provides
“need” and finances – both of which are essential elements of fetal tissue
research. As in any business,
investments are initially made in developing products that are later recouped
through the sale of the goods. The pharmaceutical company would never have
engaged in procuring fetal tissue if there was not to be both a future need and
financial reward for doing so.
“…I have always
thought that one of the issues in this is overlooked because of the
origins of the tissue, that is, the trafficking and profiting aspect.
I think a prudent person could judge it immoral to profit from these
vaccines. I also think, therefore, that in conscience one could refuse
to cooperate in that aspect of the business" Father
Edward Richard
5)
The use of this tissue can be compared to
accepting the donated organs from a murdered child.
This argument is flawed for several obvious reasons:
While a parent has the right to
decide how to dispose of her dead child's organs, this right presupposes the
parent has not brought about the child's death.
Steven Kellmeyer
6)
Receiving benefits from past immoralities is a common feature of our fallen
world.
“It
is irrelevant that the abortion is a one-time long-since completed event. A
rape-murder committed in 1961 is also a one-time long-since completed event, but
it is still immoral to buy the film of the event for one's own enjoyment. Buying
goods produced by apartheid or slave labor is not moral even if the crime which
produced the item is a completed action, with the slaves now dead. Using the
product encourages slavery. Using the vaccine encourages the abortion industry.”
Steven Kellmeyer
7)
Receiving the vaccines will not encourage further abortions.
The cell lines, WI-38 and MRC-5
are “immortal”, meaning no further abortions will be needed to supply fetal
tissue.
This is not true.
According to the FDA, these cell lines will continuously divide and
regenerate for quite some time, perhaps another 50 years.
But WI-38 and MRC-5 are NOT immortal.
At some point, the weakened culture will need an infusion of fresh cells
in order to maintain the appearance of the original aborted fetal lung tissue
used to cultivate the viruses. Geron
Corporation testified to as much before Congress.
Here is what they said about a new embryonic stem cell they had
discovered, called hES:
"Therefore, hES cells may be a continuous source of
normal pluripotent human stem cells. We expect they can be scaled-up to
commercial manufacturing levels for transplantation therapies. It has not been
possible to maintain long term self-renewing capacity of other human stem cells
in culture. No other cell has the potential of hES cells to re-tool
pharmaceutical research and development practices. Moreover, hES cells
should provide an immediate, alternative source and industrial supply of
starting material, relieving the need to continually resource primary human
fetal-derived tissues." (4)
“All normal
human cells have a limited reproductive life-span. This is of considerable
importance in protecting human cells from malignant transformation; by contrast
all human tumor cell lines are immortal. The ‘Hayflick limit’ refers to a
phenomenon that occurs when human cells are grown in tissue culture. Under these
conditions it is observed that the population can only double a limited number
of times - around 50 - before the cells senesce and are unable to grow any more. It is
named after noted biogerontologist Leonard Hayflick. (5,
5A)
“When cells
become cancerous, telomerase is activated. These cells can then replicate
without a limit and this process is called "immortalization" There is
currently debate about the actual role that telomerase activation plays in tumor
formation. Telomerase uses an RNA template to maintain the ends of linear
chromosomes. It is active in immortal cell lines (cancer, single celled
organisms, germ cells) but inactive in most normal multicellular tissues.”
(6)
“The use of
cell cultures in experimental gerontology was greatly stimulated by the work of
Hayflick and Moorhead [11] which dealt with the potential number of divisions of
serially cultivated human fibroblasts. Based on the work of Swim and Parker
[12], it was known that human fibroblasts stop growing in vitro after a period
of rapid proliferation. Hayflick and Moorehead [11] proposed that the limited
doubling potential of normal human fibroblasts is a characteristic of somatic
cells and an expression of senescence at a cellular level. An experimental
system thus became available to test Weissmann's speculation [13] that the
limited proliferative potential of somatic cells is part of the mechanisms that
lead to aging of the organism. Comparing the probability of immortalization (acquisition of
an infinite division potential) of cells from different species, either
spontaneous or induced by carcinogens, also supports the view that human
fibroblasts are indeed endowed with a limited proliferative phenotype.” (7)
Published: Sept 1999: “A technique for making vaccines that has been off limits in the
United States for 40 years is now getting a second look from the U.S. Food and
Drug Administration (FDA). Experts in cell biology, retrovirology, cancer, and
vaccinology gathered in Rockville, Maryland, on 7 to 10 September to advise the
FDA and other health
agencies on the risks of using "immortal" and tumor-derived cells to
generate viral particles for vaccines. Since
1954, the U.S. government has ruled out the use of immortal cell lines in live
vaccine production for fear that cancer genes or other hazardous factors might
be transferred to people receiving vaccines. Most normal cells have a limited lifetime in culture. It can be more efficient to use cells that
have been modified to survive indefinitely. And some scientists argue that it is
safer to rely on such well-characterized laboratory strains. But to become
immortal, a cell must override the normal braking mechanism that controls
growth. That change can arise in several ways, including by spontaneous
mutations or infection with a cancer-causing virus. Regulators have feared that
continuous cell lines might transmit their cancer-causing genes to vaccine
recipients.” (8)
In
1992, on behalf of the pharmaceutical industry, the National Institutes of
Health successfully lobbied President Clinton to repeal the federal funding ban
on the use of aborted fetal tissue, lamenting that they were unable to obtain
enough tissue for research from miscarriages.
If there were no need for further fetal tissue – if these cell lines
were truly immortal, the pharmaceutical industry would have no need to make such
demands. In addition, on July 18,
2002 it was discovered, a new aborted fetal cell line has been
created specifically for the pharmaceutical industry, named PER C6, taken from the retinal tissue of an 18 week
gestation baby. The cell line was modified with an AD5 vector, known to cause
carcinogenic tumors in order to attempt to “immortalize” the cell line. (FDA
Notes 32)
8)
Scandal/hypocrisy does not exist because one who uses these vaccines cooperates
in no moral wrongdoing.
Suppose we have a new
product in the future that might provide medical benefits and it is derived from
embryonic stem cells. It is produced and cultivated in the lab with no ongoing
act of destroying human life, just as the vaccines are produced today. When
presented with this question, the same Catholic bioethicists told Children of
God for Life this too would be "remote material cooperation." Yet how
can the Church condemn the practice now, and accept the future by-products or
benefits without being accused of hypocrisy?
“The
corpses of human embryos or fetuses, whether they have been deliberately aborted
or not, must be respected just as the remains of other human beings Furthermore,
the moral requirements must be safeguarded, that there be no complicity in
deliberate abortion and that the risk of scandal be avoided” (I.4). Donum
Vitae (Instruction on Respect for Human Life in its Origin and on the Dignity of
Procreation: Replies to Certain Questions of the Day).
“The problem of scandal derives
precisely from the fact that it encourages others to sin or to continue in their
sin. We cannot avoid participating in scandal if we provide no incentive for the
sinners to change. Public use of the vaccines will not cause Merck and Co. or
the abortionists to change their behavior. In fact, derived profits encourages
their continued fetal tissue efforts in other avenues of research. They
experience no downside. Is not this very fact scandalous?” (Catechism 2284
“Scandal is an attitude or behavior which leads another to do evil. The person
who gives scandal becomes his neighbor’s tempter.”)
Steven
Kellmeyer
9)
“Parents have a moral obligation to provide vaccinations to their
children…nor does it seem appropriate for a parent to refuse [vaccination] on
behalf of a child and thereby risk the child’s well-being.”
If the diseases were actually life
threatening or if the vaccines themselves were not without danger, that might be
a reasonable argument. But vaccine safety studies conducted through the Centers
for Disease Control, the pharmaceutical companies and the FDA shamefully
demonstrate that not only are there hundreds of thousands of cases of serious
side effects, malformations, retardation and deaths linked to the use of these
vaccines, they have not yet pinpointed the reason why it happens. In an
interview with Dr. William Egan, PhD of the Center for Biological Evaluation and Review
at the FDA, he stated, “We don’t know why on one day, a particular infant
might have an adverse reaction that would not occur, say, a few days later or
even a few months later. We have
searched for common links in children who developed autism after being
vaccinated, but if there is one, we have not found it.
To say the vaccines do or do not cause autism would not be a fair
statement.”
The most serious diseases are not
the ones using aborted fetal tissue in their vaccine production, or those that
do, also offer alternatives. The
diseases for which there are no alternatives in the United States are rubella,
chickenpox and hepatitis-A. Further,
the only disease for which there is no untainted vaccine version available
somewhere in the world is chickenpox. This vaccine is not itself without severe
problems, in that it not only does not always immunize at all, but because it is
made from a live virus, the vaccine was recently reported to cause shingles in
adults. (Reuters
Health Information Services, www.reutershealth.com, 05/02/02; Woodman, Richard)
“Parents
have a far more serious duty before GOD, Who is coming to judge the living and
the dead, to keep and defend His laws….”
Father
Phillip Wolfe
“Even if
chicken-pox or rubella were uniformly deadly diseases, the danger posed to the
public health by refusing this vaccine is irrelevant. If a serial killer auctioned off his victims' property we
must refuse to buy that property, regardless of the danger to the public
economy. In the same way, we cannot be complicit in serial killing practiced by
scientists. A murderer cannot be allowed to justify the act of murder by
donating his victim's organs. He does not gain rights over the body of his
quarry simply by virtue of having swung the killing blow. Neither does a society
complicit in abortion have a right to apportion the victim's body in ways which
benefit itself, while muttering, "Well, she's dead now, and we can't let
the body go to waste." Drug companies use these cell lines because the cell
lines make money. The cell lines will only be discarded when market pressures
demonstrate they do not make money.” Steven
Kellmeyer
“One duty must be weighed against
another duty, and often one is free to choose even the lesser good. Freedom is
present, but one can do better and one can do less well without sinning either
way. The duty to vaccinate is questionable and slight at best, because the
vaccine is tainted, because the danger of infection is remote, because the
danger of being harmed by the vaccine is not absent, the pain and inconvenience
are deterrents. No clear duty to vaccinate is present.”
Fr.
Anthony Zimmerman, STD
10)
The vaccines are licit in the absence of alternatives.
But there ARE alternatives for Measles,
Mumps, Rabies and Polio that use chick embryo and animal cell lines. There are
also alternatives for Rubella and Hepatitis-A in Japan.
The Japanese are working with Children of God for Life and the FDA to
obtain import licensing for their Rubella vaccine, but they will need a market.
At a minimum, Catholic hospitals and physicians should be encouraged –
if not required, to use alternatives whenever possible.
“This argument collapses
commercial incentive for the companies to supply untainted products”
Fr.
Anthony Zimmerman, STD
11)
We have a moral responsibility to vaccinate our children for the good of
society.
The physical well-being or “good of
society” is not at stake here. In
our environment we have “herd immunity”, whereby those who are not
vaccinated are surrounded by those who are.
The ones not immunized pose no threat to the others around them who are
vaccinated; the ones who are vaccinated safeguard the ones who are not.
In addition on May 1 2002, at the National Immunization Conference in
Denver, Dr. Walter Orenstein, head of the CDC, announced that rubella was nearly
eradicated in the United States, with only 19 cases reported last year.
In 1999 there were less than 300 cases, the majority of which were adult,
Hispanic female immigrants. (9)
“Herd immunity, the concept of
decreased infection in susceptible individuals as a result of vaccination among
household or community contacts, is generally thought to have a positive effect
on the public health. Because of
herd immunity, the incidence of several vaccine-preventable illnesses has
dropped precipitously even though significantly fewer than 100% of the eligible
population has been immunized”. (10)
James
Taylor, MD
Since the vaccines are not themselves
without risks, should a parent decide to sacrifice the safety of their own child
for the so-called “good of society”? The
“good of society” is most severely damaged when we accept a practice that
embraces the culture of death.
“Performing
an act which appears to do the greatest good for the greatest number of people,
even if it harms a particular innocent person is not part of moral discernment.
This is utilitarianism. It is an immoral system of decision because it allows
doing something evil, or unloving, to achieve the ultimate good, love, and is
therefore self-contradictory.” (11)
Note: Dr. Edward Furton, NCBC
states, “The development of widespread public opposition to
tainted vaccines might lead to an eradication of the present dilemma for future
generations.” (12) - Is
this not a Catholic responsibility too?
“An
opportunity is presented here to protest against the prevailing culture of
death, and to do something positive for the culture of life by vigorous
opposition to the use of tainted vaccines”
Fr.
Anthony Zimmerman, STD
“Society’s adoption of such vaccines (which adoption included that
consent of the will) thereby institutionalizes dependence on the culture of
death within the very fabric of society.”
12)
Abortions were not done with the intention of creating vaccines
Sadly, not true, especially in the case of
rubella. Wistar Institute collected aborted fetal tissue from 27 babies aborted
during the rubella epidemic of 1964 in an attempt to isolate the virus
specifically for vaccine development. The
27 women exposed to or infected with the virus had abortions at the advice
and encouragement of their doctor, who collaborated with Wistar to collect
and preserve the fetal tissue. It
was from the kidney tissue of the 27th fetus that the virus was
finally extracted. This virus,
known as RA/27/3 (R=rubella, A=abortus, 27=27th fetus tested, 3=3rd
tissue removed) was then grown on the WI-38 aborted fetal cell line,
taken from the lung tissue of another aborted female infant at 3 months
gestation (13-21) Further, in light of the fact that there
was an epidemic, American researchers could have done exactly what the Japanese
did in order to obtain the live virus: they swabbed the throat of an infected
child. (22) The rubella epidemic was clearly used as an excuse for
performing fetal tissue research.
“Cell-line
researchers collude with abortionists in order to get tissue. Researchers
require living tissue, as fresh as possible; dead and dying tissue is useless.
Getting living fetal tissue requires extraordinarily close cooperation between
the researcher and the abortionist. In fact, the researcher is often at the foot
of the table while the abortion is being performed, immediately dissecting the
child. Typically, published scientific papers on fetal tissue research list the
abortionist who supplies the fetal tissues as a co-author; without the close
cooperation of the abortionist, the paper wouldn't have been possible”.
“The Bush decision justifies
funding because the wrongful act was already done, but allows those who violated
the rights of the human embryos to enjoy the fruits of their misdeeds”.
Pro-Life
Secretariat, USCCB Aug. 2001
(Just as Wistar Institute and Merck
also enjoy the profits made from these vaccines.)
13)
Frequent citation is made of the scientific knowledge about hypothermia (which
is a good in itself) obtained by the Nazi's immoral human experimentations on
concentration camp inmates. There is no immoral cooperation in an individual's
use of that knowledge after the fact.
“Unfortunately,
the comparison fails. First, the use of data is substantially different from the
use of tissue. Second, no one argues that present hypothermia treatments show Nazism and Nazi
experiments were not really evil, nor is anyone arguing that the current use of
the Nazi data justifies undertaking similar experiments today. However, fetal
tissue research, transplants, and products are quite often used to justify
abortion. Third, the profits and data obtained from that research allows society
to assume the method of obtaining fetal tissue is, if not completely moral, at
least not particularly relevant. Thus, the Nazi murderers reap neither monetary
benefits from their evil nor an enhanced reputation from the use of
the hypothermia data, and, most important, they gain no emulators on the basis
of their work. However, the abortion industry is reaping both monetary benefits
and an enhanced reputation from the use of this tissue, and they have gained
quite a few emulators. Furthermore, the abortion industry and society uses
contraception and abortion to structure a eugenic biomedical agenda essentially
similar to that of the original Nazi regime. The unwanted members of society,
whether they be children in the womb, the poor unable to afford medical care, or
the aged, useless in a consuming, producing society, are being systematically
killed or pressured into suicide. Ironically, Nazi ideology is reaping the
benefits of an enhanced reputation through the use of fetal tissue for
biomedical purposes.”
Steven Kellmeyer
The World
Health Organization made the decision to destroy the experimental cell lines
taken from the bodies of Jews murdered by the Nazis during WW II, as they were
representative of the holocaust destruction of 6 million Jews.
WI-38 and MRC-5 represent the holocaust of 40 million aborted babies and
they are a horrific moral affront to every pro-life person in the world.
These too should be destroyed.
14) It is morally permissible to
use any good (even if tainted in origin) as long as one is not engaged in any
type of immoral cooperation in the evil committed to bring about the good."
“This whole line of argument can be paralleled by
the notion of soap made from fat rendered from the bodies of death camp victims.
Is this argument supposed to mean that such goods would be OK to use as
long as the fat was rendered 40 years ago, and no new Jews, Gypsies or Catholic
priests were being killed and their fat rendered to make the soap?
After all, we would be using the soap for something good, namely, washing
our hands and protecting ourselves from dirt, grime and bacteria.
Fr. Phillip Wolfe
15)
In the absence of formal guidelines by the Magisterium, Catholics are obligated
to use the vaccines, regardless of the source.
This is not true, for two reasons:
1. In dubio libertas. If there is
doubt about an obligation of law, a person is free to not follow the law. A
person is bound only by what is certain, not by what is doubtful. In this case,
the matter itself does not bind with certainty because the vaccinations are
fraught with problems and even dangers; also because their application is not
absolutely necessary; finally, because the Church has NOT issued guidelines.
Each of the three reasons is sufficient to leave a person free to not be
coerced.
2. No one can be obliged by another to act against
his conscience. Those who judge that the vaccination is illicit cooperation with
a procured abortion are free to follow their conscience.
Fr.
Anthony Zimmerman, STD
“Deep within his conscience man discovers a law
which he has not laid upon himself but which he must obey.
Its voice ever calling him to love and to do what is good and to avoid
evil sound in his heart at the right moment…For man has in his heart a law
inscribed by God…His conscience is man’s most secret core and sanctuary.
There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths.” (Cat
1776)
16) Making the issue public only burdens
the consciences of parents who do not already know. (Archdiocese of Miami)
Silence on the part of the Church is
complicity on the part of the Church. Merck
has done its best to cover up the scandal and the Church should not cooperate.
Parents have every right to know what products they are putting in their
children’s bodies. Stating that this would only “burden parents’
consciences” only proves that it burdens the Church’s conscience too.
To this, defer to the Catechism:
1778 “Conscience
is a judgment of reason whereby the human person recognizes the moral quality of
a concrete act that he is going to perform, is in the process of performing, or
has already completed. In all he says and does, man is obliged to follow faithfully
what he knows to be just and right. It
is by the judgment of his conscience that man perceives and recognizes the
prescriptions of the divine law”
17)
Catholic Schools should simply comply with the state laws, which mandate the
vaccines
Simply because
state laws request some sort of action does not mean Catholic schools should
comply. If the state decided to have all schools put condom dispensers in the
school restrooms, would the Catholics agree to it? At a minimum, the same rights given to parents sending their
children to public schools should be extended to parents sending their children
to Catholic schools. All state laws
allow religious exemptions so Catholic schools would still be following state
laws by allowing the exemptions. How
can the Church deny the right of Moral Conscience to the faithful, but then
expect this same right toward their institutions from lawmakers regarding Health
Care Conscience issues?
IMPORTANT
NOTE: If a Catholic School denies a valid State Issued Religious Exemption and
the parent is thereby forced to vaccinate their child and that child then
suffers an adverse reaction or death, the Catholic School would be held liable
for damages. States put the
exemption laws into effect to avoid such litigation.
“While
the Magisterium weighs this decision, Catholics are to follow the Church
teaching on Moral Conscience as outlined in the Catholic Catechism.
If a parent turns away from that inner conscience, whatever that might
be, it would be an error.”
Msgr. Charles Brown, Congregation For
The Doctrine of the Faith, Vatican City
18) Supporting an effort to demand alternatives would result in a
massive boycott of the vaccines and therefore, possible spread of disease.
“Accepting the current vaccination without
opposition decreases motivation to develop vaccines which people can use with an
easy conscience; bringing about a change also helps the general public to
respect life and refine the culture. This axis of pharmaceutical companies and
government administrators hangs on to a monopoly of the vaccines. It can thus
abuse the monopoly to the distress of millions of parents. Such action is
tyranny, is un-American, is anti-life and anti-morals. It drags unwilling people
into their diabolical, hellish culture of death that reeks of sulphur. This
culture of death coarsens the moral fabric of American society, cheapens the
respect for life among our citizenry, and makes daily
living for all of us less safe from crime and terror. To protest against this
evil practice is a noble cause. All parents and concerned citizens should
cooperate in order to finally release the nation from this stranglehold monopoly
on vaccines wielded by smirking pharmaceutical agents who are driven by profit,
and perhaps some of them, by a lust for evil.”
Fr.
Anthony Zimmerman, STD
“It is one thing for an individual
parent to decide to make use of the vaccines. In such an individual case, a
parent may, to the best of his or her knowledge and with all good will, think
that, in the circumstances, his or her child’s health being in danger
justifies access to the vaccine. However, for society, or even worse, for the
Church, to argue that access to the
vaccines is without moral problems is not only false, but also a failure on the
part of both society and the Church to argue that society has the moral
obligation to come up with alternatives to these vaccines.”
Father Stephen Torraco
19)
Embryonic Stem Cell Research versus Vaccines From Aborted Fetal Tissue
“Past Catholic statements on individuals' use of vaccines
developed from fetal tissue are not relevant to this issue. (Embryonic Stem Cell
Research) Catholic moralists have concluded that individuals, when they have no
practical alternative, may use vaccines to protect their health and the health
of their loved ones without serious sin, even if the vaccines were cultured in
fetal cells that ultimately came from an elective abortion. However, Catholic
teaching rejects all complicity in abortion, and the Church has opposed any
collaboration with abortionists (including government collaboration) to obtain
tissue for vaccines or other research. The embryonic stem cell issue poses an
even more serious problem because live human embryos were directly destroyed
precisely to obtain the cells” (23)
The Bush Administration has compared this
to its own proposal to fund research using cell lines from embryos destroyed
prior to August 9. But that proposal is quite different. Here the federal
government is choosing to cooperate with, and reward, researchers who have
destroyed human embryos. The link between the government's actions and the
destruction of human embryos is even stronger here than in the case of vaccine
companies using fetal tissue from abortions. In the present case, human lives
were taken in order to provide cells for research and, in some cases, precisely
to qualify for federal grants; in the case of vaccines, tissues were taken
following abortions performed for unrelated reasons. (24)
When these statements were made the USCCB was unaware:
The fact that one is destroyed in advance with the intention of
research, while the other one is destroyed and then used for research after the
fact, is really inconsequential in that:
“In the future, some will indeed suffer debilitating diseases and untimely deaths by their refusal, in the light of a well-formed conscience, to profit from the destruction of others. The widespread refusal of vaccinations derived from aborted fetuses is a well-known and much regretted phenomenon within the medical and scientific communities. Those who defend the culture of death fully expect the same to occur over the new products and therapies that are brought into being through the destruction of human embryos.” (25) Edward Furton, MA, PhD
Copyright
© March 2002 COG For Life All Rights Reserved
References
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24)
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Human Embryo as Research Commodity Special Edition
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9
26)
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27)
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29)
Journal of American Medical Assoc. (JAMA), 9-13-2000, Vol. 284, No.10, pg 1273;
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30) “Chickenpox Vaccine May Up
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Woodman, Richard
(31)
Centers for Disease Control, Hepatitis A Virus, What You Need to Know;
Jul 25, 01
(32)
FDA Notes: Dr. Van Der Eb, Crucell, NV, FDA hearings , “PER C6
was made just for the pharmaceutical manufacturing of adenovirus vectors.” I
realize that this sounds a bit commercial, but PER C6 were made for that
particular purpose.” http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/ac/01/transcripts/3750t1_01.pdf
AD 5 Safety concerns: http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/ac/01/briefing/3750b1_01.htm