1/18/2024 0 Comments Moderna embryonic stem cells![]() ![]() Of course, it is perfectly natural to wish that the cell line was derived from the tissue of a child that was miscarried and not aborted. They work away diligently and eventually succeed in producing a cell line which is of immense practical value to medical research. They only know that the folks acquiring the human remains for the lab are not picky on this point. The scientists have no means of knowing which is which or even how many of each there are. And let us say that the scientists have available to them ten cadavers, some of which were aborted and some of which were miscarried. Similarly, let us imagine a group of scientists working in a lab, trying to develop cell lines from human fetal remains. But should that possibility give us any sense of moral superiority over our neighbor whose rifle contained live ammo? But are we satisfied to assert any marked moral difference between those who unwittingly shot bullets and those who unwittingly shot blanks? From a subjective point of view, of course, it is perfectly natural to wish that one’s own rifle held the blanks. It is true, in a very real sense, that only those with live ammunition actually kill the condemned person. The shooters do not know which their rifle contains. Imagine a firing squad in which half of the rifles contain live ammunition and half contain blanks. But what? Can reflecting on this problem help clarify our moral thinking around HEK293? Let’s see if a thought experiment might shed some light. Still, I suspect many of us are not completely satisfied at this stage. The moral conclusion regarding vaccination stands, unaffected. ![]() So, it would seem, the doubt cast here really makes very little difference. Indeed, even if the child was aborted, the virtually unanimous community of faithful Catholic ethicists, the vast majority of bishops, and the Magisterium of the Church all agree that, according to established Catholic moral principles, reception of these vaccines is easily justified in the present case. This has been the response of most ethicists, and seems partly designed to alleviate the concerns mentioned in the first response. Casting this doubt only muddies the waters.Ī second response is to simply assume that the child was aborted and do the appropriate moral analysis on that assumption, perhaps with a slight caveat. We believed for years that HEK293 was derived from abortion and even now that seems to be the most likely scenario. One response is to claim that this newfound doubt is a kind of just-so story crafted from the feeblest evidence and likely to lull people into moral laziness so that they do not take the issue of cell lines derived from aborted children with the seriousness the question requires. At this remove, 50 years later, it seems highly likely that we will never know for sure the precise provenance of HEK293 with respect to abortion. e-mailed Professor Graham to gain clarity on the matter, he learned that Graham did not, and could not, know for certain. When priest-scientist Nicanor Pier Giorgio Austriaco, O.P. All things considered, his assumption was quite reasonable.īut it remains just that: an assumption. Given that abortions are much easier to predict and control than miscarriages, one could expect that, absent any moral qualms, those responsible would more regularly procure human remains from elective abortions than from miscarriages. But he judged that the fetus was in good health at the time of its death, which makes abortion more likely than miscarriage, and he worked in a context where using the human remains of aborted children was not uncommon. He was not involved in the abortion, nor the procurement of the tissue. Why did we long believe the cell line to be abortion derived? The simple answer is that Frank Graham, the scientist who first derived the cell line, had always simply assumed that the tissue on which he worked had been derived from an elective abortion. We have also learned that this cell line, which has long been assumed to have been derived from the tissue of an aborted child may, in fact, have been derived from the tissue of a miscarried, or “spontaneously aborted,” child. Avoiding every product with any connection whatsoever to HEK293 is virtually impossible. Our homes are chock full of products at least tested on HEK293, from drugs ( almost all of them, in fact) to processed food to cosmetics. Not only is it the most common cell line used in vaccine production and testing (even the synthetic mRNA vaccines made by Moderna and Pfizer had recourse to it in testing), but it is, apparently, ubiquitous in modern life. We have learned, in the last few months, a lot about the cell line HEK293, derived from the remains of an unborn child in the Netherlands in 1973. ![]()
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