They make the case that the use of older fetal cell lines, while not ideal, is not creating additional harm. Though a growing number of individual Christians refuse vaccines on moral grounds, many institutions, such as the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission and the Catholic church, support immunizations while acknowledging their dismaying history. Prentice felt that the same reasoning for the moral good of vaccines holds true for the Regeneron treatment the president received. The Lozier Institute tracks pharmaceutical companies’ use of these abortive cell lines in the development, production, and testing of COVID-19 vaccine options some use them throughout the development process, and others only in testing. Some of these are used in current COVID-19 vaccine candidates. The other two are immortalized cell lines, meaning they will grow continuously. Two of these older fetal cell lines are used mainly to manufacture vaccines, including those for rubella (in the MMR) and chickenpox. Researchers sought fetal tissue from elective abortions dating back to the 1960s, creating cell lines that are still used today, after having been multiplied in a lab and frozen. “It’s disappointing that they chose to do the tests with the old fetal cell line.”īut Lozier, like other religious groups that oppose abortion, sees a distinction between testing a treatment using the old cell lines and using abortions to obtain further fetal tissue for research. The institute has not advocated against the use of animal stem cells.Īs far as the testing, “there are ethically derived cell lines that could be used instead,” said David Prentice, the institute’s vice president and research director. Anthony List, deemed it an “ethical treatment” because of the composition of the drug. The Charlotte Lozier Institute, affiliated with the pro-life Susan B. The first uses embryonic mouse stem cell lines-not human ones-genetically altered to contain human antibodies from previously recovered patients, a research technique often termed “humanized mice.” The second antibody is produced in hamster cells. The actual drug cocktail contains two antibodies. Several COVID-19 vaccine candidates also use this cell line. Trump’s treatment included an antibody developed by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, which used a fetal tissue cell line from an abortion in the 1970s to test the efficacy of the drug. Last year, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced plans to discontinue research “that requires new acquisition of fetal tissue from elective abortions,” though it will still allow the use of abortive fetal tissue through older cell lines, of which there is plenty in supply. That’s actually the current position of the Trump administration as well. Given the role of old fetal cell lines in more than half a century of vaccine development-including options for a COVID-19 vaccine-many have been able to reconcile the use of fetal tissue from decades-old abortions while opposing the use of fetal tissue from new abortions for further testing. This is an ethical dilemma that pro-life Christians have wrestled through long before the coronavirus. President Donald Trump has praised the treatments he received for the coronavirus, including an experimental COVID-19 drug cocktail, as “miracles coming down from God.” But in the week after his hospitalization, some questioned the president’s endorsement of the medication-which he says he wants to make more widely available for free-since it was tested using aborted fetal tissue and his administration promotes a pro-life platform.
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