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.
Several frontrunners for the new coronavirus vaccine are made from the cells of aborted children — healthy children who were murdered. Most notably, this includes a human fetal kidney cell line called HEK-293, from the kidney of a healthy girl aborted in 1972, and PER.C6, from the retina of a healthy boy aborted in 1985.
Science magazine reported that five of the leading coronavirus vaccines use one of these two human fetal cell lines. And apparently similar cell lines have been used since the 1960s to manufacture vaccines against rubella, chickenpox, hepatitis A, shingles, hemophilia, rheumatoid arthritis, and cystic fibrosis.
As we record this, ethically derived coronavirus vaccines are in process, but they are slower and will likely be more expensive, rarer, and more difficult to get. That’s the prediction, at least. So should committed pro-lifers get the fast, available, cheap vaccines made from aborted cells? Or should they wait? Pastor John, how do you think through this?
This is an ethical dilemma that pro-life Christians have wrestled through long before the coronavirus. 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.
That’s actually the current position of the Trump administration as well. 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.
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. Several COVID-19 vaccine candidates also use this cell line.
The actual drug cocktail contains two antibodies. 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 Charlotte Lozier Institute, affiliated with the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List, deemed it an “ethical treatment” because of the composition of the drug. The institute has not advocated against the use of animal stem cells.
As 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. “It’s disappointing that they chose to do the tests with the old fetal cell line.”
But 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.
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. Two of these older fetal cell lines are used mainly to manufacture vaccines, including those for rubella (in the MMR) and chickenpox. The other two are immortalized cell lines, meaning they will grow continuously. Some of these are used in current COVID-19 vaccine candidates.
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.
Prentice felt that the same reasoning for the moral good of vaccines holds true for the Regeneron treatment the president received.
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. They make the case that the use of older fetal cell lines, while not ideal, is not creating additional harm. As the Catholic church concluded for vaccines: Beneficiaries of the drug are not culpable in the original sin of the abortion.
In a previous CT interview, Francis Collins, the director of the NIH and a committed Christian, suggested comparing it to an organ donation after a tragic shooting, saying that the giving of tissue would still be considered “a noble and honorable action” even though we acknowledge an evil was done.
An evangelical Protestant, Prentice weighs other ethical questions against arguments to refuse vaccines: “Is there a grave reason to use it (such as preventing death or serious illness)? If yes, is there any alternative?” If not, he says, people should feel free to ethically receive the vaccine or drug in question.
The Catholic church wrote that doctors and families may determine it necessary to use vaccines developed using the fetal cell lines to prevent illness and death. It suggested that they also have a duty to oppose the use of the fetal cells and pressure the medical industry to use alternative methods.
Prentice offers a similar support. “Future directions for use of fetal tissue from ongoing abortion will hopefully be to move swiftly to better, modern techniques that do not use fetal tissue from elective abortion,” he said.