I’m providing a different perspective from the one published yesterday, List of Vaccines from Aborted Babies.
That article provided a pdf of vaccines developed from aborted fetal lines, along with alternative, more ethical vaccines. Any Christian believer must assert the inherent wrongness of using infants electively aborted for scientific experimentation. However, as the 2005 Vatican statement addressed, now that the vaccines are already developed, do Christian ethics preclude their use?
THE ETHICAL ARGUMENT FOR USING UNETHICALLY-DEVELOPED VACCINES
Although Protestants would disagree with the Vatican on essential doctrines like justification, a citation of their ethical conclusions on vaccines might be in order.
The Vatican writes…
The first fundamental distinction to be made is that between formal and material cooperation. Formal cooperation is carried out when the moral agent cooperates with the immoral action of another person, sharing in the latter’s evil intention. On the other hand, when a moral agent cooperates with the immoral action of another person, without sharing his/her evil intention, it is a case of material cooperation.
They argue that formal cooperation (such as those immediately responsible for aborting the babies used in the two fetal cell lines from which so many vaccines were made) are always in sin, but those in material cooperation (those who benefit from medical achievements made possible by that evil deed) are not necessarily in sin.
Whether or not the one guilty of material cooperation is in sin, the Vatican argues, depends upon whether they are engaged in formal cooperation with the offense (intention, premeditation) or material cooperation with the offense (having not been involved at all in the scenario that led to the offense, but yet being connected by circumstance rather than behavior).
It’s the position of Vatican ethicists that once these children were aborted (which was sinful), and once their little bodies were used for the purpose of scientific research knowing they were aborted (which was sinful), using vaccines taken from that unethical research is not in and of itself sinful.
Our differences with the Romanists aside, does their argument not make sense?
CONSISTENCY
If using vaccines from unethically acquired research is the anti-vaxer’s only argument, it is a poor one unless they consistently avoid advancements in technology and medicine from other kinds of unethical research.
For example, Nazi research conducted on Holocaust-persecuted Jews has lead to many modern medical miracles. And yet, to advance medical science, Nazis subjected the Jews to high altitude torture, deep sea torture, cold torture, tuberculosis experiments, sterilization experiments, and as vaccine, poison, and chemical-warfare guinea pigs.
A common drug that treats arthritis was created from research conducted by a Nazi scientist, Hans Conrad Julius Reiter, which killed thousands of Jews in the process of its development.
Instead of discontinuing research and medicine produced to treat it, Reiter’s name was removed by the American Medical Association in 1977, so as to not honor him in light of his ethical debauchery. And yet, few would argue that such medications should not be made available to treat arthritis.
Or take, for example, that the Nazis invented cardiac catheterization, an essential treatment for common cardiac and pulmonary diseases. In 1956 the Nobel Prize was awarded to Werner Forssmann for pioneering the technology, which was probably developed while he was a Nazi doctor (to be fair to Forssmann, before he joined the German army he was reprimanded by the medical board for self-experimentation, not wanting to mistreat patients). But still, he was a Nazi doctor who served with Heinrich Himmler.
Medical advancements from human experimentation are too numerous to mention and are common knowledge. Also common knowledge is the United States capitalizing on Nazi technological innovation, especially as seen through Operation Paperclip, in which more than 1,600 Nazi scientists were taken from Germany to work for U.S. tech divisions like NASA.
Additionally, the use of unethically acquired products by modern people is multitudinous.
Artificially-crafted flavor receptors made by embryonic cell lines are used in the production of everything from coffee creamer to Pepsi products (although Pepsi claims to have changed this in 2005, their flavor formulas are still developed using a company called Senomyx, which specializes in it).
Processed Skin Proteins (PSP) is a cosmetic solution for burn victims and those suffering from major skin ailments, and it’s made from a fetal skin cell line that was from an aborted baby. Some over-the-counter cosmetic companies use that cell line in their production.
To be clear, the above examples aren’t actual baby corpses being injected into people, but products made by research and production made possible by unethically acquired baby corpses.
Inconsistency is the sign of a failed argument. If you would not use vaccines produced from dead baby tissue, then if you are a burn-victim, you should not use a skin-regenerating miracle drug made possible by research conducted with dead baby tissue.
Likewise, if you’re an anti-vaxer, hopefully, you’re spending as much time considering the other products you use produced from aborted fetal lines as you do life-saving vaccines.
A CLARIFICATION
I take exception with the claim in yesterday’s article that “there is foreign human DNA being put within such vaccines and medicine, which have a wide possibility of negative ramifications for human health.”
Such an accusation cannot be substantiated by medical evidence. This information, as cited, comes from the Sound Choice Pharmaceutical Institute. It was founded by Theresa Deishe, a pro-life advocate (and actual credentialed scientist) who should rightfully be commended for her work against Planned Parenthood. However, the claim is pseudo-science with no real empirical support.
Deisher writes…
The earliest aborted fetal cell-produced vaccines such as Meruvax (rubella) and MMR II do not even inform consumers that the vaccines contain contaminating DNA from the cell used to produce them. Furthermore, it is unconscionable that the public-health risk of injecting our children with residual contaminating human aborted fetal DNA has been ignored.
How could the contaminating aborted fetal DNA create problems? It creates the potential for autoimmune responses and/or inappropriate insertion into our own genomes through a process called recombination. There are groups researching the potential link between this DNA and autoimmune diseases such as juvenile (type I) diabetes, multiple sclerosis and lupus. Our organization, Sound Choice Pharmaceutical Institute, is focused on studying the quantity, characteristics and genomic recombination of the aborted fetal DNA found in many of our vaccines.
Deisher’s claims are fundamentally flawed. Simply put, there is no evidence that fetal DNA is recognized by the body as “foreign DNA” that would be rejected by the immune system as alien to the body. It’s never been known to happen.
From everything we know about molecular biology, the claim lacks any and all medical verification and relies solely upon anecdotal evidence from parents who are frantically trying to find blame for their children’s conditions or a few general physicians who have bought into the hype.
For a more thorough analysis of Deisher’s claims, check out ScienceBasedMedicine.org. My first clue that maybe the “foreign DNA invading the body through vaccines” talk was conspiracy theory was that all of the accusations you see online can be traced to a singular source…Theresa Deisher. The list of doctors who oppose vaccines on this ground is so small they can easily be listed on a single website.
While this article does not intend to address the issue of forced vaccinations and neither does it endorse all vaccinations, it does provide a point-counterpoint to yesterday’s article published at Pulpit & Pen.
If Christians are to make wise decisions on this subject – and it’s a hotly contested subject within the Christian community – they need to know both sides of the issue.
They also need to understand that not everything they read online is true.
[Editor’s Note: More back-and-forth on this subject is coming, with both sides presented. Just be glad we’re not debating flat-earthism]
