Since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, our society has had to adapt to unprecedented restrictions and limitations.  During this trying time, it has been difficult to find points of optimism.  The rapid development of vaccine candidates utilizing varied techniques remains encouraging.  However, while expeditious availability of effective vaccines is a laudable goal, the physician-led organizations presenting this statement stress the need for assurances of safety, efficacy, and a full commitment to uncompromised ethical development.

There are many vaccine candidates under development with newer technologies that have received much attention.  These include the use of viral genetic material (mRNA and DNA), the synthesis of viral protein in a laboratory, and the incorporation of coronavirus genetic information into another harmless carrier virus that is then injected.  The use of these techniques has produced very few effective and approved vaccines for any viral infection thus far.  Recent reports of the effectiveness of the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines, which are both mRNA vaccines, are encouraging.  Although it is true that the animal-phase testing for these vaccines used abortion-derived fetal cells, commendably, it does not appear that production methods utilized such cells.

Considerable attention is also being directed at the use of adenoviruses, a group of common respiratory viruses.  After disabling the virus and inserting coronavirus genetic material, the resulting product could be used for vaccination.  However, as with other newer vaccines, the adenovirus delivery protocol has not produced a licensed vaccine despite many years of attempts.  Of further concern is the standard use of abortion-derived fetal cell lines to produce these vaccines by companies such as AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson.  Sadly, many other current vaccine candidates being developed also utilize cell lines derived from aborted babies for their production.

Fortunately, there are alternatives that do not violate this basic ethical and moral standard.  Over the past decades, more than fifty viral vaccines have been approved using an attenuated or inactivated vaccine.  Many of these vaccines have not utilized abortion-derived fetal cell lines for their production.  The virus is grown in the laboratory and harvested, then weakened or inactivated to serve as a safe vaccine.  In addition, other means of manufacturing with fully ethical protocols are used, including the John Paul II Medical Research Institute’s use of umbilical cord and adult stem cells.  These and other ethical approaches provide encouragement for the future, where no vaccine will violate the dignity of human life in their production….

The organizations supporting this physicians statement:

American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists – aaplog.org
American College of Pediatricians – acpeds.org
Catholic Medical Associations – cathmed.org
Christian Medical and Dental Association – cmda.org

The above comes from a Dec. 2 email sent by American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists.