Covid, the Vatican on aborted fetal cell vaccines: “Morally acceptable” – Corriere.it



[ad_1]

VATICAN CITY “When ethically impeccable Covid-19 vaccines are not available, it is morally acceptable to use Covid-19 vaccines that have used cell lines from aborted fetuses in their research and production process.” It is a very important clarification, the one offered by the Vatican today in a note from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The text, signed by Cardinal Luis Ladaria, prefect of the former Holy Office, emerges that “in recent months, This Congregation has received several requests for opinion. on the use of certain vaccines against the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes Covid-19, developed using, in the research and production process, cell lines that come from tissues obtained from two abortions that occurred in the last century»Read the note.

“At the same time, there have been different pronouncements in the media by bishops, Catholic associations and experts, diversified and sometimes contradictory, which have also raised doubts about the morality of the use of these vaccines.” The Former Holy Office recalls that in reality there had already been Vatican pronouncements on similar issues, a text from the Pontifical Academy for Life entitled “Moral reflections on vaccines prepared from cells of aborted human fetuses” (June 5, 2005), the Instruction a person from the same Congregation (September 8, 2008), another note from the Academy for Life in 2017. In any case, given the pandemic and the recent production of new vaccines, the Vatican has decided to clarify the question again: “it has the intention to judge the safety and efficacy of these vaccines, although ethically relevant and necessary, the evaluation of which is the responsibility of biomedical researchers and pharmaceutical agencies, but only Reflect on the moral aspect of the use of vaccines against Covid-19 that were developed with cell lines of tissues obtained from two non-spontaneously aborted fetuses.“. For the Church, as it is said in a person, “In cases of using cells from aborted fetuses to create cell lines for use in scientific research, “There are differentiated responsibilities” for cooperation in evil. For example, “in companies that use cell lines of illicit origin, the responsibility of those who decide the direction of production is not the same as that of those who do not have decision-making power.”

Thus, the note explains: «The fundamental reason to consider the use of these vaccines morally legitimate is that the type of cooperation to evil(passive material cooperation) of induced abortion from which the same cell lines come, by those who use the resulting vaccines, is remote.The moral duty to avoid such passive material cooperation is not binding if there is a serious danger, such as the otherwise irrepressible spread of a serious pathogen.: in this case, the pandemic spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes Covid-19. Therefore, it should be considered that in this case all the vaccines recognized as clinically safe and effective can be used with the certainty that the use of such vaccines does not signify a formal cooperation in abortion. from which the cells with which the vaccines were produced are derived ”. However, it remains true that “the morally lawful use of this type of vaccine, due to the particular conditions that make it,cannot in itself constitute a legitimation, not even indirect, of the practice of abortion, and presupposes opposition to this practice on the part of those who use it. In fact, the note continues, “the legal use of such vaccines does not imply or should in any way imply moral approval the use of cell lines originating from aborted fetuses. Therefore, both pharmaceutical companies and government health agencies are asked to produce, approve, distribute and offer ethically acceptable vaccines that do not create problems of conscience, neither to health personnel, nor to the vaccinated themselves».

At this point one arrives important clarification about the need to get vaccinated. If “vaccination is not, as a general rule, a moral obligation and therefore must be voluntary”, in any case “From the ethical point of view, the morality of vaccination depends not only on the duty to protect one’s health, but also on the search for the common good». And methe common good “, in the absence of other means to stop or even simply prevent the epidemic, may recommend vaccination, especially to protect the weakest and most exposed». And thus, “those who, in any case, for reasons of conscience, reject vaccines produced with cell lines from aborted fetuses, should strive to avoid, by other prophylactic means and appropriate behaviors, becoming vehicles for the transmission of the infectious agent. In particular, they must avoid any risk to the health of those who cannot be vaccinated for clinical or other reasons, and who are the most vulnerable people.

The old Holy Office text, as Pope Francis has repeatedly warned, concludes:«There is also a moral imperative for the pharmaceutical industry, governments and international organizations to ensure that vaccines, which are effective and safe from a health point of view, as well as ethically acceptable, are accessible even to the poorest countries. and in a way that is not onerous for them. The lack of access to vaccines, otherwise, would become one more reason for discrimination and injustice that condemns poor countries to continue living in sanitary, economic and social poverty ”.

December 21, 2020 (change December 21, 2020 | 15:48)

© REPRODUCTION RESERVED



[ad_2]