Can a vaccine be morally compromised?

Because it contains fetal cells? The Catholic stance as the Pope said,
the vaccine is for the greater good.

J&J didn’t perform the abortion, they are making use of the results to save lives.

“The New Orleans Catholic diocese doesn’t want people to take the J&J vaccine because it was derived from fetal tissue from an abortion that took place in the 1970s.”

In telling a congregation to reject something that may save their lives i is wrong, but on the

other hand people will chose for themselves as to what is right for them , regardless.

Does that Church leader not realize that if his followers follow the advice given that soon he

will have NO followers if they take his advice?

The issue is, that by taking that vaccine, you are giving your tacit approval to the methods by which it was created.
Thematically it is analogous to the question, if it is ethically acceptable to use knowledge that was derived from medical experiments performed on Holocaust victims by Nazi Scientists.

The Catholic Church, I guess The Vatican, has been ok with vaccines grown in fetal cells for many years. This is not the Catholic stance, it is one group of Catholics. The fetal tissue argument is an old schtick of the anti-vax crowd usually not used by the Catholics, but by the Evangelical more extremist.

What I have noticed is in the last few years anti-vaxxer messaging has gotten to a lot of Catholics who previously were not infected (pun intended) by uninformed crazy talk. The anti-vaxxers were all over the internet two months against Pfizer and Moderna because vaccines are made from fetal tissue, which is completely false for those two vaccines, at least this time they are right that fetal cells are used in JNJ, but it is a very very old line of cells from willingly aborted fetuses.

See this document bottom right that the Catholic Church and Southern Baptists approve of the JNJ vaccine.

I think we should not get in an uproar with this situation and just agree JNJ uses the cells, and reinforce that Pfizer and Moderna do not, so anyone with an ethical objection can get the vaccine they are comfortable with. I emphasize again the anti-vaxxers are saying all vaccine use fetal cells, so I think lets just be honest and not spin our wheels trying to change anyone’s mind about the ethics and just give then the solution they can easily live with. The real anti-vax people won’t take any vaccine, but the people willing who are just being influenced can be reassured they do have a choice of a vaccine that is safe and free of any moral conflict.

It’s no different to me than any other moral objection to blood diamonds, fair trade coffee or products made with child labor.

The Catholic church has a long and glorious history of killing people that don’t conform to their way of thinking. This is nothing new.

Perhaps a vaccine can be morally compromised. But our world is pretty much morally compromised. Use of fetal cell cults is nothing new. It’s only compromise for those who are looking for an excuse to not take the vaccine.

I’m against abortion but as long as it’s legal and it’s happening everywhere all the time then call me a hypocrite but why not benefit from the loss.

J & J may have used ancient aborted fetal cell cultures in their R & D but there’s no fetal cells in the vaccine making process. I think it’s better that the other vaccines because it gives your cells the ability to manufacture the SARS-CoC-2 protein that then stimulates the the immune response. Rather than simply injecting SARS-CoV-2 protein like all the other vaccines do.

Let’s see it I got this right. The J & J vaccine removes the DNA from the cold virus (Adenovirus) and replaces it with a DNA version of the SARS-CoV-2 RNA (this makes up the J & J vaccine). Once the J & J vaccine is injected into your arm it delivers the modified SARS-Cov-2 DNA into your cell’s nucleus. There it transcribes it to make mRNA. The mRNA goes into your cells cytoplasm where it makes the SARS-CoV-2 spike viral particles that you make antibodies against which give you immunity to the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

So at what point does J & J use aborted fetal cells in their vaccine?

@gondwanalon It’s not in the vaccine as far as I know. The fetal cells are used to grow the virus needed for the vaccine if I understand it correctly. The anti-vax crowd makes it sound like the vaccine is putting dead baby in your body, but that is not the case. As you said the cell lines are over 50 years old, they just keep growing the cells that’s all.

As a pro-life advocate, even I will say that if the abortion has already occurred, there is no moral compromise. The moral compromise was the abortion itself.

No one aborts babies for the fetal tissue or cells.

The argument is kind of like whether vegetarians and vegans can wear leather. Nobody kills cows for the leather. The cows are slaughtered for beef. The leather is a biproduct that has value of its own.

@Yellowdog GA! I am on the pro-life side of the spectrum, but I respect the morality in your statement. The same argument applies to such things as old artisan-repurposed leather goods, or repurposed ivory from old pianos.

Soylent Green is people!
Sure, it’s healthy food for the starving masses, but should humanity die rather than eat it? They are already dead!

Okay, that argument is a bit stretched. I see no issue with getting the J&J vaccine.
However, I am reminded of my Mom returning from Africa with some carved ivory. She knew it was illegal, but justified it by saying the elephant was already dead. The correct argument, of course, is that if we stop everyone from buying ivory goods, people will stop killing elephants.
That doesn’t really work here, either. The fetuses weren’t aborted for laboritory studies.

@Caravanfan “The Catholic church has a long and glorious history of killing people that don’t conform to their way of thinking. This is nothing new.”

Not to be pedantic, but in this case it would be killing people that DO conform to their way of thinking and also people who don’t.

@gorillapaws Totally fine to be pedantic. This is Fluther after all! :-)
And you’re correct of course. I was making a frosty cynical quip.

Well, that is a no. It can certainly be an instrument of a human’s moral corruption though.