Originally Posted by
rsvman
I'm sure by now you have all also heard about the newly raised objections by some religions and religious spokespeople about the Johnson and Johnson vaccine because the adenovirus vector is grown in a cell line derived from an aborted fetus. (Of note, both Pfizer and Moderna also used the same cell line in some of their pre-clinical studies, but for some reason they don't have a problem with that?)
Anyway, there seems to be a lot of misinformation out there, and this is likely not the forum that really needs this tiny bit of education, but just so I can feel like I didn't ignore what is becoming (apparently) a really important point about covid vaccines right now, I'll press on briefly.
Cell lines are cells that grow very well outside the body and are used for medical research, medical diagnostics, and pharmaceutical product development (and probably for other things that I don't really know much about). They grow fairly rapidly and are continuously fed, maintained, and "split" so that they can continue to grow and be useful. Viruses cannot grow outside of cells, so cell lines are necessary for growing viruses. Since the J&J vaccine uses an adenovirus vector, it has to be grown. It so happens that this particular fetal cell line grows the virus efficiently.
The cells were derived from an aborted fetus back in 1985 and the cells have been propagated ever since. They have also been used (and are still being used) in the development of other vaccines, including hepatitis A and varicella zoster vaccine, among others.
Here's my take on this situation. The fetus was not aborted to get his/her cells. The fetus was aborted because its mother wanted an abortion. I get that some people see abortion as completely abhorrent and think that the mother in question should never have aborted her son. I understand that. But we can't go back in time and make the abortion not happen. Had the cells not been derived from the aborted fetus, the fetus would just have been thrown into an incinerator and burned. Instead, that aborted fetus has prevented human suffering and disease for decades.
So do the opponents of abortion really think it would be better if the fetus had just been thrown away? I would understand their objection if the fetus had been sacrificed for the sole purpose of obtaining these cells to make this cell line, but that is not what happened. And we can't go back in time and have the baby not be aborted. So our choices are i) he/she gets aborted and gets thrown away and incinerated, or ii) he/she is aborted, but we harvest a few cells and turn them into a continuous cell line that has a myriad of uses, most of which have alleviated or prevented human suffering and death. Given those choices, can they really prefer choice number 1?
Oh, and if they are that opposed to the use of the fetus-derived cells, why are they not also opposed to the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines? I guess using the fetus-derived cell line "a little bit" is ok, but using the same cell line "a lot" is not ok? To me the whole thing is mind-boggling.
Finally, to be clear, there are none of these cells in the vaccine itself. It is just used to produce the virus.
To their credit, though, and for completeness's sake, the Vatican has said that if you don't have a choice as to what vaccine you are going to get, it is ok to get the J&J vaccine. Also, Holy Cross has agreed to get J&J vaccine distributed and administer it.