Posted on 09/27/2021 8:58:47 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The Covid-19 vaccine question is a complicated one which involves many issues. Are government mandates appropriate? Are private employer mandates appropriate? How good and/or bad are the vaccines as a prevention against Covid-19, or against serious health issues, or against death from Covid-19? How risky are the vaccines when it comes to possible side effects? How risky is taking the vaccine as opposed to not taking it? Should there be religious exemptions for people who have conscience concerns about the vaccine? This article doesn't deal with any of those. I might take up some of those issues in the future, but through many discussions with people about this whole complex raft of issues, I find that they quickly shift back and forth between different questions without fully dealing with any one of them.
This question requires focus, which means I plan to deal with one main issue at a time. The issue today has to do with medications that involve, in some way, the use of stem cells from lines that trace back to aborted human embryos. I am going to assume the basic Christian consensus that abortion is a moral evil and that Christians are forbidden from procuring abortions or performing them. In other words, abortion is wrong, period.
But increasingly I am seeing Christians arguing that the Christian prohibition against abortion implies that getting a vaccination is also wrong because of various allegations about the use of aborted fetal tissue in vaccinations. This is no longer a claim made on the fringes: I see comments from both thought leaders and ordinary Christians that go far beyond the actual established facts, calling on Christians to refuse the vaccine due to these alleged abortion connections. One of the editors at The Stream, John Zmirak, has referred to "The dead baby vaccine", (Abandon the Faithful to the Dead Baby Vaccine, Cardinal Dolan Demands of Priests | The Stream) and has had his arguments promoted by Christian apologist Eric Metaxas repeatedly. Beyond that, I've seen more references than I can count, in conservative Christian social media gossip, to the idea that the vaccine is "contaminated" by fetal tissue, etc. This idea is out there, and like the Delta variant, it is spreading rapidly.
One tragic example is the Pastor and Christian talk show host, Bob Enyart, who refused to take the vaccine, claiming that some of them had been tested on fetal tissue:
"August 2021 update: Bob and Cheryl Enyart have sworn off taking the Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson vaccines because, as those firms admit, they tested these three products on the cells of aborted babies."KGOV
And he urged Christians to boycott the vaccine to put pressure on the abortion industry:
"…we urge everyone to boycott Pfizer, Moderna and the Johnson to further increase social tension and put pressure on the child killers."KGOV
Sadly, since then, Enyart has died of Covid. But did he or others who contracted Covid suffer or die needlessly because they refused the vaccine because of abortion concerns?
First, let's apply the 9th Commandment test. Christians are forbidden to bear false witness. So when Christians make claims about the vaccines in order to persuade others not to get vaccinated, are those charges factually true? Are the vaccines in any meaningful sense "dead baby vaccines?" Are they made from aborted fetal tissue? Were they tested on the cells of aborted babies?
HLI does acknowledge that there is medical experimentation going on right now on actual newly aborted fetal tissue, which is indeed horrific. But that is not the case with any of the big three Covid vaccines which are currently disputed.
So, when it comes to the vaccine wars, we're not talking about aborted fetal tissue being physically present in the vaccines. We're also not talking about using aborted tissue indirectly on the way to making the vaccines. We're talking about using clones of clones of clones of clones… in the thousands of generations… of cells from aborted embryos from the 70s or 80s indirectly in the development of the vaccines.
I should also add that these practices do not just apply to the politically contentious Covid vaccines: various other vaccines such as those against measles, rubella and polio also have used cell lines descended from embryonic tissue in similar ways. Furthermore, some medications which have become politically favored (and God help us now that we live in a world where medications are favored or disfavored along political lines!) by many who are vaccine hesitant, such as Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine, also appear to have involved embryonic stem cell line testing. Mechanism of Ivermectin Facilitation of Human P2X4 Receptor Channels (nih.gov); Chloroquine and Hydroxychloroquine Are Novel Inhibitors of Human Organic Anion Transporting Polypeptide 1A2 - PubMed (nih.gov). So to single out Covid vaccines for this scrutiny without alerting readers and/or listeners to the wide array of other medications which also use embryonic stem cell lines is highly misleading.
Of course, setting the record straight about the specifics of the case, while important, does not resolve the controversy by itself. There are still moral issues to be dealt with, but making moral decisions about real life situations first means actually knowing the facts about those real life situations.
So, are Christians forbidden from using vaccines which indirectly involve medical research on cloned cell lines thousands of generations removed from abortions in which they did not participate and had no control? That's a separate issue and will require separate treatment in our next column.
Jerry Bowyer is financial economist, president of Bowyer Research, and author of “The Maker Versus the Takers: What Jesus Really Said About Social Justice and Economics.”
How Alinsky of him. Use their rules against them.
RULE 4: “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.”-PJ
Nothing to do with Alinsky. We ought not to misinform. Period.
He's basically saying that if people have a religious exemption to the vaccine, then they better live up to the 10 commandments, too.
-PJ
RE: I presumed you were talking about finding stolen money
I was talking about UNCLAIMED money.
If you knew the owner of the stolen money of course the moral thing is to return it to the rightful owner.
But many aborted fetuses are unknown. Their mothers are anonymous. Most importantly, they are DEAD. The souls have left the body. The cells, if unpreserved would become dust.
Literally. This brings tears to my eyes.
The things that break God's heart should break ours, also.
RE: He’s basically saying that if people have a religious exemption to the vaccine, then they better live up to the 10 commandments, too.
He is saying that if you are going to use the aborted fetus as an argument to get religious exemption, you better not misrepresent the truth of the matter.
I don’t know a lot on this subject, but HeLa cells were used if that makes any difference?
If TPTB are violating the Nuremberg code, you better dot every i and cross every t when you assert your rights....
not!
No.
Is it now okay to use the knowledge of Josef Mengele because what he did to Jewish prisoners of the holocaust happened 80 years ago?
That is the ethical question, and I wonder if simply waving it away as having happened beyond a statute of limitations isn't misrepresenting the opinion of those with religious objections to the vaccines, or inserting his own opinion over theirs.
-PJ
Then it’d depend on the amount. Finding a 20 on the ground means someone likely dropped it and there’s no chance of finding the original owner.
However, finding a wrapped bundle of 10 grand would likely make you think something else was up. The procedure then is to turn it over to the cops and file the appropriate report. If continued to be unclaimed they give it to you.
I’m not sure how you think anonymity provides cover in your latest example. Knowledge of the act is what’s important, not the “players”.
RE: So is the author lying by suggesting that “immortal” cell lines are okay because the abortion happened a long time ago, or is that just a difference of opinion?
To answer this question, the moral principle of complicity needs to be considered.
One is complicit when he consents to the acts of others, either for good or for evil. If one grants approval to evil, one bears culpability and guilt in that evil act.
I don’t think the author ever says he grants approval of deliberately aborting a baby for the purpose of doing research.
Interestingly, there seems to be no market or bank of
tissue deposits that come from miscarriages or instances of natural fetal demise.
The majority, if not all, of the fetal tissue comes from
elective abortions. Does that mean that research on vaccines encourages abortions? Can a direct line from
abortion be drawn to patients who use them?
The Federal Government from the time of GW Bush recognized that the market for unborn tissue may create unethical incentives and has set up certain restrictions that Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) monitor for compliance so that human subjects are protected in research.
The existing statute intends to prevent research from increasing the number of abortions to achieve certain research ends.
While there may be a desire to use aborted tissue,
the researcher is put at a distance to prevent influencing one to abort. If the statute is followed, no direct line exists between researcher and
abortion. The desire for tissue is separated from the actual cause of death. Therefore, a direct line from vaccine user to abortion does not exist.
“The majority, if not all, of the fetal tissue comes from
elective abortions.”
“Does that mean that research on vaccines encourages abortions?”
Oh, nooo! No no no. PP selling baby parts has nothing to do with people being willing to look the other way regarding injecting themselves with serum utilizing aborted fetuses or containing aborted fetuses
Unclaimed Cadavers Are not used for this nor are products from organ donation, however The ‘argument’ here has morphed into that.
“Can a direct line from abortion be drawn to patients who use them?“
Patients who use fetuses for their own well being prefer to pretend that there is no use of the fetus for their own well being. Of course the line can be drawn but to try to prove that is a truth less culture is not possible.
People are walking around with foreign fetal products In their systems But shhh!
Well, it was 75 years ago, and the bad guys were all dead. We should go ahead and take advantage of their data it sounds like.
If so, how does harvesting the cell line of a dead fetus whose death you had nothing to do with make you morally culpable for the fetus’ death?
If so, how does harvesting skin of a dead Jew whose death you had nothing to do with make you morally culpable for the Jew’s death? You just run a lampshade factory.
The majority, if not all, of the fetal tissue comes from elective abortions. Does that mean that research on vaccines encourages abortions?
I don't think so. I think the reason that people choose to have an elective abortion are personal and immediate. I don't think that anybody believes they are furthering science by aborting their baby in the way that people who leave their bodies to science do.
Can a direct line from abortion be drawn to patients who use them?
I think the second question is like asking someone if they would still buy a gun if they knew it was used in a murder, or buy a home where people were killed in it, and so on.
Maybe it's superstitious, maybe it's a moral objection, or maybe it's societal inculcation to not consecrate a place or object where evil happened.
But I think the gist of your question is whether people who use a vaccine that depended on aborted cell lines is in any way encouraging abortions? I think the answer is no, the reasons for abortions are removed from the future use of the aborted fetuses.
That's a different question than asking if someone who used a vaccine that depended on aborted cell lines has in any way benefitted from the abortion. That's the moral question that each person must answer for themselves, however consistent or not the answer comports with how they live the rest of their lives.
-PJ
You’re conflating the researcher and the subject in that one. What you’re citing refers to protecting potential subjects, i.e. someone talking a reluctant subject into having an abortion because the “someone” wants the tissue, meaning, they are not acting in the best interest of the subject. This’d be comparable to the “fiduciary” relationship financial advisors use.
It’d still effectively be up to the researcher and vaccine recipient to decide for themselves if what they are doing is immoral or not, even if they have legal “cover”.
This is always the foundational problem in these situations. Even though you can point to law or even church tenets, it will come down to the individual’s understanding of the matter. If someone has faith that what they are doing is right or wrong, it’s hard to talk them out of that. So to conclude that a researcher or vaccine recipient cannot possibly conclude something is immoral to them is erroneous.
Imagine if these ‘immortal’ cells came from Holocaust victims. Would a long time ago mitigate their origins?
“If the statute is followed, no direct line exists between researcher and abortion. The desire for tissue is separated from the actual cause of death. Therefore, a direct line from vaccine user to abortion does not exist.”
Why, that is some of the best sophistry I’ve ever seen!
By this logic, a German lampshade maker can use Jewish skin as long as they do not order the skins BEFORE the Jews (who were going to be killed anyway) were murdered.
Nice lol.
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