Stacy Trasancos, Ph.D., the Chief Research Office of Children of God for Life and Executive Director of the St. Philip Institute and Melissa Moschella, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Catholic University of America and visiting scholar at the Heritage Foundation’s Simon Center for American Studies discuss moral concerns about the new COVID-19 vaccines. This webinar was hosted by ITEST.
Note: The first slide of Stacy Trasancos’s presentation in the recording has an error. The words “mediate” and “immediate” are exchanged. The order is corrected in the downloadable slides linked above and the image below. Immediate is direct. Mediate is indirect.
The drug companies will never change their abhorrent methods of development and/or testing on aborted fetal cell lines until people refuse to take these tainted vaccines. And as long as YOU continue to push these relativistic argumentS, THEY will continue to have us over a barrel. They WON’T CHANGE. Why should they? I will not be taking a vaccine.
Margaret, who are you addressing?
Is there an ethical vaccine for covid 19 in the works? Who is doing the research?
Rita – yes there is a list of moral and immorally produced Covid 19 vaccines on the website here: https://cogforlife.org/wp-content/uploads/CovidCompareMoralImmoral.pdf
In the matter of the Covid vaccine the remote material cooperation is passive, simply because the abortions are not a consequence of the need for vaccine..
With all due respect, Dr. Brown, I feel your statement is very presumptuous and questionable. No matter what we have been told, we cannot really know for certain the final catalyst that allowed the mother to justify and carry out her decision to murder the baby in her womb. If others had convinced her that she was ultimately doing a great good by providing her baby’s body to medical research to help others, this could well have been the “straw that broke the camel’s back” and provided the justification she needed for her conscience to accept aborting her child. Stacy explained this aspect well in her portion of the presentation.
Dr. Brown – I would further add that the Vatican has stated considerably more than this. Quoting: “However, in this situation, the aspect of passive cooperation is that which stands out most. It is up to the faithful and citizens of upright conscience (fathers of families, doctors, etc.) to oppose, even by making an objection of conscience, the ever more widespread attacks against life and the “culture of death” which underlies them. From this point of view, the use of vaccines whose production is connected with procured abortion constitutes at least a mediate remote passive material cooperation to the abortion, and an immediate passive material cooperation with regard to their marketing. Furthermore, on a cultural level, the use of such vaccines contributes in the creation of a generalized social consensus to the operation of the pharmaceutical industries which produce them in an immoral way. ” See https://cogforlife.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/vaticanresponse1.pdf
Dr. Brown, please consider the dimension of scandal with respect to this general question. One could make the consequence argument for every experiment and research program if fetal materials are sourced from a tissue bank. The materials in such a case are not collected consequent to the need of any specific application, they are ‘just there’, waiting to be ordered up. Why are they ‘just there’? Perhaps it is because we, collectively, have become insensitive to the ‘production’, collection, storage and use of aborted fetal tissue and the remains of aborted children are exploited without much thought or consideration as to their origin. Aborted fetal tissue is a biomedical researcher’s commodity. The consequence argument starts to come apart when one takes note of the variations, the manipulations, of the cell lines designed to better fit certain requirements like ACE2 expression or SV40 T-cell antigens. There are dozens of trade names associated with aborted fetal cell lines and these trade names are associated with manipulations designed to serve the various needs of the research community. The ‘need for a vaccine’ is something that the manufacturers of biologicals take into account and put product on the shelf to support. The WalVax-2 cell line was purposefully established in 2015 to provide a better cell-line for vaccine research. I urge you to read the scientific literature on the development of this cell line. WalVax-2 was not developed with any specific vaccine in mind, but the researchers that designed the experiments and developed the cell line had a very clear view of specimen selection criteria and how to best collect the specimens (aborted children).
Perpetuation of scandal, leading others to sin, is abetted by an inappropriately narrow field of view. The use of aborted fetal tissue in research has accelerated dramatically in recent years. Why would that be, if not consequent to need? Consequent to demand? That doesn’t make me feel any better about it.
Are there any covid 19 vaccines available in the US that are ethically engineered?
I have seen notes that Moderna IS morally produced, without fetal cells, and I have seen notes that Moderna IS NOT morally produced, and uses fetal cells. Could someone please clear this up? Also, when will any of the COVID vaccines be safe to take, since many are saying that there has not been enough testing.
Moderna used aborted fetal cells in their original research, development, design, production of the spike protein and testing. The cells do not end up in the final product but it does not take away from the fact they were most certainly used. Proof is here: https://cogforlife.org/2020/11/16/moderna-covid-19-vaccine-facts-not-fiction/ I hope this helps!
Haven’t yet watched the video. Aside from the abortion-tainted ethical issues of vaccines, which for me is probably the most important issue when it comes to making a decision on the vaccines, does Children of God not agree that any vaccine is necessary? Does it not agree that the vaccines are in the experimental stages until 2023 and are thus rushed without being properly tested on animals? Does it not agree that efficacy is unproven – these may not always work and there’s no proof the vaccines stop transmission – vaccinated people are told they must continue with the restrictive measures such as wearing masks and being locked down? Does it not agree that it can’t be proven to be safe? People have died and had severe adverse reactions (and not just old and with conditions)? Does it not agree that they can’t prove that it doesn’t affect fertility both of man and the woman? Does it not agree that it is unproven that doesn’t affect one’s health medium to long term? In addition, the pcr tests were flawed and we can’t be sure if they tested for any virus. After all, flu seems to have disappeared. There are some confusing messages coming from authority figures and unknowns about the vaccines. Finally, is it right to dismiss care workers who decline to have a vaccine for any of the reasons I have mentioned for declining the vaccines? Especially abortion-tainted and the possible unknown and known adverse affects – those two being of utmost priority when deciding not to have the vaccines!
Jason, I agree with every thing you are saying. Why would we even want to take any inoculation that will alter our God made genetic make-up with a man-made genetic modifying substance???
Could you please explain the difference between a fetal cell line use and fetal cell line blue print use. I spoke to a friend of mine and she said she didn’t have an issue with the vaccine because she read somewhere that fetal cells lines weren’t used and that only the blueprint of fetal cell lines were used. It confused me.
Thank you,
Pamela Dronen
Pamela, I am not familiar with that term. What I can say is that the research teams that developed the mRNA vaccines used aborted fetal cell lines in the research and development of the vaccines. The vaccines would not exist but for the use of aborted fetal cell lines. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine uses the aborted fetal cell lines as a growth medium, so this vaccine goes beyond the research and development and uses aborted fetal cell lines in the production of the vaccine itself. ‘Blue print’ is a term that I had not encountered before your note, so that leads me to believe that the term is contrived, very much like ‘confirmatory testing’. HEK-293 and other cell lines were used in all three of the vaccines that are currently approved for use under the EUA – the moral fault is clear and unambiguous.
If your friend is aware of something that is new to us, we would welcome the opportunity to discuss this.
I believe she is referencing how the initial development was done. If you look into the Hexapro 2 spike protein you see numerous references to using HEK-293 in the early development of the mRNA strand which seems to be partly dependent. This seems to me analogous to the Epogen and Procrit development based on the cell line for initial set up aka… the blueprint.
However, I believe Stacy had made reference to Moderna buying a product used in the manufacturing of the final vaccine that was based on the cell line for production?
I’m familiar with the foundational research and the development. The cell lines and the spike protein are commercially available from biologics manufacturers. I would say that ‘build vs. buy’ has no effect on the ethics, one of those distinctions without a difference. The fact remains that Moderna, Pfizer and J&J vaccines would not exist but for the use of aborted fetal cell lines.
Thank you for the feedback. Trying to understand all the terms and their meanings. Still sounds to me that if it sounds like a duck, quacks like a duck, it must be a duck!!
That’s generally a very sound approach, Pamela! More than a fair amount of complexity has been invented in attempts to convince people of faith that the use of aborted fetal tissue is ethical and moral. And it’s still a duck.
The baby is alive when the cell lines are harvested, without anesthesia, in order to have a viable sample. How inhumane can we get? This is immoral and evil! As Catholics, we need to put an end to this procedure immediately