IMPORTANT CORRECTION
Since original publication my attention has been drawn to some crucial facts to do with the Pfizer vaccine in particular which I had overlooked in error. Please accept my sincerest apologies. Below is a corrected version, based on my most recent understanding.
I was recently asked to speak for 8 minutes at an online conference on the ethics of the upcoming Covid-19 vaccines. Here's what I said...
A recent Tweet from the Secretary of State for Health, Matthew Hancock, declared that “hope” would soon be injected into millions of arms all over the UK. He was talking, of course, about Covid vaccines: the subject of the most fervent prayers of pagans today – and not a few Christians too.
But what actually is it that they propose to inject into your arm?
Certainly not “hope” as we know it: hope, we know, is a person, Jesus Christ, and his effectiveness is 100% for all who receive him, no bad side effects! I don’t know which arrival you’re holding out for in the days in which we live but I’m holding out for Jesus. I’m looking forward to his soon coming. I’m not holding out for a vaccine! We are not like those who live and die without real hope, or whose only hope is in this life: health, safety, wealth, worldly achievements, the esteem of men.
Nevertheless, I don’t think vaccines are inherently bad, they can be good, but it all depends on the facts. So: what’s in this thing?
Pfizer, Oxford, and Moderna
There are of course many different vaccines currently in development but I want to focus chiefly on the ones that the UK Government seems at this moment most enthusiastic about: Pfizer, Oxford, and Moderna.
Given how limited my time is, I urge you to do your own research, starting perhaps here or here - I can only give the briefest of introductions.
Pfizer was not "developed" with the use of a cell line derived from a healthy baby intentionally killed by medical professionals many years ago, but it was "tested" in one - HEK-293.
Many, including prominent Catholic pro-life bio-ethicists, see a morally signicant distinction between a cell line being used in the development stage and one being used for final testing, and categorise Pfizer as "ethically uncontroversial". However, I cannot see what morally significant difference there could be. Although there is heavier involvement where development is concerned, testing is still an integral part of the overall process: the vaccine would not be released without this being done.
(There are also other concerns about the ethical record of Pfizer, including proven charges of bribery.)
The Oxford vaccine uses HEK-293 both in the development and in the testing stage.
As you’ll no doubt be aware, finding out the facts on vaccines is becoming very difficult, because Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and our Government are all by their own admission censoring and taking down anything they consider to be “anti-vax” or “fake news”. Given our Government’s understanding of what counts as “the science”, this is of course very problematic and concerning indeed. What it means is that some scientifically correct facts – and certain opinions or questions – will be deemed “fake” or “dangerous” or “unhelpful”, and will be book-burned.
One recent example of this is to do with the Oxford vaccine. If you try Googling it, you will find multiple articles at the top of your search declaring something along the lines of: “Oxford vaccine does NOT contain aborted baby cells: fake news busted”. What happened here is that a certain video went up on Facebook claiming that the Oxford vaccine contained MRC-5 cells – cells derived from a certain aborted baby. As a technicality – we’re pretty much on semantics here – it was only tested in MRC-5 cells, and it was a different aborted baby cell line, HEK-293, that was used more extensively in the actual development of the vaccine. It is also a misleading truncation to say that the vaccine actually contains aborted baby cells; rather it was developed in those aborted baby cells. On the basis of these technicalities alone, the video was dismissed as fake news – and Facebook took it down. But the reality is that the Oxford vaccine in its development does rely heavily on cell lines taken from a baby girl killed in the womb many years ago.
What is HEK-293?
This is the name given to one specific “aborted fetal cell line”, a constantly reproducing line of human cells used in the development of vaccines all round the world. This cell line originates with a Dutch baby girl, apparently perfectly healthy until she was killed by a Dutch doctor in 1972. Cells were taken from her kidney and cultured [whether this happened while she was still alive we don't know; we also don't know whether she was killed in the womb and then removed or removed from the womb and then killed]. The identity of her parents and the reason for this abortion are unknown – meaning that it might have been with this purpose in mind that the girl was killed. Certainly, the doctor would have had to premeditate his harvesting of the organ tissue before the killing of the baby in order to be adequately prepared for the time-sensitive action required.
The Oxford vaccine has been developed in this wrongly killed baby girl’s kidney cell line.
Moderna, like Pfizer and unlike Oxford, does not fundamentally rely on the use of fetal cell lines for its development, but does use HEK-293 cells in its testing. Moreover, as pointed out in this document citing several sources, Moderna did use HEK-293 at various points in the development process itself as well.
In this helpful presentation, you can see that there are vaccines in development around the world that do not use fetal cell lines at all - but none are currently being considered for distribution in the UK.
She Had a Name
Some will say that benefiting from something wrong in the past doesn’t mean you are complicit in that wrong, and given that they’re not obtaining fresh cell lines from babies aborted today, it can’t be argued that you are encouraging more of that specific injustice by benefiting from cell lines obtained in that way. Perhaps.
But we are complicit now in the wrong killing of hundreds and hundreds more babies like her daily in our nation alone. Did you know that you and I are funding a genocide, if we’re UK tax-payers? This state-sponsored genocide of babies in the womb continues today. Healthy babies like that little Dutch girl are killed every single day by the much-lauded NHS. And largely, we say nothing. That’s how we’re complicit. We stay silent – and in a sense we “benefit” from our complicity (i.e. silence). We appease the culture – hoping that they won’t hurt us too. And indeed, this is how we evade persecution, this is how we "benefit". We continue to betray the voiceless, for whom we are commanded by God to speak.
So here’s where my wife and I stand on vaccines that use aborted cell lines, such as MMR, and that wasn’t an easy decision. How can we look anyone, much less God, in the eye and say that we oppose the genocide as it is today, if we at the same time “benefit” from the fruit of that same genocide? Wouldn’t my opponents be justified in calling me a hypocrite? “You say you oppose abortion for any reason, but what have you just had injected into your arm?” God forbid.
Or, for those of us who do not speak up for the babies in our nation, what would taking this vaccine represent? It would be a powerful symbol of our whole approach to this genocide. Even, a confirmation. Whatever moral authority the UK Church still has to speak out against this genocide – as we’ve largely failed to do for decades – will surely be finished off if we, wholesale, inject our arms with the fruit of this very genocide. Wouldn’t Satan be delighted? Wouldn’t the orchestrators of the baby genocide rejoice?
Such a Time as This
Since March the Government in our country has allowed DIY, at-home abortions. We’ve seen more babies than ever killed this year – more than 4,000 a week. Go to HancocksHealthcare.com for more info.
Is this the time to be accepting compromise, taking a moral lead from our Government, and declaring with our actions that we are indeed living for this world and according to its standards?
Or is this the time to lift up our voice, trust God, and defend the defenseless: come what may?