Good reasoning?

[TimV]

Any thoughts on the reasoning here? You'll have to read the whole thing (but it's not too long).

It almost seems they are saying that one can participate in evil temporarily.

Vatican Statement on Vaccines Derived  From Aborted Human Fetuses

 

[JoannaV]

Am I right in thinking that the original vaccine was developed using aborted foetuses many years ago but that no aborted foetuses are used in production of the vaccine now? (Although such methods may still be used to develop new vaccines.)

 

[TimV]

As I understand it, the cells taken from the abortion have been propagated all this time, so the genetic material still comes from the child.

 

[Peairtach]

One of these difficult moral choices.

I'm glad to see the art of casuistry is alive and well. As Greg Bahnsen said, every Christian has to do casuistry, the Q is whether it is done well or badly.

I was unaware that any vaccines used aborted human foetuses.

If they were naturally aborted I wouldn't see the problem.

The Vatican doesn't reason here from the fact that if parents denied their children some of these vaccines with no alternative, you might end up with two dead children, the aborted foetus and the child who didn't have the vaccine.

You could protest to the pharmaceutical companies and the governments who licence their use of deliberately rather than naturally aborted foetuses that they were putting you in a difficult position, that you didn't approve, but you used them under protest for the sake of your child.

The closeness of proximity makes things difficult. No doubt many of us are dependent on medical treatment that was developed unethically many years or decades ago, maybe unbeknown to us.

This will become an even more pertinent problem if genuine progress is made in medicine because of work on embryonic stem cells. Apparently, at the moment, progress is being made with non-embryonic rather than embryonic stem cells (?)

 

[Philip]

Let us say that cure X for disease Y was discovered as the result of human experimentation by the Nazis during the holocaust---experimentation that resulted in hundreds of deaths. Further, the cure involves duplicating cells taken from one of the victims. Is it therefore wrong to use this vaccine?

 

[TimV]

The allies decided not to release data from any unethical experiments done by the nazis, even if they could have been useful.

 

[Philip]

The allies decided not to release data from any unethical experiments done by the nazis, even if they could have been useful.

Interesting. If they had, would it have been wrong?

 

[TimV]

To me it would be a case of assuming that good can come of evil. Personally I'd not let my child get the Rubella or Hep A vaccine if the only ones available were made from murdered kids, because of both the ends and the means have to be good for an action to be good according to basic Christian ethics. I though the Catholic arguments interesting, though and wondered what others thought of them. The ignorant part I can by; after all, my kids got the Rubella one in South Africa and I assume (maybe wrongly) that it was made by one of those giant companies who've kept the diploid lung cells cultured from that same child.