VACCINE RESOURCE COMMITTEE
of the Edmonton Zone Medical Staff Association
View Full List of Vaccine Questions Here
General Vaccine Question #3:
Are vaccines made with aborted fetal cells?
Vaccines do not contain fetal cells and no abortions are performed to make vaccines.
Vaccines do not contain fetal cells or tissues. Some vaccines, like some medications, are made by growing the vaccine virus in laboratory cell lines that are human fetal cell lines, but the purification process removes nearly all the cell components so the cells are not in the vaccines we receive.
Fetal “cell lines” are used in some drug and some vaccine development and manufacturing. Fetal cell lines are not the same as fetal tissue. Fetal cell lines are cells that are grown in a laboratory. They descend from the cells taken from fetuses aborted in the 1970s and 80s that have since multiplied into many new cells over the past few decades to create new fetal cell lines. No fetuses were aborted to make vaccines. The vaccines do not contain any tissue from a fetus.
Fetal cell lines are used with development and manufacturing of some vaccines because viruses need to be grown in cells and human cells are often better than animal cells are at supporting the growth of human viruses. Manufacturers use fetal cell lines for research, development, production and manufacturing.
Source: Charlotte Lozier Institute-Fact Sheet: COVID Vaccines & Fetal Cell Lines
The Vatican's Pontifical Academy for Life declared in 2005, and reaffirmed in 2017, stated that in the absence of alternatives, Catholics could, in good conscience, receive vaccines made using historical human fetal cell lines. In December 2020, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith provided a note on the morality of using some anti-Covid-19 vaccines.
Sources
John Hopkins-Religion and vaccines
Charlotte Lozier Institute-Fact Sheet: COVID Vaccines & Fetal Cell Lines