Can Catholics Receive Vaccines That Used A Foetal Cell Line?
We have been hearing the good news that the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine has shown over 90% efficacy in trials. Unlike some other vaccine candidates including the Oxford AstraZeneca candidate – this vaccine did not use a foetal cell-line in either its design or its production. Reports of the use of foetal cell-lines at some stage for some vaccines have sparked concern for Catholics and other opponents of abortion.
But what is a foetal cell-line, exactly? Is it ever admissible for Catholics to receive a vaccine which has employed one? How can we approach these moral questions in the context of a global pandemic?
To explore these issues and more, Michael Wee interviewed the Anscombe Bioethics Centre’s Senior Research Fellow, Dr Helen Watt. To find out more, you can read Dr Watt’s briefing paper, here.
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Michael Wee Talks to EWTN About the Anscombe Bioethics Centre & the ‘Bioethical Vocation’
21 February 2022
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Staff are grateful to all those who sustained the Centre in the past by their prayers and the generous financial support from trusts, organisations, communities and especially from individual donors, including the core funding that came through the Day for Life fund and so from the generosity of many thousands of parishioners. We would finally like to acknowledge the support the Centre has received from the Catholic community in Ireland, especially during the pandemic when second collections were not possible.
We would like to emphasise that, though the Centre is now closed, these donations have not been wasted but have helped educate and support generations of conscientious healthcare professionals, clerics, and lay people over almost 50 years. This support has also helped prevent repeated attempts to legalise euthanasia or assisted suicide in Britain and Ireland from 1993 till the end of the Centre’s work on 31 July 2025.