The institute said last Thursday that it is “encouraging” that “many leading vaccine candidates” funded by the U.S. “do not use abortion-derived cell lines in their production.”
Even those vaccines which are being ethically produced did use fetal cell lines from aborted children during their research phases, however. The two vaccines being considered by the FDA for emergency authorization include one developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, and another developed by Moderna. While neither of these vaccines would use abortion-derived cells in production, tests on both vaccines did involve these ethically-questionable cells.
Three other vaccine candidates, all of which are still in Phase III trials, use aborted fetal cell lines in both production and testing. AstraZeneca with Oxford University, Johnson & Johnson, and Novavax are the developers of these vaccines.
CLI asked developers to use ethical alternatives to human fetal cells when testing and producing their vaccines.
“Many developers already opt to use animal cell lines, non-fetal human cells, yeast, or chicken eggs instead,” the CLI stated. It argued that the ethical alternatives to these cell lines “will reduce vaccine hesitancy for those who oppose the use of fetal cell lines.”
