Page 58 - Vaccines

Vaccines and Catholic morality

as a medicina principaliter sanativa or salutifera in a pre-
ventative way. Its morally legitimate use would thus be
established in terms of its functioning or operation to
foster and to protect the health of the person or to seek
to prevent its deterioration in the recipient and further
in the community, subject to the proviso that it may not
be appropriate and hence legitimate for use in individu-
als whose allergies, other health conditions or age would
render it dangerous or ineffective for them. If, in an
emergency, some such stages have been excluded, short-
ened or otherwise compromised, that may be under-
standable, but it could lead to legitimate objections to the
vaccine in some cases or may lead to more serious
adverse events occurring.

b. Details of vaccine production

It is no doubt the case that the details of how vaccines
have been produced from aborted human foetuses or
have been tested at certain points with materials derived
from such a source are often gruesome and harrowing,
which gives rise to objections also to the further mutila-
tion of the bodily remains of such unborn children thus
involved. Such objections are more than valid where
aborted human foetuses are abused in these ways.
However, the production of vaccines, derived from the
cells or tissues of human foetuses who have died without
procured abortion may entail similar procedures. Quite
apart from the necessary and legitimate research which
is an inevitable part of the progress of medical science
and of its praiseworthy service to the human person,
experimentation upon the human subject is an inevitable
aspect, perfectly legitimate when undertaken in full
harmony with the various elements of the therapeutic
principle. Many medical and especially surgical proce-

46