Page 65 - Vaccines

Moral responsibilities

others. Claims that taking certain vitamins builds up
resistance to the coronavirus may have some merit, but
confirmatory tests would be needed on an extensive scale.
It may be that such vitamins may be of real help to some
people or sectors of the population and/ or that they may
help to give added protection, but viral diseases need to
be countered by vaccines, safe, effective and morally
unexceptionable. In the present circumstances, morally
compromised vaccines cannot simply be ignored, nor can
it be presumed that vitamins can substitute for them in
extensive sectors of the population or in different coun-
tries, especially when the virus is rampaging in some
countries such as Brazil and India.3 Unless truly effective
alternatives are actually available to people in need where
they are, it would not be immoral to use effective vaccines,
safe for most of the population (with testing to identify
those who need to avoid the specific vaccines); refusing

3 Cf. “Opinion: A priest reflects on the morality of abortion-tainted
COVID-19 vaccines”, 5ᵗʰ March, 2021, as found on www.
lifesitenews.com/opinion/on-abortion-tainted-vaccines (accessed
24ᵗʰ April, 2021). This opinion was provided by a priest who states
that he concealed his real name. He claims that the documents
from the Holy See which have also been examined above by me
and which consider the use of vaccines derived from aborted
human foetuses legitimate in some circumstances do so on the
basis of four key points: that 1. there is no available morally
untainted therapeutic intervention that neutralizes the proposed
health threat, 2. there must exist a proportionate cause for using
an abortion tainted therapeutic intervention based on the risks
involved, 3. there must exist an actual grave threat to a person’s
health or that of others if he or she were to refrain from taking the
proposed abortion tainted therapeutic intervention and 4. they
must oppose the abortion taintedness of the therapeutic interven-
tion. He claims that tests in the United States have shown that
vitamin treatment is effective against coronavirus and that, hence,
that the use of these vaccines is not legitimate because, in his view,
at least the first two conditions are not met.

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