Some of the vaccines being developed for COVID-19 pose an ethical threat as they use old cell lines, created from the cells of fetuses who were aborted.

Dr. Edward Furton with the National Catholic Bioethics Center in the US says in such cases, “the researcher stands by and is ready to receive the materials as soon as the abortion is completed. These are placed into a petri dish with appropriate nutrients and they begin to duplicate themselves and each duplication is a passage and over time this is called a cell line. So the cells that are produced in a line are descended cells from tissue taken from an original abortion”.

However, he says the cells are not actually needed. “They don’t need to start this way they can grow vaccines in other ways.”

Helen Watt, with Anscombe Bioethics Centre in the UK, said some methods don’t use cells at all and some use cells from animals or plants. “Unfortunately some methods use cell lines originally developed from tissue taken from an aborted baby. These are cell lines that have been circulating for decades in labs throughout the world. So obviously those cells do create questions of conscience.”

However, not all current coronavirus vaccine trials involve such morally dubious methods.