Bioethics

What’s important for the public to know even if they are opposed to the use of fetal cells for therapies, these medicines that are being made and vaccines do not contain any aspect of the cells in them.The cells are used as factories for production - Dr. Deepak Srivastava

Bioethics
Bioethics

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3 Bioethical Questions About COVID-19 Vaccines

Though the coronavirus vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer represent a new type of vaccine—using mRNA rather than a weakened form of the virus to trigger the immune response—some of the basic ethical questions around them stem from existing concerns over vaccination.

Vaccine hesitancy ranked among the World Health Organization’s top 10 threats to global health in 2019, before the pandemic began. Some American Christians have declined vaccines due to ethical and religious concerns over their formulation, and some share concerns with the vaccine-hesitant minority over safety and side effects.

The COVID-19 vaccine, so far, has been shown to be 94–95 percent effective, with side effects…

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 3 Bioethical Questions About COVID-19 Vaccines

Some of the following questions focus on whether the vaccines themselves are safe and ethical for individuals to use—starting with grappling over the common use of abortion-derived fetal cell lines in vaccine development—and some take a closer look at the ethics of distribution for the sake of local and global neighbors.

Cell lines

Immortal cell lines are often used in research in place of primary cells. They offer several advantages, such as they are cost effective, easy to use, provide an unlimited supply of material and bypass ethical concerns associated with the use of animal and human tissue. Cell lines also provide a pure population of cells, which is valuable since it provides a consistent sample and reproducible results.

Human Cell Strains in Vaccine Development

The first licensed vaccine made with the use of a human cell strain was the adenovirus vaccine used by the military in the late 1960s. Later, other vaccines were developed in human cell strains, most notably the rubella vaccine developed by Stanley Plotkin, MD, at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia.

Human primary cells and immortal cell lines: differences and advantages

In research and drug development, scientists routinely use cell lines as a model for healthy or diseased tissue. Cell lines offer an easy, inexpensive and stable platform. However, they often do not fully represent what is occurring in vivo. If you want to model the complex physiological behavior, human primary cells might be the better choice.

Lung tissue from aborted fetus not used in AstraZeneca vaccine development

The AstraZeneca and Oxford vaccine relies on a harmless chimpanzee cold virus to carry the coronavirus spike protein into the body in order to create an immune response. AstraZeneca did not use MRC-5 cells, but it did use a different producer cell line to develop it: Human Embryonic Kidney 293 TREX cells. According to the University of Oxford development team, the original Human Embryonic Kidney 293 cells were taken from the kidney of an aborted fetus in 1973, but the cells used now are clones of the original cells and are not the original fetal tissue.

PromoCell

PromoCell’s facility remains operational and we continue to support researchers worldwide. We are proud of making a contribution to the fight against SARS-CoV-2 with our products.

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