Is Receiving the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine Ethical?

Public Discourse recently published my essay, written with Dr. Jeff Barrows, "Is Receiving the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine Ethical?"

On November 9, 2020, pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and biotech company and cancer treatment specialist BioNTech stunned the world with the announcement that a “vaccine candidate was found to be more than 90% effective in preventing COVID-19 in participants without evidence of prior SARS-CoV-2 infection in the first interim efficacy analysis.” The 90 percent success rate far exceeded experts’ hopes of a 50–70 percent effective rate and promised ultimately a potential curb on the global pandemic that has crippled the world’s economy.
So, with millions of doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine on the verge of distribution to American citizens and people worldwide—immediately following FDA emergency approval—what do we know of the vaccine’s ethical considerations, given controversies with some vaccines over the use of cell lines from aborted babies? In brief, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was not developed or produced using any tissue from an aborted child, though it did make use of a biological assessment tool that relies on a cell line (HEK-293) derived from an aborted baby in 1972. Ethical considerations including loving our neighbor, the unavailability of ethical alternatives, and distance in participation and time from the original unethical act make this vaccine a candidate for morally licit use. Let us explain....

Read more: Is Receiving the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine Ethical? - Public Discourse (thepublicdiscourse.com)