#75
The COVID-19 Vaccine Challenge: Faith Fears?

The development of a vaccine is almost universally viewed as a crucial step to curtail the COVID-19 pandemic and thus the devastation that has so disrupted the world. A proven vaccine is still some time away, but debates have begun about bioethical and social justice topics: Can sufficient vaccines be produced, at what cost, and how will they be allocated and distributed? A further worry is that focusing solely on developing a vaccine swiftly might distract from broader and critical issues that the crisis presents.

Ethical questions turn around the development and use of any vaccine. Two basic questions involve the judgment of when trials are considered satisfactory and who would benefit from what will plainly be production and distribution on a very large scale. These questions will have special force in this case given the global reach of the pandemic and its vast impact.

Various current debates involve, directly or peripherally, faith communities. These could present barriers to developing a vaccine and distributing it and thus should be addressed. 

A first set of debates revolve around misinformation, deliberate or otherwise, including conspiracy theories. They could create or accentuate real fear and anger. An extreme example is reports about the Orthodox Church in Moldova, which has denounced the potential use of a vaccine against COVID-19, calling it a satanic plan to microchip people or introduce other foreign devices into the human body. “The global anti-Christian system wants to introduce microchips into people’s bodies with whose help they can control them, through 5G technology,” a cleric said in a recent press release. The fears focus on the role of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In the United States, some religious communities fear that the government will roll out a mandatory coronavirus vaccination order. One Catholic anti-abortion website has created a petition opposing any obligatory vaccination against the virus. Neither seem borne out by evidence or real plans.

More complex debates which pose bioethical issues relate to the fetal cell lines used to create some, but not all, COVID-19 vaccines currently being researched. Some faith actors ask whether this practice is acceptable, given that the cell lines were originally created from tissue sourced from abortions and whether this makes those who accept the vaccine complicit in harvesting of fetal tissue. 

Looking ahead there are important opportunities to bring wise faith voices to what will clearly be complex decisions made under great time pressures. Faith community commitments to social justice, the poor/vulnerable, etc., can be mobilized to support justice in distribution. A conclusion is that there urgently needs to be active engagement of faith communities in these discussions.

(Based on: April 27, 2020, Anscombe Bioethics Centre briefing paper; April 29, 2020, Tablet article; May 15, 2020, Daily Beast article; May 20, 2020 Balkan Insight article; and LifeSiteNews petition)