Should you take the vaccine?

Are you going to take the vaccine?

I wonder how many times you’ve been asked that question or asked others?! It is amazing how many Covid-19 vaccines have been developed so quickly, so naturally we may wonder are they really safe? Should we send a few more canaries down the mine before we take it?!

But it’s not just about our own personal well-being, what about loving our neighbours by taking it or by making sure others get access to it before us?

In terms of the safety of the virus, although it seems to have been developed quickly, the vaccines available in Europe do seem to have been through all the extensive testing and scrutiny required.  The speed of development has largely been due to the resources thrown at it rather than steps being skipped. You can read about the process here.

No one knows of the longer term possible side effects of the vaccine, but there’s nothing to suggest anything negative at this stage, and plenty to suggest ongoing negative effects from Covid-19.  If you would like to read more about the safety of the vaccines I would refer you to a very helpful article by Dr John Wyatt, a Christian research scientist. 

 If it is safe should I take it?

On the basis of “love your neighbour” then in many ways there is a Christian duty to take the vaccine to try and protect our neighbour and especially the most vulnerable.  In the Bible we are told many times of God’s special concern for the widow, the orphan and the foreigner and in today’s world, we may link that to the vulnerable.  If by taking the vaccine I can help to reduce the spread of the virus[1], then I should take it, a bit like why we wear face-masks, keep our distance and use hand sanitizer.

Are there any reasons not to take it?

We may well want to let others go first, not to see if they survive(!), but because they may be more vulnerable than us.  For this reason, we should seek to campaign for a fair distribution around the world so that poorer countries don’t miss out and face more unavoidable deaths and economic hardship. 

What about the use of cells from aborted babies (HEK-293)?

The Bible teaches us that every life is made in the image of God and therefore of incredible value. It’s one of the reasons that medicine is good, it preserves valuable life.  The Bible is also clear that life begins at conception and therefore abortion is tragic and abhorrent since it involves taking the life of the most vulnerable.  If you’re reading this as someone who is struggling with guilt over an abortion, please know that if you turn to Jesus there is complete forgiveness available.  The Bible assures us that if we are sorry to God, the blood of Jesus purifies us from ALL unrighteousness (1 John 1:9). 

Very sadly a baby was aborted in 1973 in the Netherlands. This abortion was not carried out for scientific research, but cells were taken from the kidney and grown to develop a cell-line known as HEK (Human Embryonic Kidney) 293.  This cell line has been used for testing for many different drugs for many years.  Many of us have probably benefitted from it without realising.  But now we do know, should we refuse a vaccine because it has been developed using this cell line?  Some of the vaccines used the cell line in design and production and others only in testing or not at all.  The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines only used the HEK-293 cell line in some of it’s tests, for more info see here.

But does it matter how much of it was used? Surely we should not be benefitting from an abortion, even if it happened a long time ago in another country?

Sadly we live in a broken world, evil has effected so much of what we do. If you are reading this on an iPhone or iPad, someone may suggest you are supporting slavery, but you probably consider that you are not. 

How do we make right decisions in a world that is affected by evil at every level? 

Dr John Wyatt speaks of the question of closeness and cooperation.  It would be one thing for a research scientist to deliberately perform an abortion in order to use the baby for medical research.  This would clearly be wrong.  But if the abortion was not carried out for the purposes of scientific research, but rather the body was donated to medical science, then it would be arguable that the scientist could say she was bringing good out of evil.  She is not so close to the original evil and did not co-operate in it.   She may still express a preference to her lab that she would prefer not to work with such cells, but she may decide she can in good conscience use the cells even though she fundamentally disagrees with abortion, she is seeking to bring good out of a tragic act. 

If you are a Christian health care worker you may decide it is better for you to take a vaccine even if you are concerned about its origins because you are not co-operating in the original evil action, but are rather seeking to bring good out of it; you have a duty to care for other vulnerable people.  

It could also be argued that by taking the vaccine we are not co-operating or in any way condoning abortion.  The original abortion was not for the purposes of medical research, but good has been able to come out of the evil.  We should take the vaccine to protect ourselves and so reduce the strain on the HSE and to protect our neighbour. 

It is a complex world that we live in, but we praise God that He is the one who can take the very worst of evil acts and bring good out of it.  In Acts 2 we read that men committed the worst possible evil – they put God’s own Son to death and yet His death was planned by God to save many people.  Ultimately our hope is not in an injection but in a person, the Lord Jesus Christ, He is the one who will one day bring total deliverance for all who trust Him.

While we wait, we have tough decisions to make, we mustn’t go against our God-given consciences, but we must inform our consciences.  I am convinced that abortion is wrong, I campaigned against it in the recent referendum and I ought to speak out against it more often.  I am also persuaded that although the HEK-293 cell line has a sad and wrong origin, the evil action was not performed to create the cell line and we should not refuse the good that has come out of it we should seek to love our neighbour by taking the vaccine.  

For more writing and podcasts on the subject see John Wyatt’s site here..

[1] Research is yet to be carried out on whether the vaccine stops the spread of the virus, but arguably the more people get vaccinated the more quickly it will be brought under control.