The Coming Vaccine, by Matthew Hanley

By Matthew Hanley, The Catholic Thing, Sept. 16, 2020

Matthew Hanley is senior fellow with the National Catholic Bioethics Center. Mr. Hanley’s new book, Determining Death by Neurological Criteria: Current Practice and Ethics, is a joint publication of the National Catholic Bioethics Center and Catholic University of America Press. The opinions expressed here are Mr. Hanley’s and not those of the NCBC.

If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a million times: life just can’t get back to normal until a vaccine is ready for stopping COVID-19. Owing to fear, aggressively cultivated panic, and blind trust in what we are disingenuously told is “science,” this view has taken on such momentum that challenging it seems unthinkable – possibly even a punishable offense.

On the one hand, we hear that American ingenuity and freedoms (which of course should be appreciated) have already enabled us to be on the verge of producing said vaccine in record time. On the other hand, several Catholic voices have focused on questions about a vaccine that, at some point in its development, might make use of cell lines derived from aborted fetuses. …