Pfizer Coronavirus Vaccine Not Created with Fetal Cells

The news that Pfizer’s vaccine is 90 percent effective has rocked the world (a tad too late to help Donald Trump). The company will be applying for an emergency FDA approval. From the Wall Street Journal story:

A vaccine developed by Pfizer Inc., PFE0.03% and partner BioNTech SE proved better than expected at protecting people from Covid-19 in a pivotal study, a milestone in the hunt for shots that can stop the global pandemic.

The vaccine proved to be more than 90% effective in the first 94 subjects who were infected by the new coronavirus and developed at least one symptom, the companies said Monday.

The positive, though incomplete, results bring the vaccine a big step closer to getting cleared for widespread use.

Pfizer said it is on track to ask health regulators for permission to sell the shot before the end of this month, if pending data indicate the vaccine is safe.

The timetable suggests the vaccine could go into distribution this month or next, though U.S. health regulators have indicated they will take some time to conduct their review.

That’s great news. But many pro-lifers have resisted taking any COVID vaccine if fetal cells taken from aborted fetuses were used in its development.

So, I checked. Pfizer’s vaccine was developed using genetic sequencing on computers without using fetal cells. As a consequence, the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute listed the vaccine as “ethically uncontroversial.”

That news may materially increase the number of people willing to be inoculated when the vaccine becomes generally available, perhaps avoiding a potentially explosive controversy over mandates that has been brewing in recent months.