SYDNEY (UCAN): In Australia, Archbishop Anthony Fisher of Sydney; Anglican Archbishop Glenn Davies of Sydney; and Greek Orthodox Primate of Australia Archbishop Makarios; wrote to the Australian government on August 20 urge it to distribute a Covid-19 coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) vaccine that does not use the cells of aborted human fetus, the Catholic News Agency reported on August 24.
The letter said that the vaccine the government plans to distribute “will raise serious issues of conscience for a proportion of our population” On August 18, the Australian government inked a US$24.7 million ($191.4 million)npact with Swedish-British pharmaceutical company, AstraZeneca, to distribute a vaccine being developed with the University of Oxford. It is in Phase 3 clinical trial phase.
The vaccine is reported to use the cell-line, HEK-293, which is “cultured from an selectively aborted human fetus,” Archbishop Fisher said.
In a column titled, Let’s not create an ethical dilemma, in Sydney’s The Catholic Weekly, the archbishop wrote: “I’m a strong advocate of vaccinations—and not just for Covid-19—as long as they are safe and ethically obtained,”
He added, “Let’s not create an ethical dilemma. There are ethically untainted alternatives: let’s pursue those.”
The government of the United States has also joined hands with AstraZeneca to distribute the vaccine.
Archbishop Fisher warned that people in Australia would face “significant pressure to receive it.”
The country’s health minister, Greg Hunt, has suggested that people who refuse the vaccine may lose government assistance on childcare.
Deputy chief medical officer, Nick Coatsworth, defended Oxford University researchers saying their vaccine is one of several candidates that use the controversial HEK-293 cell line.
On August 19, Pope Francis urged nations to make Covid-19 vaccines “universal and for all” rather than “the property of this nation or another” (Sunday Examiner, August 30)
