The Pontifical Academy for Life did NOT argue it is morally obligatory to use tainted vaccines

By Dr. Jeff Mirus ( bio - articles - email ) | Feb 05, 2015

If I may be permitted one brief follow-up to yesterday’s essay (Thinking morally about vaccinations: My turn!), it would be to single out a particular portion of the 2005 statement of the Pontifical Academy for Life that has led to confusion.

Though I realize the PAL text is non-magisterial, I believe the moral principles it expresses are, in fact, correct. Unfortunately, in addressing an issue secondary to the question which prompted its statement, the PAL wrote one sentence which, for some readers, overshadowed its primary conclusion. Here are the two critical paragraphs in which this overshadowing may seem to occur:

As regards the diseases against which there are no alternative vaccines which are available and ethically acceptable, it is right to abstain from using these vaccines if it can be done without causing children, and indirectly the population as a whole, to undergo significant risks to their health. However, if the latter are exposed to considerable dangers to their health, vaccines with moral problems pertaining to them may also be used on a temporary basis. The moral reason is that the duty to avoid passive material cooperation is not obligatory if there is grave inconvenience. Moreover, we find, in such a case, a. proportional reason, in order to accept the use of these vaccines in the presence of the danger of favouring the spread of the pathological agent, due to the lack of vaccination of children. This is particularly true in the case of vaccination against German measles.

In any case, there remains a moral duty to continue to fight and to employ every lawful means in order to make life difficult for the pharmaceutical industries which act unscrupulously and unethically. However, the burden of this important battle cannot and must not fall on innocent children and on the health situation of the population—especially with regard to pregnant women.

Note that the first paragraph answers the primary question of whether tainted vaccines must always be avoided or may sometimes be used. It states, very precisely, that in the absence of a serious medical threat to others, “it is right” to abstain from using tainted vaccines, even if they are the only ones available. But if there is a considerable health danger, vaccines with moral problems “may also be used on a temporary basis” (emphasis added).

The second paragraph comments on a secondary question, namely the requirement to oppose the immoral production of vaccines even if one chooses at times to make use of them. In a far less carefully-worded paragraph (and I think that’s an important observation), the PAL insists strongly that we are obligated to “to fight and to employ every lawful means to make life difficult for the pharmaceutical industries which act unscrupulously and unethically” (a very broad range of possibilities!). But the PAL also adds what ought to be obvious, namely that disproportionate sacrifices (“the burden”) in this battle should not fall on innocent children, public health, and especially pregnant women.

A decision not to use an immoral vaccine is not a battle against the drug czars. The clearly hortatory language of the second paragraph cannot be construed as denying the precise moral conclusion of the first. If you argue that the second paragraph declares a moral obligation to use these vaccines to preserve public health, you deny the specific answer the PAL gave to precisely this primary question.