If a COVID-19 vaccine is developed with the use of cell lines derived from an aborted fetus, should a citizen of conscience who is opposed to abortion avail herself of it to protec
The past year of suffering under the onslaught of COVID-19 has brought with it numerous ethical questions, and the advent of effective vaccines for COVID is no different. Foremost
At its core, public health is concerned with promoting and protecting the health of populations, broadly understood. Promoting and protecting the health of populations often involv
Vaccination involves priming the immune system with an antigenic agent that mimics a virus or bacterium, which results in immunity against the “real” microorganism. Collective vacc
Public health ethics is the branch of bioethics that is concerned with behaviours and policies affecting not only (or even not primarily or not at all) the health of any single ind
If the state seeks to protect the human body, it should do so in view of a more ultimate flourishing of the whole human person, for the sake of a civic society that promotes the fr
All humanity is being put to the test. The Covid-19 pandemic puts us in a situation of unprecedented, dramatic and global difficulty whose power to destabilize the plans we have fo
The matter in question regards the lawfulness of production, distribution and use of certain vaccines whose production is connected with acts of procured abortion. It concerns vacc
For several centuries it has been understood that disease could be spread by contact, and quarantining has been used as a way of limiting this. What was not understood until more recently were the means by which contact or near proximity transmitted disease. In the 19th century the germ theory of microscopic pathogens was developed and tested leading to the practice of vaccination of small amounts of the pathogens to induce subsequent protection. A virus is another means of transmission involving a pathogen that replicates inside the living cells of whatever it infects. Among the most common human viral infections are respiratory ones. These include influenza and coronavirus disease. There have been major viral pandemics of these sorts in 1918/9, 1957/8, 1968, 2009, and 2019- (Covid-19). The science of virology has been advanced by efforts to contain such diseases through vaccination. Ethical concerns about this include a) whether it should be mandatory, which violates the widely held principle of consent, b) whether state compulsory vaccination violates the right of freedom, c) which groups should be prioritised within a country, and d) whether vaccines should be donated at the same time to poorer countries, thereby touching on questions of justice.