The “doctrine of double effect” has a pleasing ring to it. It is regarded by some as the cornerstone of any sound approach to end-of-life issues and by others as religious mumbo jumbo. Discussions about “the doctrine” often generate more heat than light. They are often conducted at cross-purposes and laced with footnotes from Leviticus. C. Foster, J. Herring, J. Melham, T. Hope, “The Double Effect Effect,” Cambridge University Press.
INTRODUCTION
Faithful Catholics sin if they use vaccines tainted by use of fetal cells from aborted babies. If my inference is correct, that’s what Dr. Stacy Trasancos is saying in her Crisis article, “Awakening Consciences about Abortion-tainted Vaccines:”
“If we truly find it moral to benefit from abortion, then we are ultimately no different from the abortionist. And that is an insurmountable problem for the conscience of many good Catholics.”
Her argument is that by taking vaccines that may have used (to one degree or another) cell lines from aborted babies we tell the world that our Catholic opposition to abortion is only nominal, and when convenience requires, we are willing to turn our heads:
“It may satisfy the Catholic conscience to say that we oppose abortion even as we accept the abortion-tainted vaccines, but to the rest of the world the message we send is contradictory. It appears to put us in the same category as any pro-abortion advocate.”
I find that argument at best, facile, and at worst, harmful to those who should take a vaccine. Arguments have been given by Catholic theologians, Catholic medical ethicists, and Church hierarchy that it is indeed morally acceptable (in some circumstances) to take such vaccines. (I’ve summarized some of these arguments in a previous article, Covid-19 Vaccines and Catholic Ethics.) I’ll discuss below how the Doctrine of Double Effect (first proposed by St. Thomas Aquinas) supports such arguments.
THE DOUBLE EFFECT DOCTRINE: ACTS WITH GOOD AND BAD EFFECTS
St. Thomas Aquinas observed that many actions have both good and bad effects. In his Doctrine of the Double Effect, he set forth guiding principles to help us decide how to act in such cases. Here’s some background material: factors affecting moral decisions, as outlined in the Catholic Catechism (CCC 1750-1761); an application to a famous ethical thought experiment, the Trolley Car problem (see “Catholic Ethics, the Trolley Car Problem, and Driverless Cars).
The featured image gives a pictorial summary of the Doctrine. (There are actually four conditions, rather than the three given in the image, but space was limited.) I summarize these below (as reproduced from the New Catholic Encyclopedia, in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy):
- The act, in itself, must not be evil;
- The person doing the act must intend good, not evil;
- The good effect of the act must proceed directly, rather than indirectly from the act (good ends don’t justify evil means);
- The good effects of the act must outweigh the evil effects (the proportionality condition)
Let’s see how that might be applied to the covid-19 vaccine problem. With respect to condition 1 above, we can certainly say that the act of vaccination in itself is morally neutral. (Just as hammering a nail into a wall is an act in itself that’s morally neutral.) With respect to condition 2, we can say that the intention is to do good, to prevent oneself from contracting covid-19. And certainly, the good effect of the act proceeds directly from the vaccination itself, so condition 3 is satisfied. I contend that the good effects of the act are much greater than the evil ones, so condition 4 is satisfied. I’ll give my reasons for that contention below.
WOULD A VACCINE BOYCOTT AFFECT THE NUMBER OF ABORTIONS?
Would boycotting the vaccine inhibit future use of fetal tissue cell lines in medical research? Would it minimize in the future the number of abortions? If the answer to these questions is “No,” then condition 4 above is satisfied and the Doctrine of Double Effect is applicable. I believe that boycotting vaccines will have little effect in achieving an intended goal, that fetal cell lines not be used in medical research.
Moreover, it will not promote what should be an ultimate goal, that legal abortion should be eliminated. How could that happen, given that the current Democratic administration and Congress is giving more money to Planned Parenthood and planning to remove restrictions on the use of fetal cells for medical research? If 100,000 people refuse to be vaccinated, will that make big Pharma decide not to use fetal cells when 100 million do take vaccines and when the national government now in power promotes fetal cell research and abortion?
Would not protests by Catholic laymen, priests, and bishops against those Catholic politicians (Catholic in name only?) who support such actions be a more effective way of showing that Catholics stand with Church doctrine on the sanctity of life? And should we not also protest against those Catholic priests and hierarchy who give such politicians Holy Communion and congratulate them on their election? And would it not be more effective to oppose abortion by supporting the efforts of pro-life priests, like Fr. Frank Pavone?
Boycotting vaccines may make oneself feel virtuous, but it is not, I claim, a realistic way to advance the pro-life cause. And speaking of feeling virtuous–I don’t feel virtuous about taking the covid-19 vaccine. It is too complicated an ethical issue, involving both good and bad moral effects, to have such feelings. I’d like now to give a personal account of why I decided to take the vaccine, and why it was not an easy decision.
VACCINES AND MY BATTLE OF CONSCIENCE
When I first learned several months ago that vaccines were to be available, I was 90.7 years old, and therefore at high risk (fatality) should I contract covid-19 (despite looking younger than my age—but you should see the disgusting picture of me up in the attic!) Moreover, my wife was 85.5 years old, suffering from three co-morbidities, and was therefore at even higher risk than I. Also, I am the main support for my wheelchair-bound wife, who is adamant that she will not be consigned to a nursing home. Accordingly, if I were to contract the virus, my wife would almost certainly be infected, be left helpless, and almost certainly would die.
As I pondered whether to take the least offensive of the vaccines, Moderna or Pfizer (these used fetal cell lines only in testing, not in research or production), I wondered: would I be following Catholic moral teaching if I took the vaccines so that my wife and I did not get ill.
I did an internet search—Catholic morality of vaccines—and found these two resources: a catalog (up to date as of November 2020) by the pro-life Charlotte Lozier agency about the use of fetal cell lines in covid-19 vaccines; a document (2005) from the Pontifical Academy for Life, “Moral Reflections on Vaccines Prepared from Human Cells Derived from Aborted Human Foetuses,” that gave ethical guidelines about the use of vaccines involved with fetal cell lines. The article linked above gives my summary of those two resources, and what I concluded from them, so I won’t repeat that here, other than to say I found them very helpful in my decision to be vaccinated.
Let me make two other points regarding this decision. Had I been 30 years younger, and both I and my wife been in good health, I would have decided not to be vaccinated. This would have been my protest against the use of fetal cell lines from an aborted baby, even though it was only in testing. And had I believed that one less abortion would occur in the future if I refused to be vaccinated, I believe I would have asked my wife to stay with me in our semi-quarantine or at least that she be vaccinated and I not. (Granted, this is easy to say after the fact.)
Here’s a story—The old man, the flood, and God’s help—that buttresses my argument. An old man, sitting on the roof of his house during a flood, finally drowned after refusing multiple offers of aid, with the explanation each time, “God will save me.” In heaven, he asked God “why didn’t You help me?” And God replied “I sent a pickup, a boat, and a helicopter. What more could you ask?” God has sent a vaccine to help us if we need it.
Finally, let me repeat: I would have avoided the vaccine were my wife and I younger and in good health (I believe I still have some years to contribute to doing God’s will on earth). And let me add this prayer: that those arguing against the use of the vaccine don’t convince those at risk to avoid the vaccine; or if the anti-vaccine arguments do convince those at risk, that God will send His pickup, boat, and helicopter to rescue them.
21 thoughts on “Covid-19 Vaccines and the Doctrine of Double Effect”
1) The act, in itself, must not be evil.
Taking a vaccine is not, in itself, evil – this is true/correct.
However, taking a vaccine that was produced in an immoral way is, correct?
The act, in itself, is evil. i.e.:
1) a man going to the grocery store to buy groceries with stolen money.
VS
1) a man going to the grocery store to buy groceries with his own money.
-Todd
So, “DV” thinks it’s appropriate to attack the man instead of attacking the argument, which is that the Catholic Church can say anything it likes, as can the catechism and the clergy (like the Catholic Bioethics Research Center) but that does not automatically make it infallible and on par with Sacred Scripture. Which by the way, is God’s revealed Word to us that contains everything required for salvation. That is why it’s a closed canon, and adding or subtracting from its foundations is strictly prohibited.
However, our understanding of how to apply those foundations to our lives can and does develop over time and circumstances, but we must always be diligently careful to ensure that such developments to not dishonor or contradict the foundations they are supposed to be based on and protect. If they do either, then they are garbage and not worth anything. Therefore, rather than make sweeping statements and assumptions about me, DV should address the argument at hand.
Where is the Scriptural support for participating in an ongoing eVIL for the physical betterment of one group of people (the born) at the expense of another (the unborn)?
Please also note that the Catholic Church, which includes the laity, does have the authority to interpret various aspects and applications of Scripture but that in no way means that everything they think, say, or do has the same weight or importance as Scripture at all. If you think and believe otherwise, then please substantiate that foundationally from the Bible. The church is the “pillar and foundation of Truth”, the Truth that has been handed on and entrusted to us, not the tRUTH that was decide to make up for ourselves. So, the basis (foundation) for all Truth has been given to us through the Bible and I know of nothing that would promote supporting the ongoing eVIL of abortion for the greater good of anyone. However, I do know we are told not to sin in the hope that grace will abound even more.
I follow Christ and His prophets and apostles before I follow men that can not or do not hold themselves against the test of Scripture on everything. Even the Bereans did as much before they would listen to the apostles!
In Christ,
Andrew
“repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar”
Thanks, DV, for your comments. I was going to advise Andrew to use rational arguments, rather than perjorative adjectives (“tired,” “irreverent,” “wrong,” etc) and to give scripture citations to back up his claims that scripture says using vaccines is a sin, if he wants to convince others, rather than just vent. As you point out, Catholic Dogma and Doctrine are based on both Scripture and Tradition, and the latter includes the Magisterium, the teaching of the Church. No “Sola Scriptura” in the Catholic Church.
You are more than welcome, Dr. K. Alas, Andrew is completely lost in his quasi-sola scriptura approach, and so he wrongly insists that you, me, and others defend various positions based only on a principle (sola scriptura – applicable only to flawed Protestant Bibles for the most part) that we do not and cannot accept as morally or theologically legitimate, especially since this approach was not taught to us by Christ. And of course, Andrew doesn’t really believe in pure sola scriptura, either; simply his man-made interpretation of that pernicious doctrine that does not appear anywhere in scripture. We pray for him even as we reject his irrational accusations.
If you have not seen the following, I believe you will find the following article most intriguing as we deal honestly, faithfully, and wisely with the realities of life and the moral use of various vaccines and other things:
“12 Things Less-Remote Cooperation in Evil Than COVID Vaccines” by Fr. Matthew P. Schneider (12/18/2020).
God Bless
Sorry Bob, I was treating you with respect by stating what I did instead of citing it for you and insinuating that you were unfamiliar with the verse and concept. However, since you would prefer that we treat this like a college course where it is not safe to assume that people have done their homework and are familiar with the material they are discussing then the citation you are asking for can be found at Romans 6:1. In addition, I would ask that you read the entire chapter, as well as the tail end of the previous one (Chapter 5), so that the whole context and spirit of what is written is conveyed properly.
Also, please don’t be dishonest again in the future when you are speaking to me or about me because I just looked through my comments on this thread and saw where I did indeed cite the same chapters to you (albeit without a verse) as I just did above. However, if you prefer to do a verse-by-verse battle for the Truth than perhaps you should re-think your own disapproving statements of me that liken me to a Protestant when you are the one asking me to debate like one. The Protestants are well known for citing chapter and verse out of context and I do not do that, which is why I directed you to a full chapter and part of another one. Honesty and integrity are two marks of a true Christian, so please exhibit them if you are going to participate in this or any other discussion while calling yourself a Catholic Christian.
In Christ,
Andrew
I envy those who find ethical decisions easy, black or white. As the priest who taught my moral theology class 24 years ago was wont to say, “every act can have good or bad effects. You should use the Catholic Catechism and the teaching of the Good Doctor (St. Thomas Aquinas) to decide whether an act is morally licit or not.” And so I have done, giving links in the article to such guidelines. I have two questions for those who say no one should take a covid-19 vaccine that has used fetal cell lines only in testing. (By the way, in the article I never argued that everyone should take such a vaccine; indeed, I agonized for some time before I decided to do so–my reasons are given in the post.)
First question: Can you give me any evidence (not opinions) that one abortion will not occur in the future or that big pharma will not use fetal cell lines in research or production if, say, 100,000 or even a million people refuse to be vaccinated? Note that big pharma gets its money from the government, not from sales.
Second question: Suppose a million old people and at-risk persons die because they have not taken a covid-19 vaccine and one less abortion occurs. Would this proportionality justify that no one take the vaccine?
Ethical questions, either those as thought experiments or as in real life, are not easy, even if one follows Catholic teaching to the letter.
Honestly, those questions are irrelevant and also irreverent because they are applying utilitarian thinking to base our actions on instead of using faith-based thinking to do the same. We do not commit or capitulate with sin or evil in the hope that God’s grace and goodness will abound or abound all the more. It is not our calling or responsibility to weigh the outcomes of a faithful act in comparison to a faithless one. We are called to be faithful and do what’s right by God, while leaving the consequences/outcomes/results to Him. Anything more enters into idolatry, us playing God, and anything less adultery, what we want is more important than what he wants.
When we live our lives in faithfulness to God, and to others through Him, our lives are secured forever, even though they may suffer or be in jeopardy temporarily here on earth. Better to live faithfully and die once than to be unfaithful and suffer the second death for eternity. In Christ, Andrew
Andrew, I can’t argue with you; that’s your opinion. All I can say is that you disagree with the Catholic Catechism, Church authorities, moral theologians and with most of the Catholics I know, good people, who have taken the vaccine.
God bless you and teach you compassion.
and understanding.
You are not arguing against me and my opinion, you are arguing against Scripture and, in doing so, placing the words of men above the Word of our Lord and one of His Apostles. If the catechism and all the other people and groups you mentioned agree with your position, what kind of solid ground can you or they hope to stand on if it does not stand firmly on the Rock of Our Salvation – Jesus Christ and His Holy (inerrant) Scripture?
Please read, reflect, and pray on Romans 6, and the last part of Romans 5, with the Holy Spirit in order to learn what the Lord wants for us and from us when it comes to being taught to live with the compassion and understanding you’ve spoken of. It’s one thing to use those words, and it’s another thing altogether to incorporate them into our very lives with Christ by abiding in the Holy Spirit as He calls us to.
John 14:21, and surrounding, detail what such an abiding entails, and it does not include sinning or capitulating with sin.
Lastly, arguments are designed to get at the truth, not to needlessly banter back-and-forth with some other purpose or no purpose at all. Any so-called truth that does not align or agree with Scripture is no truth worth following; and there is no divine Truth in benefiting from the genocide of the unborn. May the Lord help you to see and believe (follow) that with the Holy Spirit, even if it might mean being called to martyrdom as a result – dying from not taking an experimental biological agent that was created and/or tested against products of an undeniably wicked practice (abortion).
In Christ,
Andrew
I have noticed the starting point for the double effect argument is when the individual is at the point of deciding to take the vaccine that is already produced. I would argue the starting point should be during the development, testing and manufacturing of the vaccine.
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I wonder what Polycarp would have to say about this…
“86 years have I have served him, and he has done me no wrong. How can I blaspheme my King and my Savior?”
Polycarp’s Martyrdom (ca. 69-ca. 155)
There is NO good arguments for endorsing evil. PERIOD. END of the discussion.
From a personal perspective, I’ve been working with tissues and cell-lines for decades – mostly cancer. I’ve grown cancer cells (in dishes) and “treated” them with drugs to see if they die (apoptosis). I’ve “lysed” cells to determine whether certain proteins are effected one way or another by the drug…etc.
My point is that along the way it is certainly possible that I may have grabbed a “forbidden” cell-line as a “control”. By control, I mean that the ‘literature’ says that this particular cell-line would be expected to express (or not express) the protein (or genetic material) in question. I don’t recall ever having actually done this, but it is possible. Would it be a sin? Yes, definitely a sin of laziness by not understanding every detail of my experiments, but no, not a grave sin which would require full knowledge that what I was doing was deliberate.
Anyway, this whole debate has definitely made me more vigilant. I wonder whether the HEK-293 was just grabbed off the shelf by a lazy researcher (like me :)) who had no malicious intent.
It wasn’t me, I swear!
And that’s another thing – “HEK-293”. It is just a arbitrary label (unfortunately). Not an aborted girl. It may have been tested along with other immortal cancer lines like DU-145 (prostate), ARH-77 (B-lymphoblast), or a MRC-5 (lung) which currently sit in my lab.
The good that will come from this debate is that researchers will be less hasty and more aware of the issues.
The MRC-5 was a typo. It is an aborted boy, but I had it written down because it was originally misidentified as involved with COVID.
HEK – 293 is not an arbitrary label at all because it means “human embryonic kidney”, which can be easily corroborated by anyone with a quick Google search. It is never wise to make excuses for ourselves or others based on poor information and/or information that we should be knowledgeable about if we cared enough to seek it out.
Almost all of us are in positions of knowing and doing much better, and that includes the Vatican, the Bishops, and the Bioethics Research Center of the Catholic Church who have been making excuses for people to immorally follow on this for years.
We often know better when we have a desire to do better, and in this case that refers to protecting the yet-to-be born and eliminating abortion. In Christ, Andrew
MRC-5 is a diploid cell culture line composed of fibroblasts, originally developed from the lung tissue of a 14-week-old aborted Caucasian male fetus
Tired and wrong. We do not participate in any way with evil in order to accomplish good, no matter what unbiblical and faithless workarounds come from within the upper echelons of the Church. We always follow Jesus before anyone else and that includes unto death, which is a reward not a punishment. In Christ, Andrew
Andrew: In your criticism of Dr. Kurland’s analysis on the use of vaccines (that you clearly do not understand), I find your interpretation of Scripture exceedingly unconvincing, irrelevant in part, and also hypocritically silly in part (but of course you are just a mere man, and so I am quite free to reject your ignorance and false claims), and I suspect that you do not recognize the Christ-granted authority of the Catholic Church in this and other respects, which is most ironic since it was Our Lord Jesus Christ who established the Catholic Church as His One True Church (for all time) for all to be a part of to more faithfully follow Him than in any other way or through any other so-called church, or through vague claims about following Him as a generic Christian so to speak, and so on. It is actually quite sad that you claim to be a follower of Jesus Christ, yet you tell Christ to take a hike when it comes to following His Specific Church that He established. Oh well. Such is the pride of one who believes his flawed interpretation of Scripture is superior to that of Christ’s One True Church. And indeed, the Catholic Church is based on Christ Himself first and foremost as Christ is the ultimate Word of God; not the Holy Scriptures by themselves (and certainly not flawed and incomplete versions of Holy Scripture like the KJV for one) that remarkably ignorant people arrogantly declare to be so in complete disrespect for what Christ actually taught. Good luck and God Bless. Hopefully, as a mere man you will stop hypocritically placing your interpretation of Scripture above what the Lord has taught. And just so you know, all of the apostles of Our Lord were also men.