Are you going get it? Haneen and Lauren talk the COVID vaccine, the science behind it, and their differing ethical views re: fetal cell line testing.
Thank you Sarah Morgan, Noah Love, and Isaac Guarisco for participating in our pre-podcast dialogue!
*EDIT!
In this episode, we state that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines could potentially carry "low concentrations of chemicals derived from human cell lines." This is incorrect. Pfizer and Moderna are mRNA vaccines that teach our cells how to make a protein that triggers an immune response to the virus. While Pfizer and Moderna used fetal cell lines in their testing processes, they did not use them in vaccine production. The article we were referencing detailed the production process of a different vaccine entirely - AstraZeneca. As opposed to an mRNA vaccine, AstraZeneca works by injecting an inactivated viral vector with DNA from the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. AstraZeneca uses fetal cell lines in both testing and production. In the production process, they remove the human cell lines that were originally used to grow the modified virus, but there is a small chance that low chemical concentrations of those cell lines remain in the final vaccines. The science of our episode actually detailed the production process of AstraZeneca, instead of Pfizer and Moderna. Pfizer and Moderna use mRNA technology and only use fetal cell lines in their testing processes, not production. In conclusion, if you get the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine, there is a 0% chance that there are any low chemical concentrations of fetal cells lines in the injection itself.