Vaccine Questions
As those of us in England head into our second national lockdown, many are naturally wondering when this pandemic and the huge impact it is having on our lives will end. A vaccine seems to be favoured as the best—or perhaps the only—resolution to the situation, but vaccines are not straightforward: not only is the development, production, and distribution of a vaccine difficult, but each stage also raises ethical questions.
John Wyatt has done a great job of helping us to think through some of these questions in a recent article and podcast. Both are well worth engaging with.
John tackles some key questions, some of which we may have thought of, while others may not be as obvious:
- Is the use of live human cells in the production of a vaccine ethical? What if these cells have come from an aborted fetus?
- What level of risk should we allow people to take in the testing of a vaccine?
- It is ever ethical to deliberately expose someone to the virus in order to test a vaccine?
- Once a vaccine has been approved as safe and effective, how do we decide which countries should get it first? Is it those who have invested the most in its production, those who can pay the most, or those who have a greater number of people likely to die if they catch the virus?
- When a country receives its allocation of the vaccine, who should be vaccinated first?
A vaccine may be our best way out of this pandemic, but that may not be as straightforward as it sounds!