A Greek Orthodox bishop has urged churchgoers to not take the COVID-19 vaccine because, citing sources from Italy, it is "made from aborted fetuses."
On Sunday, December 27, after the vespers, the Metropolitan of Kythera said he was informed by Orthodox Christians in Italy that the vaccines were made with cells from aborted fetuses, Proto Thema English reported.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9_ceDXazp0&feature=emb_title
“This is very terrible, my brothers, and the Christians of the West, the Papists, have been concerned and have addressed their leader, the Pope," the bishop said.
"Of course he has reassured them and told them: ‘It is so, but we will accept it for the health of the people'," he continued.
"But this is a big mistake and of course, he is outside a holy catholic and apostolic church and we cannot count his opinion, but we Orthodox cannot accept such a thing," the bishop emphasised.
Pfizer and Moderna use mRNA technology, thus creating a synthetic vaccine that does not contain human cell lines.
The claim that COVID-19 vaccines are using human fetuses first emerged on social media in November.
This claim was fact-checked by Associated Press, Full Fact, Politifact, Reuters, and Snopes and found to be false.
This was a disappointing article in that the GCTs did no investigative journalism for it and made a statement based on web “fact check” sites which are notorious for selling a slanted version of “facts” at the request of industries such as pharmaceutical companies from which they receive “donations”. Fact-checkers routinely rely on semantics and technicalities to break apart a given claim, and unless you carefully read their explanation, you’re likely to miss this and simply write it off based on the headline claiming something to be false. The case of COVID-19 vaccines containing aborted fetal cells is a perfect example of this. There are several cell lines commonly used in vaccine development that originate from aborted fetuses, including:
HEK2937— human embryonic cell line originally derived from kidney tissue obtained from a female fetus aborted in the Netherlands in 1972
MRC512 — human embryonic cell line originally derived from the lung tissue of a 14-week-old male fetus aborted in 1966
PER.C613 — human embryonic cell line originally derived from the retina of an 18-week-old male fetus aborted in the Netherlands in 1985
WI3814 — human embryonic cell line originally derived from the lung tissue of a 12-week-old female fetus aborted in 1961
Because these cell lines are cloned however that does not make them non-human.
Vaccine makers using at least one of these fetal cell lines in the development of their COVID-19 vaccines include:
AstraZeneca (HEK293)
Jansen Research and Development (owned by Johnson & Johnson), (PER.C6)
CanSino Biologics (HEK293)
University of Pittsburgh (HEK293)
ImmunityBio (HEK293)
Altimmune (PER.C6)
It is unknown if the Russian-made Sputnik V uses cloned human fetal tissue. Unless a vaccine manufacturer can prove that its product does use cloned fetal cells, then our Bishops are correct in telling the faithful not to take the vaccine.