VERIFY: No, COVID-19 vaccines do not contain fetal tissue

PORTLAND, Maine — UPDATE: on October 5, the FDA released the ingredients in the Pfizer-BioNTech and the Moderna COVID-19 vaccines.

Pfizer: https://www.fda.gov/media/144414/download
Moderna: https://www.fda.gov/media/144638/download
One common reason people cite for not getting the COVID-19 vaccine is a claim that the shots contain fetal tissue. Maine is seeing wide gaps in COVID-19 vaccination rates: some counties, such as Cumberland have 75% of people with a final dose, while others, like Somerset, have 53% of people with a final dose.

THE QUESTION

Do COVID-19 vaccines contain fetal tissue?

THE SOURCES

• Nebraska Medicine's Dr. James Lawler, a practicing Catholic
• The Catholic Church
• NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information)
• County of Los Angeles Public Health

THE ANSWER

FALSE, but with context

WHAT WE FOUND

Doctor Lawler and LA County Public Health said the COVID-19 vaccines do not contain fetal cells or tissue.

"While fetal cell lines may be used to develop or manufacture COVID-19 vaccines, the vaccines themselves do not contain any aborted fetal cells."

"No, the COVID-19 vaccines do not contain any aborted fetal cells. However, fetal cell lines – cells grown in a laboratory-based on aborted fetal cells collected generations ago – were used in testing during research and development of the mRNA vaccines, and during production of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine," Lawler wrote. "Fetal cell lines are cells that grow in a laboratory. They descend from cells taken from abortions in the 1970s and 1980s. Current fetal cell lines are thousands of generations removed from the original fetal tissue. They do not contain any tissue from a fetus."

Lawler, NCBI, and LACPH said fetal cell lines were used in the research and development of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines and in the production and manufacturing of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine.

The Catholic Church weighed in on this moral issue, writing:

"In this sense, when ethically irreproachable Covid-19 vaccines are not available (e.g. in countries where vaccines without ethical problems are not made available to physicians and patients, or where their distribution is more difficult due to special storage and transport conditions, or when various types of vaccines are distributed in the same country but health authorities do not allow citizens to choose the vaccine with which to be inoculated) it is morally acceptable to receive Covid-19 vaccines that have used cell lines from aborted fetuses in their research and production process."

To see the list of ingredients in COVID-19 vaccines, click here.