The country’s oldest Catholic university has been conducting research on aborted fetal cell lines for several years. What might surprise you is that this research has been sanctioned by several Catholic bioethicists and even Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, leader of the Archdiocese of Washington.
While the president of the United States struggles with questions of stem cells and cloning, Georgetown University Medical Center has become embroiled in a 25-year-old debate. Last summer, Debra Vinnedge, the founder of a Catholic organization in Florida, discovered that Georgetown University Medical Center has been in possession of normal cell lines derived from aborted fetuses for several years. She demanded that this research be stopped immediately, or that Georgetown sever its connection with the Catholic Church. But Georgetown says it hasn’t done anything wrong.
According to University bioethicist Rev. Kevin Fitzgerald, S.J., Georgetown’s research has saved thousands of lives and could save thousands more. But Vinnedge and her supporters don’t think anyone should be benefiting from what they see as murder, even if Georgetown didn’t have anything to do with it. Should Georgetown be allowed to continue its life-saving research? Or has it committed the Catholic sin of “cooperation with evil”?
If you didn’t know her name, you might think you already know her. As the head of a watchdog organization, Vinnedge spends much of her time keeping an eye on the government and other important organizations in this country. She is friendly and talkative, but resolute. Her mission is never far from her mind. Under her guidance, her small non-profit group has become an authority in its field in the past five years.
Her field, however, may not be so familiar. Vinnedge’s group, Children of God for Life, is a highly specialized branch of the anti-abortion movement in the United States. Her goal is to end medical research using cell lines derived from aborted fetal cells and prevent use of the products of that research.
Cell lines were developed in the 1950s, when scientists discovered that they could maintain mammalian cells outside the body. These aren’t stem cells, but normal cells induced to replicate in a Petri dish. By forcing these cells to reproduce continually, the scientists created a huge medium for experimentation. Today, mammalian cells, housed in cold storage repositories, can be distributed to researchers throughout the world.
Cell lines derived from aborted fetuses have been a staple of medical research for years. Research on fetal tissue has been legal in the United States for 11 years, and research using the derivative cell lines has been happening for much longer than that.
Today, almost all children in the United States are given the measles, mumps and rubella vaccines that are cultivated on aborted fetal cell lines. The recently revived smallpox vaccine and vaccines for chicken pox, Hepatitis A and rabies are also grown on these cell lines.
One of Vinnedge’s most extensive campaigns is an effort to stop the use of those vaccines. Children of God for Life hopes to provide “ethical” alternatives that were developed using monkey or chicken embryos. Vinnedge says such alternatives exist for many of these vaccines but are simply not produced in this country.
Vinnedge doesn’t use any fancy equipment to track the use of aborted fetal cell lines. At regular intervals, she runs simple Internet searches on various cell lines that she knows to be derived from aborted fetuses. Because research institutions typically publish their studies online, its easy for her to find out if they are using the offending cell lines.
Last July, during one of these routine searches, she discovered that a number of researchers at Georgetown were using aborted fetal cell lines in their studies. Once cell lines are removed from the repository, they are the responsibilty of the researcher, and these could have been obtained anywhere. But officials confirmed that Georgetown had four aborted fetal cell lines in its own repository, which houses more than 300.
The four cell lines were created between 25 and 40 years ago, according to Amy DeMaria, the Director of Communications at the Medical Center. WI-38 was developed from the lung tissue of a fetus aborted in Europe; this was the line used to create the measles, mumps and rubella vaccines that Vinnedge so detests. MRC-5 and IMR-90 were also derived from fetal lung tissue. The fourth line, HEK-293, was derived from the kidney tissue of an aborted embryo.
Vinnedge said she was shocked to find that a Catholic university was using these cell lines. She wrote a letter to McCarrick asking him to investigate the matter further. When no reply came, she pressed on with phone calls and more letters. She finally received a response in December.
“Most of the problems in your letter have been resolved and I am peaceful that the concerns expressed in your letter are no longer valid,” McCarrick wrote, according to Vinnedge. Satisfied with the response, Vinnedge replied to the Cardinal thanking him for his help. Several Catholic newspapers hailed his actions as a victory for the anti-abortion movement.
But in January, Vinnedge learned that their celebration was premature. DeMaria confirmed that while the cell lines had been removed from Georgetown’s repository, research using those cell lines had not been discontinued. What happened?
When McCarrick received Vinnedge’s letter, he promptly contacted the University. At the time, the Medical Center was unaware that these lines had been derived from the cells of aborted fetuses: The lines were not developed at Georgetown. When officials discovered the origins of the four lines in question, they turned the job over to the Center for Clinical Bioethics.
Founded in 1991, the Center, in addition to running an M.D./Ph.D. program in Bioethics, provides ethical advice to doctors, nurses and patients at Georgetown University Hospital, which the Virginia corporation MedStar has run since purchasing it in 2001. After the Cardinal’s inquiry, GUMC enlisted Fitzgerald, along with Director Carol Taylor, C.S.F.N., Ph.D., and Medical School Professor Dr. John Collins Harvey, to determine whether the research was licit.
Fitzgerald said, however, that he didn’t expect much of a controversy to develop. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops had affirmed in August 2001 that research on aborted fetal cell lines, when the researcher was not involved in the abortion itself, was permissible for a Catholic institution.
“Catholic moralists have concluded that individuals, when they have no practical alternative, may use vaccines to protect their health and the health of their loved ones without serious sin, even if the vaccines were cultured in fetal cells that ultimately came from an elective abortion,” a conference press release stated.
Indeed, according to Fitzgerald, the use of vaccines cultured on cells derived from aborted fetuses has been considered acceptable for at least seven years. “My first reaction was, ‘didn’t we deal with this already?’” Fitzgerald said. “I was not terribly concerned.”
Fitzgerald and his colleagues presented the problem to experts at the University and several Catholic organizations in the country, including the National Catholic Bioethics Center and the Catholic Health Association. Meanwhile, McCarrick was working with ethicists as well.
By December, both McCarrick and the Medical Center had determined that the use of these cell lines for research was in accordance with Catholic teaching. “While using such cell lines would not be our preference, Catholic medical centers are morally justified in doing so under the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services, as well as widely accepted Catholic moral theology,” DeMaria said.
Nevertheless, four researchers (of 18 who were using the cell lines) volunteered to modify their studies and discontinue the use of the aborted fetal cell lines. Fitzgerald said that this was not to remedy something illicit, but “to do the best that we can do.”
The University acknowledges that the use of cell lines derived from aborted fetuses is not the most desirable situation; they would rather have no connection with abortion at all. In accordance with this desire, the University took the further step of removing the cell lines from the repository. However, Fitzgerald says that the life-saving results of the research outweigh the downsides of an indirect connection to what the Church sees as an evil act.
So the research has been allowed to continue, with McCarrick’s approval. Some still question whether he made the right decision.
Vinnedge says that Catholic moral theology is clear on the issue of aborted fetal cell research, but most theologians disagree. The disparity lies to some extent in the biological nature of these cell lines.
Cell lines are cultures of cells that are able to continue reproducing outside the body indefinitely. Normal cells can only reproduce a certain number of times before they die in a process called cell senescence.
In some cells, however, this process malfunctions. Inside a human body, this out-of-control reproduction produces a tumor. But in a Petri dish, this gives researchers an unlimited supply of cells that maybe abnormal but are still human. The first cell culture was developed from cervical cancer tissue removed from a woman named Henrietta Lacks in Baltimore in 1951.
In the 1960s, researchers determined they could infect normal human cells with viruses that interfere with senescence, a process called immortalization. These cells could therefore continue to reproduce. Although they had been changed from their original form, and those mutations were initially unknown, these cells presented an enormous opportunity for research on the human cell.
The Catholic Church has not spoken specifically on the issue of fetal cell lines. However, the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services are explicit on the issue of research on fetal tissues. Directive 66 states, “Catholic health care institutions should not make use of human tissue obtained by direct abortions even for research and therapeutic purposes.”
According to the National Catholic Bioethics Center, the intention of Directive 66 is to prevent researchers from directly collaborating with the abortion doctor or arranging for an abortion to take place in order to obtain tissue. Neither of those events took place at Georgetown; the researchers didn’t even know they were working with aborted fetal cell lines.
Moreover, Fitzgerald says these aren’t fetal tissues. “We are not using cells from aborted fetuses and we are not using tissue from aborted fetuses, we are using cell lines,” he said.
He argues that the process cells must go through to be able to live outside a body is so distorting that by the time they are ready for use, they hardly resemble human cells. “Any time you have a cell line that is reproducing indefinitely, there has been some kind of genetic change,” Georgetown Biology Professor Ellen Henderson confirmed.
Since the research is not specifically forbidden by canon law, theologians must ask whether it constitutes a violation of any of the tenets of Catholicism. Opponents allege that using these lines constitutes “cooperation with evil” because it implicitly condones the original abortion. They also argue that it encourages future abortions by suggesting to mothers that some good can come out of the act.
Scientists say that no new fetal cells are needed, but Vinnedge believes that this is not true. “Over the time that these cell lines are replicated, they become unstable,” she said.
But according to Henderson, cells that were successfully transformed would never need to be replaced. “Once you get these permanent cell lines, they really are stable and they can pretty much grow indefinitely,” she said.
Fitzgerald also emphasized that because these lines already exist, they are stable and they are useful for all kinds of research, scientists do not need to make more. “I don’t see much of a market for reinventing the wheel,” he said. He noted that out of the hundreds of countries in the world, only one has created a new fetal cell line in recent years. The Dutch company Crucell has created PER.C6, which has been used in the creation of new vaccines, antibodies and gene therapies.
Joseph Giganti, the Director of Media and Government Relations at the American Life League, a Catholic organization that opposes the research at GUMC, doesn’t accept Fitzgerald’s argument. But he suggested that even if these cell lines were technically sanctioned by the church, there might be benefits to ending their use.
“If we do things the right way, God will honor that we tried to do that, and our research will be more fruitful,” he said. The president of the American Life League sits on the Board of Directors of Children of God for Life.
Whether this research encourages future abortions seems to be a question of biology. The question of cooperation is harder to answer. Rev. Kevin Wildes, S.J. says the easiest way to look at the problem, and the way it has traditionally be dealt with, is in terms of a spatial metaphor: Whether or not one is cooperating with evil has to do with how close to the evil act one is.
For Giganti, using these cells is no different from using Nazi research on hypothermia. “To perpetrate that information and use that kind of science is to perpetrate that evil,” he said. Vinnedge is also skeptical of the spatial argument. “Time doesn’t diminish sin,” she said. She noted that children continue to be born every day with the original sin of Adam and Eve.
Wildes isn’t so sure. “These acts happened years and years ago,” he said. “The evil act happened independently. We weren’t cooperating with it in any way.” Wildes holds that there is a difference between cooperating with evil and benefiting from it, that one can use the products of an evil act for a greater good while still having remorse that the act itself occurred.
The National Catholic Bioethics Center supported Wildes in a statement on the controversy at Georgetown. “Simply knowing the origin of the lines does not make the researcher complicit in the evil act originially committed,” the statement reads. Because the researchers were not directly involved in the abortion of the fetus, moral theology does not condemn their research, which saves millions yearly.
The National Catholic Bioethics Center likens ending the research at Georgetown to forbidding anti-abortion groups from using pictures of aborted fetuses in their presentations, because those pictures required an evil act to occur in order to exist.
Moreover, Henderson said, in many cases no alternatives to these cell lines exist. Of the 18 researchers using these lines at Georgetown, only four were able to transition to other lines without impairing their research. “Once you have a cell line and you’ve identified the mutations, you don’t want to go around changing it,” Henderson said.
Much of this research is devoted to the creation of life-saving technologies. Fitzgerald and his colleagues have determined that the enormous benefits from continuing this research outweigh the potential evil of what he says is at most “remote material cooperation.”
These arguments still don’t convince Giganti. “It’s very clearly a very Machiavellian argument,” he said. “That is not a kind of morality that has been considered acceptable.”
Whether or not this research constitutes cooperation with evil, theologians have one more issue to address. Donum Vitae (The Gift of Life) states, ”… the moral requirements must be safeguarded, that they be no complicity in deliberate abortion and that the risk of scandal be avoided.”
According to Wildes, the possibility of scandal is one that defines many Church positions. The fear is that although an act may be formally licit, Catholics not involved in the situation might misinterpret it. This confusion might lead them to condone or even participate in evil acts.
Fitzgerald feels that this issue was resolved by the removal of the cell lines from the repository. “This research is seen as justified, but we don’t want to give the impression that we are indifferent to the fact that abortion has become implicated,” he said.
However, Giganti feels that the risk still exists. “We wish to see any Catholic University pave the way on how moral, licit research can be done,” he said. He called upon Georgetown to do more. “Stop using this tissue and come out saying that you are doing it, to prove that it can be done. We can find these solutions and we can do things the right way,” he said.
The story may be over for Georgetown, but Vinnedge isn’t ready to give up. When she realized that the research was continuing at Georgetown, she said, she was outraged. (cosmolex.com) “I found out the truth at the end of January from the Washington Post,” she said with some resentment. “It was a complete surprise to me.”
Since January, Vinnedge has been collecting signatures on a petition to the Cardinal. “We the undersigned respectfully request that you immediately put an end to the research using aborted fetal cell lines at Georgetown University or take action to remove its Catholic identity,” the petition reads. She says she currently has over 2500 signatures, and she plans to submit the document to the Cardinal within the next 30 days.
That isn’t all. Vinnedge is convinced that this research is in violation of Catholic teachings, and she is convinced that the Pope will agree with her.
According to Ladislas Orsy, S.J., a canon lawyer and Visiting Professor at the Law Center, Vinnedge cannot appeal the Cardinal’s decision. Appealing, he said, would require a court decision, which did not take place here. “It is what I call an administrative matter,” he said. “The Cardinal gives his best judgment without a formal legal investigation.”
Orsy said that the most Vinnedge can do at this point is write a letter of complaint to the Vatican and request further examination. However, the Vatican is under no responsibility to oblige her request. And although he cautioned that he is familiar with only the most basic facts of this case, he thinks it is extremely unlikely that the Vatican will respond. “They will not move. The explanation that the University offered is satisfactory and there is nothing wrong in it,” he said. “They are busy people there, too.”
If the Pope agrees with the Cardinal, Vinnedge will have no other recourse. But she is quite confident, despite the fact that, according to Fitzgerald, the vast majority of Catholic moral theologians say this research is licit. She expects the problem to be solved within months. “Pope John Paul II has already spoken about this,” she said. “It would be shocking if it went any other way.”
