Orthodox Reflections

Gayle Woloschak, PhD, DMin is Professor of Radiation Oncology at Northwestern University School of Medicine and past president of the Orthodox Theological Society in America. She has her own page on the Saint Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, where she is listed as a Professor of Bioethics. Dr. Woloschak recently wrote an article entitled Ready for the COVID Vaccine – An Orthodox Perspective on the site Public Orthodoxy.

Her goal in this endeavor could be summed up in this quote:

Despite these great efforts going into the vaccine, many Christians in the US and abroad have asserted that they will not take any COVID immunization. The justifications for this have ranged from questions about what can be “slipped into” the vaccine to concerns about sources of cells used to grow the vaccine to distrust of scientific data in general. Let us look at each of these arguments.

She is attempting to convince Christians, many of whom she acknowledges have reservations about a possible COVID-19 vaccine, to put those concerns aside and be willing to take the, as yet nonexistent, vaccine. We have multiple issues with her approach to this topic.

Above all, we want to emphasize that any discussion of vaccines must include, to be ethical, an endorsement of voluntary informed consent. Ethical physicians, like those who belong to Physicians for Informed Consent, understand that final decisions on medical treatments, including vaccinations, should be made by the patient or the patient’s parents in case of a minor:

Informed consent involves the basic human right to consent or refuse a medical treatment or procedure, including vaccination. The consent must be voluntary. If a patient, or parent of a patient, is coerced or threatened in any way into consenting for vaccination (including statutory or government mandated exclusion from school), then the “consent” obtained is actually coerced consent, not informed consent.

We view vaccines as pharmaceutical drugs and/or medicines, and we respect everyone’s right to the informed consent (or informed refusal) of drugs and/or medicines. Therefore, this organization is not ideologically pro-vaccine or anti-vaccine, but rather is pro-health, pro-ethics, and pro-informed consent in vaccination (like any other medical procedure).

The right to voluntary, informed consent or refusal of a medical procedure is a basic human right. While the medical establishment tends to downplay vaccine risks, they absolutely do exist and vary from vaccine to vaccine. It is estimated that less than 10 percent of injuries from adverse vaccine reactions are reported. Even so, the United States government has awarded over $4.1 billion to victims of vaccine injury through the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program since 1986. This program exists to shield vaccine makers and physicians from liability in the case of vaccine injury.

The right to voluntary, informed consent is recognized and supported by the Russian Orthodox Church as shown in this statement from the  Patriarchal Commission on the Family:

It is well known that, along with the risk of infectious diseases, there is also a risk of serious complications — even death — as a result of prophylactic vaccination. In such a situation, it is the patient himself who should make the choice. In the case of a child, the parents should make their choice in each particular case, taking into account the advice and recommendations of specialists, as well as other information. No one has the right to make this choice for them, even if guided by the child’s own well-informed understanding.

Even if the vaccine is generally safe and effective for most segments of the population, it may be dangerous for some based on their health condition – frail, elderly, diabetic, obese, autoimmune disorders or having immune systems which have not responded well to vaccines in the past.  The patient must be trusted with this decision, and a bioethicist like Dr. Woloschak should emphasize this basic, human right. This is particularly important when this right has been endorsed by the world’s largest Orthodox Christian body.

Further, Dr. Woloschak assumes that a vaccine is needed and that everyone should be willing to take it as a moral duty. As she says in the article:

How will this COVID vaccination controversy end? I hope we are able to develop a safe and effective vaccine, and if we do, I trust that the majority of the population will eventually be immunized with it in an effort to preserve and protect our lives and those of others. My prayer is that this vaccine will come about before too much more life is lost. We must learn to work together as a country and a global community. We must learn that vaccines (and masks and social distancing) protect not just ourselves but those around us. What will it take to make us care for the other if not a life-and-death situation like we have in COVID?

There are no facts presented in this article as to why a normal person should be willing to take a COVID-19 vaccine. She relies strictly on moral posturing. If COVID-19 were a really deadly disease, then the public would be begging for an effective vaccine. The major reason so much “resistance” exists is that many people (Christians included) simply don’t believe the risk is worth the potential reward. Here are some statistics that people believe who question the benefit of a COVID-19 vaccine:

• The estimated survival rate for Covid-19 is 99.6% or even higher. Among younger age groups there is almost no mortality at all.
• COVID-19 results in death in only 1 in 6,670,000 contacts among middle-age Americans. So far, there have been deaths equal to 0.00039% of the entire U.S. population with very few of these attributable to COVID-19 alone.
• The CDC has confirmed that only 6% of those listed as Covid-19 deaths died solely of the disease while the other 94% had an average of 2.6 additional conditions or causes of death such as heart disease, diabetes, and sepsis.
• The average age of a COVID-19 death is over 80 years of age in the United States. That is actually over the average life expectancy in this country.
• New York Times reported that 90% or more of the positives on the PCR test should really have been negative for coronavirus. That not only calls into question our current case numbers, but further casts doubt on published morbidity figures. Many of the deaths associated with COVID-19 were not based on a diagnosis, but instead were based on a positive test.
• Infection numbers indicate that 19 million people would have to be vaccinated (assuming complete effectiveness)  for 1 person to avoid death.
• While no COVID-19 vaccine has made it to market, prior experience with flu vaccines indicate about 1% of those vaccinated required hospitalization and as many as 1 in 200 of those die. It is quite possible, depending on personal factors, that the risk of adverse reaction to a vaccine can outweigh the risks of the disease.

If COVID-19 were filling mass graves, people would be clamoring for a vaccine and would not need prompting from Dr. Woloschak or anyone else. But since most cases are mild to asymptomatic, and there is much confusion over exactly how serious this disease is, many people are wary of a new vaccine which is being developed in “record time.” Their hesitation should be respected and patients allowed to make informed, rational decisions, free from compulsion or moral blackmail of the type in Dr. Woloschak’s article. If she believes that a rational person can be persuaded, based on the facts, then she needs to lay out that case. In this article, she has not done so.

An additional objection to a potential COVID-19 vaccine is the potential use of cells from previous abortions to cultivate vaccines:

The second argument is that many vaccines are derived from cells that came from two fetuses that were aborted in the 1960s (both abortions were performed to save the life of the mother). Only some vaccines come from these cells, and scientists use them because those particular vaccines will not grow in adult cells or even adult stem cells.[3] In these particular vaccine examples, the vaccine developers have agreed not to develop any new embryonic cells (from aborted fetuses) and to rely only on the fetal cells from these two abortions. The Roman Catholic Church permits, even encourages, the use of these vaccines because of their life-saving value. In other words, the Roman Catholic Church has laid aside its concerns about cellular origins (provided that no new cells will be developed for use in vaccine development) because of the life-saving value of the vaccines. Several Orthodox authorities have reaching a similar conclusion, even if some resist compulsory vaccination. It should also be noted that since the embryonic cells exist (and were generated from fetuses that died during life-saving procedures for the mothers), many medical ethicists have articulated the view that it is better to use them for the good of the public than to discard them and never use them again.

There are Orthodox and Catholic hierarchs and academics who do, indeed, feel that use of these fetal cell lines is justified. However, there are others that do not. There are faithful Roman Catholics and faithful Orthodox Christians on both sides of this issue. In acknowledgment of that fact, Roman Catholic Archbishop Fisher, Anglican Archbishop of Sydney Glenn Davies and Greek Orthodox Archbishop of Australia Makarios Griniezakis raised concerns after the Australian government confirmed it had struck an agreement with British pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca to secure at least 25 million doses of a vaccine making use of cells obtained from fetuses.

The Archbishop explained his reasoning for objecting this way, “What I did was join with other faith leaders to ask the Prime Minister to, in addition to the agreement made with AstraZeneca, pursue arrangements for other vaccines and not just limit themselves to one, which some in our community will find ethically concerning.”

These three Christian hierarchs may eventually support this vaccine, but they acknowledge that other Catholics, Orthodox, and Anglicans may find a vaccine produced in this manner to be objectionable. Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas said he “will refuse” a potential vaccine if it is made using tissue from “aborted children.” Dr. Woloschak seems to dismiss moral concerns in a more authoritative fashion than do the bishops. If any vaccine is purely voluntary, then no conflict over this need arise. Those who have no moral issue with the vaccine can partake of it. Those rejecting this vaccine would be free to keep their ethics intact. If another choice exists, then they can opt for that one instead. If no other option exists, then non-vaccination should be preserved as a choice.

Dr. Woloschak also somewhat disingenuously deals with “conspiracy theories:”

The first argument that the vaccine will have something “slipped into” it relies on an unsubstantiated “conspiracy theory.” In some versions of this, people maintain the disease itself is a hoax deployed by corrupt governments and media outlets for the purpose of scaring individuals into taking a vaccine that will allow these entities to monitor or control people as part of some maniacal plan. This conspiracy-based criticism is preposterous on many levels. Today’s microchips are too large to be implanted through a vaccine. Even if it was possible to create a microscopic chip, inserting it into an individual through vaccination would likely generate immune responses that would appear in the side-effects of the vaccine testing. For this conspiracy to be real, it would require a sinister conspiracy of global scale, implicating the entire medical, pharmaceutical, and political communities. Believing this sort of conspiracy not only reveals extreme paranoia, it reflects a great disrespect for and distrust of physicians who take an oath to protect the well-being of the person who is being treated.

Given the fact that she is generalizing, it is difficult to know precisely what “conspiracy theories” she is responding to. Apparently though, there was confusion over a statement Bill Gates made in an interview. Bill Gates said that eventually “we will have some digital certificates” which would be used to show who had been vaccinated or who had recovered from the virus. The EU has been studying a common vaccination card program since 2019.  “Immunity passports” could be an app, a card, a certificate, or they could be a digital “tatoo” such as MIT was working on:

MIT researchers have now developed a novel way to record a patient’s vaccination history: storing the data in a pattern of dye, invisible to the naked eye, that is delivered under the skin at the same time as the vaccine.

“In areas where paper vaccination cards are often lost or do not exist at all, and electronic databases are unheard of, this technology could enable the rapid and anonymous detection of patient vaccination history to ensure that every child is vaccinated,” says Kevin McHugh, a former MIT postdoc who is now an assistant professor of bioengineering at Rice University.

So while Dr. Woloschak is correct that there is no “microchip,” she is being entirely too dismissive of potential privacy and other concerns. This kind of Immunity Passport program could be required for work, travel, school, and more. That kind of power could easily be expanded and abused in a variety of ways. Further, most normal people do not relish the thought of being required to show their medical histories just to, for example, board an airplane or attend a public event.

And, yes, electronic immunization passports (smart phone apps for example) could very easily include tracking and tracing technology.

In addition, while “microchips” may be too big to inject, Harvard and other researchers are actively working on nanotechnology for drug delivery that would certainly be small enough:

DNA nanotechnological devices for therapeutic drug delivery

DNA nanostructures have future potential to be widely used to transport and present a variety of biologically active molecules such as drugs and immune-enhancing antigens and adjuvants to target cells and tissues in the human body.

Will any nanotechnology be deployed in any of the COVID-19 vaccines? Will any vaccines made with that technology be mandated by any governments or private entities (such as employers)? Either directly mandated, or indirectly mandated by requiring proof of vaccination to participate fully in society? Is this technology safe? What are the potential side effects? And if new technology like this is used, is it not all the more vital that participation be voluntary?

Shouldn’t an Orthodox leader like Dr. Woloschak be asking such questions to help the laity, rather than talking down to them?

Further, Dr. Woloschak downplayed vaccine risks:

A safe vaccine means that neither the disease for which the person is being vaccinated (in this case COVID) arises from the vaccine nor do any unwanted side effects (such as seizures or extensive allergic reactions). “Effective” means that the vaccine must actually protect against COVID, or at least against its consequences. In other words, the vaccine should prevent the viral infection in the first place, but if infection does happen, the vaccine would prevent it from being severe. In most vaccine trials in the US, scientists test and monitor thousands of people to establish that a vaccine is both safe and effective. The standards are rigorous, because unproven vaccines can have side-effects.

There are actually already major concerns with the testing protocols for vaccines in general, and whether they are sufficient to identify potential long-term adverse results. COVID-19 vaccines are being developed at an unprecedented pace. Therefore, there is great concern that even the current, potentially inadequate, testing protocols will be further truncated by skipping animal studies and going straight to human trials. There is a lot of money at stake and a lot of political and business pressure to succeed. Operation Warp speed is spending over $10 billion dollars to provide an estimated 300 million doses of a vaccine candidate by January 2021.

In addition, while physicians may be ethical in their treatment of patients, four of the vaccine producers involved in this effort are actually serial felons: Glaxo, Sanofi, Pfizer, and Merck. Vaccine activist Robert Kennedy Jr. outlined their criminal careers this way:

In the past 10 years, just in the last decade, those companies have paid 35 billion dollars in criminal penalties, damages, fines, for lying to doctors, for defrauding science, for falsifying science, for killing hundreds of thousands of Americans knowingly.

It requires a cognitive dissonance for people who understand the criminal corporate cultures of these four companies to believe that they’re doing this in every other product that they have, but they’re not doing it with vaccines.

We may trust our doctors, but can our doctors trust what the pharmaceutical companies are telling them?

Also of concern, the Moderna vaccine (and possibly others) is using new messenger RNA (mRNA) technology.  Inside your cells, mRNA activate DNA instructions, and act as a template to build a specific protein. The theory behind mRNA vaccines is that when you inject the mRNA, it will stimulate your own cells to manufacture the virus proteins. In this case, those proteins would mimic the proteins found in SARS-CoV-2. mRNA vaccines are designed to make your body produce its own viral protein, which your immune system would then mount a response to. No previous vaccines have had a patient’s own cells produce the viral proteins responsible for producing immunity.

What are the dangers of this new technology? Since there are no mRNA vaccines on the market, that is unknown but according to researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and Duke University:

mRNA vaccines have potential safety issues, including local and systemic inflammation and stimulation of auto-reactive antibodies and autoimmunity, as well as development of edema (swelling) and blood clots.

Potentially worse, since an mRNA vaccine would work on the genetic level, the effects could become integrated into DNA. What other, possibly inter-generational, problems could occur? We do not have answers to those questions.

Given the overall situation with rapid development, new technologies, political and business pressure – it should pay to err on the side of caution. Robert Kennedy described vaccines in a way that frames the stakes perfectly:

It’s a medical intervention that is being given to perfectly healthy people to prevent somebody else from getting sick. And it’s the only medicine that’s given to healthy people … and particularly to children who have a whole lifetime in front of them. So you would expect that we would want that particular intervention to have particularly rigorous guarantees that it’s safe.

Dr. Woloschak surely knows everything that has been written above. She cannot assert that a vaccine, which does not exist, will be safe and effective. She cannot simply assert, with no cost-benefit analysis, that any future vaccine of any type with any set of potential technologies will be beneficial for all Orthodox Christians. We are asking Dr. Woloschak to please endorse voluntary, informed consent for these potential vaccines, and all those in the future. And, further, to use her position to ask the tough, scientific questions needed to ensure that all people, Orthodox Christians included, can safely choose to take this vaccine if it is beneficial for them. Armed thus with knowledge, then Orthodox Christians will be ready for the COVID vaccine.

Nicholas and Irene – members of the Greek Archdiocese of America. Irene is a Clinical Educator with over 20 years of experience in health care