THE US drugs giant Johnson & Johnson, which markets itself as ‘a family company’, is reportedly planning to test its new coronavirus vaccine on pregnant women and infants.
Babies and small children have largely been unaffected by Covid-19, but Pfizer has announced plans to begin testing in children as young as five, and Oxford-AstraZeneca is to test it on children aged between six and 17.
Vaccination is a profitable business. The US government and the EU have each ordered 100million doses from Johnson & Johnson and the UK has ordered 30million.
Like AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson used exclusively cells of aborted babies in the development of their Covid vaccine.
Vaccinating babies who are highly unlikely to catch Covid might seem a dubious project since they cannot give consent. The aborted babies used in the development of the vaccine were not asked for their permission either. This all raises questions of ethics. However no doubt such questions will be left aside when parents who refuse to expose their babies to yet another vaccine are demonised.
