The John-Henry Westen Show - June 18, 2021


Researcher： Vatican, US bishops uninterested in my moral alternative to COVID jab


Summary

In all of the search for a vaccine that is not ethically tainted, people have been wondering, where do we go? Catholics especially have been very concerned about the abortion-tainted nature of COVID vaccines, vaccines generally. Most of them are, in fact, abortiontainted. How do we get out of this? Would you believe it? We have found a researcher that has been working to make ethical replacements for these aborted baby cell lines, and yet has found a lack of interest, if you can believe it, from the Vatican and the U.S. bishops.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 In all of the search for a vaccine that is not ethically tainted, people have been wondering,
00:00:08.200 where do we go? Catholics especially have been very concerned about the abortion-tainted nature
00:00:13.960 of COVID vaccines. Not only COVID vaccines, vaccines generally. Most of them, in fact,
00:00:20.040 are abortion-tainted. How do we get out of this? Would you believe it? We have found a researcher
00:00:25.660 that has been working on a solution to make ethical replacements for these aborted baby cell lines
00:00:32.440 and yet has found a lack of interest, if you can believe it, from bishops and the Vatican.
00:00:39.180 We're going to talk to him now. Stay tuned.
00:00:55.660 Dr. Alan Moy, welcome to the John Henry Weston Show.
00:01:02.660 Thank you. Thank you for having me.
00:01:04.700 Let's begin, as we always do, with the sign of the cross. In the name of the Father, and of the Son,
00:01:09.580 and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. Now, Dr. Alan Moy, you are a researcher. You are a Catholic yourself.
00:01:18.660 Tell us what you've been doing.
00:01:19.760 I have two organizations. One is I'm the co-founder of a biotech company called Southern Engineering
00:01:25.500 Technologies. We're located here in Coralville, Iowa, and also I founded, at the same time,
00:01:33.940 the John Paul II Medical Research Institute, and that organization is a nonprofit, and its mission is
00:01:40.320 to develop cell lines and therapies that are consistent with the Catholic Church's teaching.
00:01:49.700 So we don't perform embryonic stem cell research. We develop technologies that avoid using aborted
00:01:58.220 fetal cell lines in medical research. So right now, the Institute, which I'll talk mostly about,
00:02:05.140 has been really focusing on developing alternative human cell lines that are ethical, consistent with
00:02:13.580 the Catholic Church's teaching, that can be used to replace the cell lines like the HEK-293 and the PERC-6,
00:02:22.660 which, as you have talked about in your podcast, and for Lifestyle News, are used in the production of
00:02:32.700 the current COVID-19 vaccines. But moreover, they have been used for decades for wider uses for
00:02:44.480 biologics, gene therapy, vaccines, and also for cell therapies. And this is a global multi-billion dollar
00:02:55.460 business for the pharmaceutical industry. And it's a major threat to the viability of the Catholic
00:03:03.140 healthcare system.
00:03:03.900 This is incredible to me. One of the things we talked about before we began was that you've been
00:03:09.920 doing this for years. You've tried to reach out to Bishop's Conference, to the Vatican even,
00:03:16.900 but you've found a lack of interest. That's incredible to me all by itself. But how about
00:03:25.120 now? Now that this is being foisted upon the whole world, now that Catholics everywhere, I think a lot
00:03:32.160 of Catholics for the very first time learned about aborted fetal cell lines, that they were in vaccines
00:03:37.720 at all, and yet you still found a kind of disinterest from the Vatican and from the U.S. bishops?
00:03:44.780 Yeah, I would say that's true. We have been speaking for years to the Vatican, communicating to
00:03:54.840 fairly high-level individuals there, also to USCCB, to Catholic hospitals, corporations,
00:04:04.480 and major Catholic foundations, trying to warn them about that this problem
00:04:12.360 is going to be extremely detrimental to the viability of Catholic healthcare. And even to
00:04:23.000 this day, there is very little interest in helping to produce what I call, what I think is important,
00:04:34.580 a pro-life biotechnology industry sector, which we need to definitively address longstanding problems in
00:04:44.640 the pharmaceutical industry. Let's get into this a little bit, because some of the terms you used are
00:04:48.780 probably unfamiliar to most. So you talked about, yes, aborted fetal cell lines like HEK-293, PERC-6,
00:04:57.940 and others, are used. They're used in vaccines, most vaccines, in fact. But you also mentioned
00:05:04.340 biologics. What are biologics? So biologics are protein drugs. So they are antibodies.
00:05:12.200 They can be enzymes. And for most of the biologics that are produced, they use various different cells. Most
00:05:24.440 commonly, they use animal mammalian cells out of hamsters. And about 50% of those are produced out of
00:05:33.320 that particular cell lines. So there's no ethical issue. But in about 20% to 25% of these biologics,
00:05:41.160 they are being produced using the HEK-293 cell. And so that is a challenge for a lot of Catholic
00:05:51.200 scientists who are in the scientific field. This is a problem for patients where their drug,
00:06:00.060 this particular biologic, is being produced for them. So if you're an assisted fibrosin patient
00:06:06.360 or a patient with hemophilia, you have to use a drug produced out of the HEK-293. If you are doing
00:06:16.840 any type of viral work where you need to produce viral particles in medical research, you are using
00:06:24.760 the HEK-293. So this is a problem for not just for patients, but for Catholic scientists and at all
00:06:36.440 levels where if you're doing any type of viral research, you cannot get away from the 293 cell
00:06:44.480 line. It's incredible. It's the same reason why one of my interviewees, researcher Pamela Acker left
00:06:49.820 because she couldn't do that ethically. She couldn't do that in conscience. And she had to
00:06:54.620 quit the research she was doing at Catholic University of America. So this is a vast problem.
00:07:01.460 Give us an idea of how vast the use of these aborted fetal cell lines are in medicine.
00:07:09.480 So the HEK-293 and the PERC-6 is used in about 20 to 30 percent in the production. So you're talking
00:07:19.880 about globally hundreds of billions of dollars. If you're talking about viral research, 100 percent of
00:07:31.260 all the viral research requires the 293. If you're doing gene therapy, 100 percent of gene therapy are using
00:07:43.000 the 293. If you're a patient who has a blood cancer and you're going to be considered for what are called
00:07:54.760 CAR-T therapies, these are specialized cell therapies that are used in the treatment of
00:08:00.320 hemopoietic cancers. 100 percent of those therapies are using the HEK-293 cell line.
00:08:07.700 So it is ubiquitous. It is pervasive. And so the COVID-19 has now educated Catholics about its existence.
00:08:21.300 But for years, you know, most Catholics weren't unaware what the 293 cell line was.
00:08:28.880 Exactly. In fact, I remember reporting on it already over a decade ago, and people honestly thought we were
00:08:34.540 fake news for suggesting it. Now, it has applications beyond even medicine. They're actually using aborted
00:08:44.540 fetal cell lines. I've heard in other products as well, at least in testing. Can you tell us a little
00:08:49.980 bit about that as well?
00:08:50.760 There is some thoughts that the 293 is used in cosmetic testing. The problem is it's very difficult
00:08:59.820 within some of these industries to know to what degree they're used in performing routine cosmetic
00:09:09.140 testing. So any type of, say, toxicology testing, the 293 could be used. The problem is it's very
00:09:20.660 difficult to track to the extent that the pharmaceutical industry are using the 293 because it's just not
00:09:28.340 well-published.
00:09:28.960 Okay. So we've got a ubiquitous, pervasive problem in that this is abortion tainted, and this is all
00:09:39.620 over the place. Now, you're proposing a solution to that. Go a little bit into that. Not overly
00:09:44.520 scientific, but give us a little taste of what you're doing that's different so that we can get to an
00:09:50.180 ethical cell line, human cell line.
00:09:52.920 What we have been working on for some time is to develop the technical foundation to replace these cell
00:10:02.600 lines. So first, there are actually good scientific reasons to replace the 293, notwithstanding the
00:10:15.060 moral issue. But the 293 has a lot of problems, one of which is not even human anymore. It's been so
00:10:26.280 mutated to the extent that it has 50% more chromosomes than a normal human cell. So the cell was originally
00:10:34.820 produced 50 years ago using methods to what we call immortalize. That is, to allow it to grow
00:10:44.500 indefinitely. And so after 50 years of being around and growing to a large extent, this cell line
00:10:54.760 has a lot of problems in terms of being able to provide reproducibility, reproducibility in producing
00:11:04.880 products, reproducibility in trying to reproduce research results. And so this is a problem that if you
00:11:14.200 talk to scientists, they will complain about the 293 cell line. And so there hasn't been a lot of
00:11:20.380 innovation over the last half century to replace the 293 cell line. So what we have done is, based on our
00:11:27.740 stem cell background, we're looking at a potential candidate cells, stem cells, that are readily available
00:11:37.060 from newborn deliveries that can be reproduced, that can be genetically engineered and modified so that
00:11:48.800 it, they can serve to replace the function of the 293 for a variety of different, or the same
00:11:56.560 application that the 293 cell line is offering. So what we have done is taken some stem cells from
00:12:06.100 postnatal cord blood and from placenta tissue. We have used some more up-to-date genetic methods
00:12:17.780 called CRISPR, where we have made very pinpoint targeted modifications so that these cells will
00:12:27.960 grow longer than their original parental cell lines, and they will grow faster,
00:12:34.600 so that they can be used for the same applications. And so we've done this at a, at a, a small
00:12:43.900 production level. And what we are, our company and our nonprofit are, are working towards is ultimately
00:12:54.880 to create a new operation that will produce large scale manufacturing of these cell lines,
00:13:03.720 that could be used for all the biomanufacturing products and medicines that are currently out
00:13:10.500 there. So where we can be using those for in-house for our own, uh, drug development, but also offer,
00:13:17.560 uh, these cell lines for other scientists and other pharmaceutical industries to hopefully they will adopt,
00:13:25.240 uh, not just because of the, because of the moral issue, but because they, uh, should offer scientific
00:13:33.640 advantages to the 293. Right. I find it hard to imagine that this is going on. The disinterest is
00:13:41.040 particularly disturbing because even if you take it that in 2005, the Vatican put out a document allowing
00:13:49.560 for this somehow with, you know, some look at remote material cooperation and the allowance of such for
00:13:57.220 that. Even there though, and in the 2008 document from the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith that
00:14:03.080 basically repeated it, they talk about demanding ethical alternatives and only using it as a last
00:14:10.980 resort. And yet here you are trying to make that ethical alternative and the bishops and the Vatican
00:14:19.320 have turned a blind eye or stopped their ears. Unbelievable. Um, tell people where they can get ahold of
00:14:27.840 you, where they can get ahold of your research, uh, and find out about what you're doing.
00:14:31.080 People can go to the, the John Paul II medical research Institute's website. Um, that is jp2mri.org
00:14:39.780 and they can learn what we're doing. Um, they can sign up on our, uh, newsletters. They, and, uh,
00:14:48.440 keep abreast on the research activities and also they can donate online through our website.
00:14:55.080 Great. Dr. Alan Moy, thank you for what you're doing for trying to get to an ethical alternative for us all.
00:15:00.680 Um, any parting word for us? I appreciate the opportunity to give us a platform to speak,
00:15:06.980 let Catholics know what's the nature of the problem. Uh, let them know that there are, uh,
00:15:12.500 solutions that Catholics are working on this, uh, to solve these problems. Um, and so I think there
00:15:18.820 is hope in the future, um, uh, to eventually address, uh, a problem that is vexing, um, the Catholic
00:15:29.080 religious market. Dr. Alan Moy, thanks for being with us on this episode of the John Henry Weston
00:15:33.360 show. Well, thank you. God bless you and God bless all of you. We'll see you next time.
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