Last week saw a minor victory for vaccination advocates amid the United States' ongoing measles outbreak: A Kentucky judge ruled against a lawsuit filed by 18-year-old Jerome Kunkel against the Northern Kentucky Health Department, claiming the department had discriminated against Kunkel by asking schools to exclude students not vaccinated for chicken pox from school and extracurricular activities. Kunkel argued that he had refused the vaccine on religious grounds because he is Catholic, and that the vaccine is derived from cells taken from the tissue of aborted human fetuses. The judge ruled the health department hadn't discriminated against Kunkel.
But the greater blow to Catholic anti-vaccination sentiment certainly came during the case, from the Pontifical Academy for Life, a Vatican-linked society on biomedicine and law whose members are appointed by the pope. Last month, as the Kunkels' suit gained news attention, the academy sent an updated consideration of the Catholic position on vaccination to the Catholic News Service, ruling unequivocally in favor of vaccination. In 2005, the academy had laid out its position on vaccination, which was mainly positive, but with serious moral reservations concerning vaccines derived from aborted human fetal tissue. The academy's complex discussion of moral harms versus practical benefits had led some Catholics, such as the Kunkel family, to decline certain immunizations.
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