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Justice Clarence Thomas repeated a false claim on Thursday that "all available COVID-19 vaccines" were developed using cell lines from "aborted children."
On Thursday, the Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 vote to leave New York's vaccine mandate for healthcare workers in place after petitioners challenged the mandate over its lack of a religious exemption.
In his dissenting opinion, Thomas wrote that the petitioners — which included 16 healthcare workers from the state — "object on religious grounds to all available COVID-19 vaccines because they were developed using cell lines derived from aborted children," citing the petitioners' complaint in his dissent.
While it is true that fetal cell lines were crucial for developing and testing the efficacy of some of the vaccines, not all of them required the use of those cells throughout the development.
In the widely available Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines, for example, "abortion-derived cells" were not used in the development or production stages of the two mRNA vaccines, according to the Charlotte Lozier Institute, the research arm of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. Some...
Misinformation about hantavirus has run rampant on social media, with online users reviving viral COVID-19 theories to spread fake news about the outbreak. From conspiracy theories claiming that...