"One pertinent detail that I have not been able to discover is the exact manner in which the tissue was transferred from those who performed the abortions to those who initiated the research. Did the research teams make it known that they were seeking certain types of tissue in a certain condition and did this influence the time or manner of the relevant abortions? This is significant because it can determine the moral quality of the initial research work relative to the abortions. This can be seen clearly by considering the differences between ordinary abortions and abortions that might be performed with a view to using fetal tissue for therapeutic or research purposes. In some of these cases it could happen that the manner of the abortion would be dictated by the need for certain amounts of, say, neural tissue in a certain condition. And so it might become necessary for fetal tissue collection to take place while the fetus still lives, or, more accurately, it might be necessary that the manner of fetal tissue collection itself be the cause of fetal death. If some similar relationship obtained between the original abortionists and the researchers who developed the cell lines, these researchers would be morally implicated in the abortion. Nevertheless, judging those actions is not now the primary concern. Knowing the exact manner of the transfer of tissue would be significant for evaluating the moral character of the initial research uses of the fetal tissue, but it is not, I argue below, decisive for evaluating the use of the vaccines today."