‘Latin American Christian communities aren’t the only religious groups to fall victim to misleading claims or outright misinformation about the pandemic. In June, Spanish cardinal Antonio Cañizares Llovera declared attempts to find a vaccine the “work of the devil” that would involve “aborted fetuses” in a filmed Mass shared around the world. Church leaders in Australia raised similar concerns recently, apparently unaware that the practice of using cell lines grown from a fetus in 1972 has been commonplace in vaccine development for decades.
‘In India, Hindu religious and political leaders have promoted cow urine as a cure for Covid-19, inspired by the sacred status of cows in Hinduism, and declared the coronavirus would leave India once a controversial temple was completed. Claims that a polio vaccine contained pork products or toxic ingredients, often circulated by Muslim clerics, have damaged the fight against the disease in Muslim-majority Pakistan.’
Read here (Nieman Lab, Sept 2, 2020)
