quote:

In Conway, Ark., Matt Troup, CEO of Conway Regional Health System, has granted 45 religious exemptions to employees who refused to get a COVID-19 vaccine. Their objections were largely based on the employees' beliefs that vaccines that used fetal cells in research, testing or production should not be put in their bodies.

(Public health officials say fetal cell lines developed decades ago in the laboratory were used to develop and test the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines — a common practice in pharmaceutical research. Other fetal cell lines are being used in the production of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. But the vaccines themselves do not contain any fetal cells.)

Before granting the religious exemptions, Troup sent the employees a list of 28 commonly used medicines that also used fetal cells in their research, testing or development — a list that includes Tylenol, Motrin, Tums, Ex-Lax and other medicine cabinet staples. He asked employees to attest to not be using any of those medicines.