Michigan must tell Johnson & Johnson vaccine recipients that it was developed using stem cells

Residents of Michigan receiving the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine must be told it was developed using a stem cell line originating from an aborted human fetus, according to a state law passed by Republicans.

Related: 'Vaccine interlopers’ exploit chaotic policies to skip line in rural Tennessee

The requirement only applies to vaccinations funded by the federal coronavirus relief package, prompting accusations from Michigan Democrats that Republicans in control of the state legislature are politicizing the public health effort.

In remarks reported by the Detroit Free Press on Monday, Erika Geiss, a Democratic state senator, told lawmakers: “The pandemic was never supposed to be political.

“It’s disappointing but not surprising that you’re putting politics into this process in order to scare people from getting this extremely safe vaccine.”

The language requiring the notification is contained in a state bill dealing with the allocation of funds from the $1.9tn economic relief package signed into law by Joe Biden earlier this month.

Each state legislature is responsible for allocating such funds. In Michigan, while Republicans and Democrats became embroiled in wrangles over moves that would have weakened the power of the Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, which she ultimately vetoed, the “informed consent” provision slipped through almost unnoticed.

According to the Free Press, the bill states that anyone who receives a vaccine paid for through $110m appropriated in the relief legislation “shall be provided with information or informed if and in what manner the development of the vaccine utilized aborted fetal tissue or human embryonic stem cell derivation lines”.

The bill does not specify how the information will be transmitted to recipients, or who will be responsible for doing so. The state health department has updated its vaccine information website to clarify the process that Johnson & Johnson used.

“The Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine has been produced by growing the virus in fetal cells during vaccine development and manufacturing (using the PER.C6 line),” the website states.

“Even though fetal cells are used to grow the vaccine virus, vaccines do not contain these cells or pieces of DNA. The mRNA vaccines (those by Pfizer and Moderna) did not use a fetal cell line to produce or manufacture the vaccine.”

According to information from the Philadelphia children’s hospital, Johnson & Johnson used a retinal cell line, PER.C6, developed from a fetus electively aborted in 1985, in the development of its vaccine. The company won emergency use approval from the US government last month.

Catholic leaders and anti-abortion groups have raised obections to the use of fetal cells, a process common in vaccine development since the 1960s, including for chickenpox, rubella, hepatitis A and rabies.

Earlier this month the Michigan Catholic Conference said use of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was “morally problematic”.

Michigan’s vaccine database was reporting on Monday that 3.9 million residents had received shots, of which fewer than 75,000 were Johnson & Johnson.

Vaccine “denialism” has become popular among rightwing conspiracy theorists in recent weeks, gaining traction as QAnon and other extremist groups lost hope that Donald Trump’s election defeat would be overturned.