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Good reasons to vaccinate: mandatory or payment for risk?
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  • Published on: 1 January 2022
    Fifty years later: the significance of the Nuremberg Code

    Fifty years later: the significance of the Nuremberg Code
    E Shuster 1 Affiliations expand, PMID: 9358142 DOI: 10.1056/NEJM199711133372006
    Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA.
    ----
    https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10557112/

    The prosecution of doctors guilty of appalling human rights abuses at Nuremberg was achieved on the mistaken premise that the research community already had a code of conduct which, if applied, would have made such abuses impossible. In fact, not only was there no such code but when the 'Nuremberg Code' was published after the trial it continued to be ignored by many doctors for some thirty years afterwards. Indeed its central principle of informed consent has itself been eroded by subsequent international agreements on the ethics of medical research. This review shows that the mechanisms for approval of medical research which have now been promulgated in England and Wales, in practice, are applied on a very variable basis. Research in vulnerable groups unable to give fully informed consent such as children, prisoners and the incompetent elderly require the application of more rigorous standards of ethical control than those currently in operation. The use of vulnerable populations in the developing world and the application of international standards to them is also considered. A number of suggestions for improvements in current proce...

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    Conflict of Interest:
    None declared.
  • Published on: 13 January 2021
    Mandatory Vaccination by a philosopher?

    Dear Editor,
    having scanned the article by Julian S, philosopher in Oxford no less, in your journal's edition from Nov 2020 , I feel I need to comment: The mandate to prevent harm from others requires a reasonable amount of knowledge what the risk to self is. To use a narrative extract from an autoethnographic case study as example:
    ... what those people who experienced serious reaction to the covid vaccine are believed to have reacted to is an emulsifier called PEG -
    polyethylenglycol which sounds harmless enough. I was tested for allergies comprehensively by a very thorough specialist in Ger in 1996
    and that because of a series of very light reactions. I dare to assert that in the UK where I have lived for 20 years and worked in
    multidisciplinary health settings, the first thing people would know about such an allergy would be if they suffered an anaphylactic shock.
    Prior to that most people would only/at best have been prescribed cortisone.
    I believe here enters what M. Fricker, UK philosopher in NY, calls epistemic injustice inherent in a system of health inequalities as prevalent in the UK and an approach to behaviourism in clinical practice I politely call blinkered. - So far my initial reaction to the article.
    Coincidentally I then after I found the video interview where Dr Mary Ramsey for PHE declares the safety of vaccines, I felt prompted to do a little research and - surprise, surpri...

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    Conflict of Interest:
    None declared.
  • Published on: 7 November 2020
    Critique of Good Reasons to Vaccinate: Mandatory or Payment for Risk?

    The author asserts that coercion to vaccinate is ethically analogous to mandatory seatbelts or the use of physical force to remove a dangerous substance from a child. This is a false analogy. Wearing seatbelts while driving or removing a dangerous toy from a child does not alter anyone’s individual constitution, but vaccines do, permanently, and with largely unknown long-term consequences. Vaccination is an intimate, deeply invasive and permanent medical procedure, not just a behavioural preference. The same flawed comparison could be used to support mandatory abortion or coercive organ harvesting if these procedures were deemed in the interest of public health: a repugnant conclusion.

    Regarding seriousness of Covid-19 as a public health issue, the author ignores the fact that Covid-19 deaths are recorded in a non-standard way which precludes meaningful assessment of the true public health impact of this disease in comparison to other respiratory infections. Acording to the WHO https://www.who.int/classifications/icd/Guidelines_Cause_of_Death_COVID-... guidelines, “A death due to COVID-19 is defined for surveillance purposes as a death resulting from a clinically compatible illness [...] COVID-19 should be recorded on the medical certificate of cause of death for ALL decedents where the disease caused, or is assumed to have caused, or contributed to death.” The Office of Nat...

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    Conflict of Interest:
    None declared.

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