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- Published on: 22 May 2024
- Published on: 22 May 2024Author’s Response
I thank the authors for critically engaging with my paper “Ethics of vaccine refusal”. http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/medethics-2020-107026
I agree that personal autonomy does not of itself invalidate medical mandates.
I note that I do not conclude that vaccine mandates are wrong just because they violate body autonomy of vaccine refusers. Rather, ‘mandatory vaccination, immunity passports, or any other form of discrimination on the basis of the vaccination status are defeasible not because they limit basic freedoms and rights but because they discriminate against (and thus devalue) the innate constitution of all human beings.’ Moreover, the premise that vaccine mandates are justified by the value of human autonomy is logically inconsistent: ‘We must, first of all, value our kind ’as it is’ in order to bestow worth on what we ‘ought to become’, and to pursue any ontological transformation by devaluing the innate constitution of other members of the kind would, paradoxically, negate the value of our own judgement.’ https://blogs.bmj.com/medical-ethics/2021/03/01/discrimination-on-the-ba...
It seems the authors interpret the healthy, innate human constitution that includes our immune system - an act of nature that determines our objective identity - as an act of socia...
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None declared.