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Current controversy
Compulsory medical intervention versus external constraint in pandemic control
  1. Thomas Douglas1,2,3,
  2. Lisa Forsberg1,4,5,
  3. Jonathan Pugh1,3
  1. 1 Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, Oxford University, Oxford, Oxfordshire, UK
  2. 2 Jesus College, Oxford, Oxfordshire, UK
  3. 3 Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford, Oxford, Oxfordshire, UK
  4. 4 Faculty of Law, Oxford University, Oxford, Oxfordshire, UK
  5. 5 Somerville College, Oxford, Oxfordshire, UK
  1. Correspondence to Dr Thomas Douglas, Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, Oxford University, Oxford OX1 1PT, Oxfordshire, UK; thomas.douglas{at}philosophy.ox.ac.uk

Abstract

Would compulsory treatment or vaccination for COVID-19 be justified? In England, there would be significant legal barriers to it. However, we offer a conditional ethical argument in favour of allowing compulsory treatment and vaccination, drawing on an ethical comparison with external constraints—such as quarantine, isolation and ‘lockdown’—that have already been authorised to control the pandemic in this jurisdiction. We argue that, if the permissive English approach to external constraints for COVID-19 has been justified, then there is a case for a similarly permissive approach to compulsory medical interventions.

  • public health ethics
  • law
  • ethics
  • vaccination
  • compulsion
  • mental health law
  • quarantine
  • public health law
  • isolation

Data availability statement

There are no data in this work.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to copy, redistribute, remix, transform and build upon this work for any purpose, provided the original work is properly cited, a link to the licence is given, and indication of whether changes were made. See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

https://doi.org/10.1136/medethics-2020-106435

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    Data availability statement

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    Footnotes

    • Contributors TD, LF and JP all contributed with ideas and to the drafting of the manuscript. All authors have agreed to the final version.

    • Funding TD is funded by the European Research Council (ProtMind 819757), the Uehiro Foundation on Ethics and Education, and the Wellcome Trust (100705/Z/12/Z). LF is funded by the British Academy (PF170028). JP is funded by the Uehiro Foundation on Ethics and Education.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

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