PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Michael Kowalik
TI  - Ethics of vaccine refusal
AID  - 10.1136/medethics-2020-107026
DP  - 2021 Feb 26
TA  - Journal of Medical Ethics
PG  - medethics-2020-107026
4099  - http://jme.bmj.com/content/early/2021/10/20/medethics-2020-107026.short
4100  - http://jme.bmj.com/content/early/2021/10/20/medethics-2020-107026.full
AB  - Proponents of vaccine mandates typically claim that everyone who can be vaccinated has a moral or ethical obligation to do so for the sake of those who cannot be vaccinated, or in the interest of public health. I evaluate several previously undertheorised premises implicit to the ‘obligation to vaccinate’ type of arguments and show that the general conclusion is false: there is neither a moral obligation to vaccinate nor a sound ethical basis to mandate vaccination under any circumstances, even for hypothetical vaccines that are medically risk-free. Agent autonomy with respect to self-constitution has absolute normative priority over reduction or elimination of the associated risks to life. In practical terms, mandatory vaccination amounts to discrimination against healthy, innate biological characteristics, which goes against the established ethical norms and is also defeasible a priori.There are no data in this work.