Philosophical Problems around Vaccination

[Deborah]

I've been wondering.

Is vaccination actually something which can be philosophically justified, or is it a fundamentally morally flawed program, at least on a population level?

I'm going to lay out an imaginary scenario.

Somewhere, on a little island, someone determines that the overall health and success of the society of people who live there will be improved if all children are forced to undergo a certain invasive process. Unfortunately, some children will die as a result, some will be permanently injured, but for the society as a whole, most people will end up healthier.

Is this justifiable?

Most of the debates around vaccination focus on whether it works or not, to prevent various diseases. There are also arguments about the safety of particular vaccines. There are debates about choice and freedom and bodily integrity.

I want to focus this thread on two aspects.

Is it justifiable to sacrifice some individuals for the good of the whole society?

How far can public health programs go to protect society in general? For example, is quarantine okay? What about invading privacy by insisting on testing people for diseases, or tracking down people who are spreading venereal disease? Vaccination is one of the most invasive, if not the most invasive, public health procedure, since it penetrates the skin and changes the functioning of a person's body. Does society have a right to force something like this on the individual?

Contrast this with helmet laws, or seatbelt laws, or traffic lights. Consider also laws against dumping sewage into rivers, or even laws against leaving dog poop on the sidewalk. All of these laws invade our freedom, none break the skin...

[ma2two]

No, it's not morally justifiable, even if it does make the population healthier. And it's insanity if it makes the population less healthy. I don't see how anyone can consider the general population of today's kids to be healthy.

[poppan]

I like this question and I'm interested in the discussion. However, I wonder if it would be more fair to define the "healthier society as a whole" as fewer lives lost and disabilities/injuries sustained than the lives and disabilities sustained through vaccination. Is it justifiable to kill ten people to save a hundred. I'm not saying this is the case, but I am pressure testing. Does the answer depend on the numbers involved on each side?

I've been turning this over and over in my head recently, specifically with regard to German measles. By all accounts it is an incredibly mild disease with few complications, and the danger is only to unborn children in the stomachs of women who managed to not get rubella while growing up. Further, the danger is only to the extent that the vaccine fails in this group of women. It seems ridiculous to me that we vaccinate an entire population (at what cost?) to protect a very very few...

[Deborah]

That is an ongoing philosophical debate, whether it is a greater good if more lives are saved.

Here is another hypothetical example, which lines up more with the "green our vaccines" approach: baby car seats have been demonstrated to save lives, no doubt about it. however, the regulators came up with a "one size fits all" design for car seats. Really tiny babies have an unfortunately raised rate of death in these seats, even without accidents, and large babies do too. But they are totally safe and lifesaving for babies in the middle range, unless they happen to have a few odd physical problems. The car seat manufacturers argue that it would be too expensive to customize the seats for the full-range of babies and certainly no baby can be left out of a car seat, plus the deaths and injuries are really quite rare (although only a few cases are currently reported). And so on.

Any philosophy majors here who could give us a rundown on the various sides of this argument presented by moral philosophers throughout the ages?

[fruitfulmomma]

I don't believe it is justifiable. I believe individuals may choose to sacrifice *themselves* for the good of others. (e.g. firefighters risk their own lives to save the lives of those in danger or a person may risk his life to ward off an attacker with a gun and die.) No one has the right to sacrifice or risk someone else's life for the good of others.

Quarantine is actually the only public health care policy I agree with. And by this I mean, not individuals who refuse to be vaccinated or whatever, but that individuals who are known to have a communicable disease should be restrained from spreading that to others and if they refuse to do so on their own, I do believe that government may step in and enforce it. A proper quarantine would also ensure that the patient is treated with the utmost care as a human being and given proper treatment, food, whatever it is they need to live and heal.

We are reading a book on Paul Revere whose daughter came down ill with something, don't remember exactly what it was, and he was supposed to send her to the sick house which he refused to do because he knew all the children there were dying. Instead he voluntarily quarantined his whole family, including having sentry posted at the front door to keep people from going in and out for a month, and the illness passed.

[ammiga]

I find your first question to be an interesting one.

"Is it justifiable to sacrifice some individuals for the good of the whole society?"

This specific argument is so interesting to me, because the vast majority of people will get through the VADs without any lasting problems. The good of the whole society isn't really in jeopardy. There may be some short or long term issues, but likely not. And even when there are, they don't tend to be of a life threatening nature (or even truly life altering).

When that is pointed out to someone who is using that line of thinking, the conversation quickly turns to "we have to protect the small amount of people who can't protect themselves". To me, all children fall into this category. Yes, there are some who have no immune system and may not survive the VAD. But all children need to be protected, and who are we to say "I'm willing to risk this child to protect that one". Even if only a "small" percentage of healthy children end up vaccine damaged, what makes the child with immune issues more important to protect than those without? One is still a guaranteed exposure to a risk, while the other is only a possibility.

[amnesiac]

Please be mindful of our UA & forum guidelines in this thread. We are not interested in hosting any discussion regarding merits of mandatory vaccination and any such posts will be removed.

Please also note that discussion should remain focused on the issues as they pertain to vaccination. If you would like to further explore other issues pertaining to disease, such as illnesses themselves or non-vaccine control measures, please do so in our Health & Healing forum.

[karika]

This part

"Is it justifiable to sacrifice some individuals for the good of the whole society?"


IMO the thinking is just the opposite. The good of the whole society is served by halting all vaccines. They are harming upwards of 80% of the people that receive them in some way. Most people do not even realize they are damaged. But there was a cellular change. There was a mini stroke in their brain at the time of shot. There are lasting effects on a cellular and DNA level from the practice. More people are damaged by the vaccination program than not.

If the vaccination program were halted, we would truly be living the statement above. Some people might die (those with weak immune systems that do not eat organic and healthy, babies that are not breastfed on demand), but then at least 80% of the population won't have been made a little to a lot sick.

I can't write more now, but I will check in later

[Deborah]

I'm trying to take a step back from the question of whether the vaccines work or not and consider the morality of asking people to take on a risk (however large or small) for the good of society as a whole.

Negative reactions to vaccines = worthwhile for the good of society

How does this differ from dropping the occasional person into a volcano to appease the gods? Obviously, the various societies that did human sacrifice believed that it worked really well or they wouldn't have kept on with the procedure. So the claim that vaccination is based on good science and human sacrifice was based on superstition is sort of irrelevant...

because the problem is the justification of sacrificing a few for the good of the group--

which is a philosophical question, not a scientific question. And I think scientists would actually agree on this one. There is nothing in science which "proves" that it is a good idea to sacrifice individuals for the group. Not in their purview. The most science can do is come up with numbers on how many are facing the chop. And how many may be benefiting. Whether the exchange is moral is not their problem.

[poppan]

Originally Posted by fruitfulmomma

I don't believe it is justifiable. I believe individuals may choose to sacrifice *themselves* for the good of others.

I agree with this.

[caned & able]

Excellent question.

What I find fundamentally baffling about the entire vaccine debate, whether or not vaccines are at all effective, is the fact that the medical establishment has gone to every state legislature in the fifty states to de facto force all parents to vaccinate their school age children whereas de jure this is not true, and the educational establishment is complicit in doing this.

Furthermore, informed consent for vaccination is not a requirement since parents tend to trust the judgement of the trained professional to make the decision to vaccinated their child on an arbritrary schedule. This reminds me of the weight charts used to judge baby's growth rates which were based on Irish children in the 19th century in Boston. These growth charts and their dubious information and expectations are extrapolated to the rest of humanity regardless of race, diet, or other conditions.

[Deborah]

Thank you for the responses.

I want to add one more point on the philosophical problem I'm trying to highlight.

Let us suppose that vaccine injuries and deaths really are "1 in a million" while disease injuries and deaths would be as high as the CDC claims. (note, I don't agree, IRL, with either of these suppositions).

But even if vaccines were really saving 33,000 lives a year at the cost of 4 lives, the philosophical/moral question doesn't go away. It doesn't matter how many lives are being saved or how many are injured. The question shouldn't be about numbers. It is purely and simply about the right of society to injure some BECAUSE of the claim that others are being protected thereby.

It just occurred to me that this is usually presented as though the problem were the opposite one.

Do parents have the right to abstain from a medical intervention if this MIGHT cause injury to other people's children or their own? Thereby making the medical intervention the default position and abstaining from the intervention the moral problem.

Interesting to flip it, isn't it?

[littlest birds]

The natural course of illnesses including "VPD" and the new ones they are always trying to make vaccines for is not human-produced. The choice to vaccinate is an intervention by humans and is human-produced. So I think that this comes down to fundamental beliefs about whether we should adapt to what nature gives us or alter what nature gives us (if we can).

I think that it could be philosophically justified if the philosopher in question used certain underlying moral assumptions, but could not be justified using others. In other words, philosophers definitely disagree about that kind of thing as well.

Who can make choices that interfere with others' "natural state"? Parents for children? Experts for the general population? Governments for the masses? Elders for the younger adult members of the group or tribe?

Numbers would NOT make a difference in terms of morals. Has anyone ever read Ursula LeGuin's story Omelas? It is about a wonderful utopia that it turns out owes its existence to the continued suffering of exactly one person. Striking and simple--I recommend it.

Vaccination is not simple. But I think it fails all tests when it comes to our society's basic ideas about freedom and the rights of the individual. Maybe it is a tossup on numbers--but because the benefits are not one-sided that leaves me with my own philosophy of nonintervention in nature when the intervention does substantial damage. Benefits of vax are actually unknown, because there is no modern society that has developed side-by-side with OTHER legitimate approaches to these diseases. The past is a pitiful measuring standard. Mainstream science is not admitting certain facts such as these. I think it has to come down to freedom of choice in a situation where different people weigh out the morals differently. One thing I do NOT believe is that "herd immunity" is valuable enough to justify any intrusion on individual choice.

IMO we are gradually breaking free of a lot of propaganda-controlled groupthink on this matter. Overall it has been swallowed whole for a few generations. Discussion of risk is first and foremost NOT HONEST. Certain high-status groups have made decisions for the rest of us and then controlled what we believe. Self-education and questioning have become a massive force during the past few decades. And perhaps the emperor wears no clothes.

Okay I'm rambling and off topic. I'll sign off. Cheers!

[Deborah]

littlest birds,
not rambling and not OT, thank you for your interesting thoughts!

[poppan]

Thank you for your post, littlest birds. This thread is helping me in a very unexpected way (so thanks to Deborah for starting it too). I have been exercising my right to a philosophical exemption not because I have a "philosophical" objection to vaccination but because I didn't want to vax and didn't qualify for an exemption on medical or religious grounds. So I took the third door--the philosophical exemption. Had anyone actually asked me why I was philosophically opposed, I wouldn't have been able to answer the question. I don't even know what it means to be philosophically opposed to something.

But now I have an answer. I'm philosophically opposed not because I think my kids are less likely to get and be harmed by a VPD than by the vaccine -- that's just my reason for not vaxing. I'm philosophically opposed because I don't think it's fair to cause harm to some people in order to prevent harm to others. You are so right. Omelas helped me to see it much more clearly (I was able to google and read it online this morning).

[Deborah]

poppan wrote:

I'm philosophically opposed because I don't think it's fair to cause harm to some people in order to prevent harm to others.

I think we are getting somewhere. The difference is between the active and the passive.

Vaccination is active, it invades the body on purpose.

If someone infected himself with a disease and then went running around spreading it as widely as possible, that would be morally wrong. To abstain from vaccination is not morally wrong, because there is no more than a "chance" that abstention from vaccination will result in disease and considerably less than a "chance" that if it does result in illness that the illness will be spread. And certainly there isn't an intention to spread disease when someone abstains from vaccination. I've never encountered a non-vaccinating family that was planning to spread illness in the community.

With, of course, the exception of the chickenpox party. My grandchildren recently attended one and both of them found it very interesting and were intrigued that they might come down with chickenpox. Their mother is planning to be careful about their social life once they become infectious (one of the advantages of a planned exposure) to avoid spreading it around to someone who doesn't want it. I'm hoping for the exposure to boost my system and reduce the possibility of coming down with shingles.

Returning to the topic, abstention from vaccination does not equal an intention or desire to spread disease. Therefore, in my view, it is not equivalent to vaccination, which is an invasive procedure designed to modify the body of the recipient. In one case there is a clear intention, in the other a simple desire to opt out of an invasive procedure.

Am I missing something?

[poppan]

I hadn't thought about that you could read my statement both ways -- is this what you're saying?

the way I meant it:
it's not fair to cause vaccine injuries and deaths in order to prevent injuries and deaths from "VPDs" (it's the "preventable" that I'm putting in quotes--because if vaccines truly prevented 100% then we wouldn't be having this discussion).

and the other way:
it's not fair for cause VPD-related injuries and deaths in order to prevent vaccine injuries and deaths.

LOL help me a little because I think I'm not really getting what you're saying.

[poppan]

Re-reading... I think I agree on the active vs passive. It is the natural state of things to have disease. By vaxing we are trying to change the conditions we were given. But we know it causes harm to some people who receive the vax. Therefore, to me, vaxing should be voluntary and an informed choice and it would not be fair to force, scare or trick anyone into it.

It is hard for me to read it the other way around. I think I'm too grounded in where we're starting from--with disease as the default--and I'm mentally having a hard time getting out of that place.

[mamaofthree]

this is an amazing discussion. i can't contribute right now, just wanted to subscribe.

h

[EdnaMarie]

Somewhere, on a little island, someone determines that the overall health and success of the society of people who live there will be improved if all children are forced to undergo a certain invasive process. Unfortunately, some children will die as a result, some will be permanently injured, but for the society as a whole, most people will end up healthier.

Is this justifiable?

If each individual takes a risk, but harm for that individual is not certain (i.e. it's a question of probability, not selection of certain individuals), then yes.

Society has the right to ask everybody to take a small risk (infinitesimal chance of big problem, medium chance of very small problem) in order to provide a certain medium benefit to almost everyone and huge benefit to many others.

Ultimately this saves more lives.

I don't agree that the diseases are the "natural" default. Most VPDs are the result of agriculture and urbanization (where they grew to live in a kind of parasitic relationship with humans). Incidentally, urbanization also provided some benefit to many, a large benefit to few, while causing harm to others.