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The moral obligation to be vaccinated: utilitarianism, contractualism, and collective easy rescue

We argue that individuals who have access to vaccines and for whom vaccination is not medically contraindicated have a moral obligation to contribute to the realisation of herd immunity by being vaccinated. Contrary to what some have claimed, we argue that this individual moral obligation exists in...

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Autores principales: Giubilini, Alberto, Douglas, Thomas, Savulescu, Julian
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer Netherlands 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6267229/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29429063
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11019-018-9829-y
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author Giubilini, Alberto
Douglas, Thomas
Savulescu, Julian
author_facet Giubilini, Alberto
Douglas, Thomas
Savulescu, Julian
author_sort Giubilini, Alberto
collection PubMed
description We argue that individuals who have access to vaccines and for whom vaccination is not medically contraindicated have a moral obligation to contribute to the realisation of herd immunity by being vaccinated. Contrary to what some have claimed, we argue that this individual moral obligation exists in spite of the fact that each individual vaccination does not significantly affect vaccination coverage rates and therefore does not significantly contribute to herd immunity. Establishing the existence of a moral obligation to be vaccinated (both for adults and for children) despite the negligible contribution each vaccination can make to the realisation of herd immunity is important because such moral obligation would strengthen the justification for coercive vaccination policies. We show that two types of arguments—namely a utilitarian argument based on Parfit’s Principle of Group Beneficence and a contractualist argument—can ground an individual moral obligation to be vaccinated, in spite of the imperceptible contribution that any single vaccination makes to vaccine coverage rates. We add a further argument for a moral obligation to be vaccinated that does not require embracing problematic comprehensive moral theories such as utilitarianism or contractualism. The argument is based on a “duty of easy rescue” applied to collectives, which grounds a collective moral obligation to realise herd immunity, and on a principle of fairness in the distribution of the burdens that must be borne to realise herd immunity.
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spelling pubmed-62672292018-12-11 The moral obligation to be vaccinated: utilitarianism, contractualism, and collective easy rescue Giubilini, Alberto Douglas, Thomas Savulescu, Julian Med Health Care Philos Scientific Contribution We argue that individuals who have access to vaccines and for whom vaccination is not medically contraindicated have a moral obligation to contribute to the realisation of herd immunity by being vaccinated. Contrary to what some have claimed, we argue that this individual moral obligation exists in spite of the fact that each individual vaccination does not significantly affect vaccination coverage rates and therefore does not significantly contribute to herd immunity. Establishing the existence of a moral obligation to be vaccinated (both for adults and for children) despite the negligible contribution each vaccination can make to the realisation of herd immunity is important because such moral obligation would strengthen the justification for coercive vaccination policies. We show that two types of arguments—namely a utilitarian argument based on Parfit’s Principle of Group Beneficence and a contractualist argument—can ground an individual moral obligation to be vaccinated, in spite of the imperceptible contribution that any single vaccination makes to vaccine coverage rates. We add a further argument for a moral obligation to be vaccinated that does not require embracing problematic comprehensive moral theories such as utilitarianism or contractualism. The argument is based on a “duty of easy rescue” applied to collectives, which grounds a collective moral obligation to realise herd immunity, and on a principle of fairness in the distribution of the burdens that must be borne to realise herd immunity. Springer Netherlands 2018-02-10 2018 /pmc/articles/PMC6267229/ /pubmed/29429063 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11019-018-9829-y Text en © The Author(s) 2018 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
spellingShingle Scientific Contribution
Giubilini, Alberto
Douglas, Thomas
Savulescu, Julian
The moral obligation to be vaccinated: utilitarianism, contractualism, and collective easy rescue
title The moral obligation to be vaccinated: utilitarianism, contractualism, and collective easy rescue
title_full The moral obligation to be vaccinated: utilitarianism, contractualism, and collective easy rescue
title_fullStr The moral obligation to be vaccinated: utilitarianism, contractualism, and collective easy rescue
title_full_unstemmed The moral obligation to be vaccinated: utilitarianism, contractualism, and collective easy rescue
title_short The moral obligation to be vaccinated: utilitarianism, contractualism, and collective easy rescue
title_sort moral obligation to be vaccinated: utilitarianism, contractualism, and collective easy rescue
topic Scientific Contribution
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6267229/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29429063
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11019-018-9829-y
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