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An Argument for Compulsory Vaccination: The Taxation Analogy
I argue that there are significant moral reasons in addition to harm prevention for making vaccination against certain common infectious diseases compulsory. My argument is based on an analogy between vaccine refusal and tax evasion. First, I discuss some of the arguments for compulsory vaccination...
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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John Wiley and Sons Inc.
2019
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7386912/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32742053 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/japp.12400 |
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author | Giubilini, Alberto |
author_facet | Giubilini, Alberto |
author_sort | Giubilini, Alberto |
collection | PubMed |
description | I argue that there are significant moral reasons in addition to harm prevention for making vaccination against certain common infectious diseases compulsory. My argument is based on an analogy between vaccine refusal and tax evasion. First, I discuss some of the arguments for compulsory vaccination that are based on considerations of the risk of harm that the non‐vaccinated would pose on others; I will suggest that the strength of such arguments is contingent upon circumstances and that in order to provide the strongest defence possible of compulsory vaccination, such arguments need to be supplemented by additional arguments. I will then offer my additional argument for compulsory vaccination: I will argue that in both cases of vaccine refusal and of tax evasion individuals fail to make their fair contribution to important social and public goods, regardless of whether each individual contribution ‘makes a difference’. While fairness considerations have sometimes been used to support a moral duty to vaccinate, they have not been appealed to in order to argue for a legal duty to vaccinate. I will suggest that this is due, among other things, to a misapplication of the principle of the least restrictive alternative in public health. Finally, I will address nine possible objections to my argument. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7386912 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2019 |
publisher | John Wiley and Sons Inc. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-73869122020-07-30 An Argument for Compulsory Vaccination: The Taxation Analogy Giubilini, Alberto J Appl Philos Original Articles I argue that there are significant moral reasons in addition to harm prevention for making vaccination against certain common infectious diseases compulsory. My argument is based on an analogy between vaccine refusal and tax evasion. First, I discuss some of the arguments for compulsory vaccination that are based on considerations of the risk of harm that the non‐vaccinated would pose on others; I will suggest that the strength of such arguments is contingent upon circumstances and that in order to provide the strongest defence possible of compulsory vaccination, such arguments need to be supplemented by additional arguments. I will then offer my additional argument for compulsory vaccination: I will argue that in both cases of vaccine refusal and of tax evasion individuals fail to make their fair contribution to important social and public goods, regardless of whether each individual contribution ‘makes a difference’. While fairness considerations have sometimes been used to support a moral duty to vaccinate, they have not been appealed to in order to argue for a legal duty to vaccinate. I will suggest that this is due, among other things, to a misapplication of the principle of the least restrictive alternative in public health. Finally, I will address nine possible objections to my argument. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2019-11-01 2020-07 /pmc/articles/PMC7386912/ /pubmed/32742053 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/japp.12400 Text en © 2019 The Authors. Journal of Applied Philosophy published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Society for Applied Philosophy. This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | Original Articles Giubilini, Alberto An Argument for Compulsory Vaccination: The Taxation Analogy |
title | An Argument for Compulsory Vaccination: The Taxation Analogy |
title_full | An Argument for Compulsory Vaccination: The Taxation Analogy |
title_fullStr | An Argument for Compulsory Vaccination: The Taxation Analogy |
title_full_unstemmed | An Argument for Compulsory Vaccination: The Taxation Analogy |
title_short | An Argument for Compulsory Vaccination: The Taxation Analogy |
title_sort | argument for compulsory vaccination: the taxation analogy |
topic | Original Articles |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7386912/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32742053 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/japp.12400 |
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