an article on vaccination how it helps and why should it be compulsory
Answers
Answer:
Vaccination is one of the most effective public health interventions in the world for saving lives and promoting good health. Only clean water, which is considered to be a basic human right, performs better.
Despite this, uptake of vaccines has reduced in some countries and this is thought to be partly caused by misguided concerns over vaccine safety.
Answer
This essay argues that compulsory vaccination by the state is justified only when herd
immunity is not realised. Herd immunity occurs when the vaccination of a significant portion
of a population results in the resistance to the spread of a disease within a population and also
provides a measure of protection for individuals who cannot develop immunity, such as
children too young for the vaccine, or those who are immunosuppressed.
1 By firstly exploring
the moral obligation to vaccinate, an ethical framework arises that strengthens the argument
for enforced vaccination, yet when attempting to cohere compulsory vaccinations within
principles of liberty and the harm principle, the risk of going unvaccinated when herd immunity
is realised does not provide enough harm to others such that state coercion can be justified.
The scope of the argument must also be clarified; the application of this argument is towards
vaccines that immunise against contagious and threatening diseases such as measles and
mumps.
To explore the moral obligation to be vaccinated, the principle of beneficence can be
applied to the situation. This principle refers to a “normative statement of a moral obligation
to act for others’ benefit, helping them to further their important and legitimate interests,
often by preventing or removing possible harms.”
2 Hence, it is a welfare- orientated principle
of altruism where acting for the benefit of others is considered morally correct. Beneficence
provides the basis of John Stuart Mill’s principle of utility and utilitarianism: a consequentialist
moral framework that holds that the ethically correct choice is the one that will produce the
greatest good for the greatest number.3 The principle of utility presented by Mill is an absolute
principle such that the concepts of duty and right are subordinated to, and determined by, that
which maximizes benefits and minimizes harmful outcomes and hence makes beneficence the
preeminent principle of his ethics.
4 Using these principles it seems the moral obligation to
vaccinate can be shown. In the context of vaccination, being a beneficent agent requires those
of the populace who can, to vaccinate for the benefit of those who cannot and achieve the
collective beneficent effect of herd immunity; where the spread of disease is nullified and
those vulnerable protected. In addition, herd immunity provides the maximisation of utility as
the costs of vaccination for an individual are low (because of high vaccine safety)
5
, and this low
cost is greatly outweighed by resulting gains in health and well-being and reductions in disease