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The unintended consequences of COVID-19 vaccine policy: why mandates, passports and restrictions may cause more harm than good
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  • Published on:
    Fundamental values cannot be defeated by the argument from proportionality

    The article does not adequately take into account a crucial ethical and (by implication, legal) fact: the argument from proportionality does not justify arbitrary violations of the right to life or the removal of the right to free medical consent, for the following reasons.

    Summary of the three strongest arguments against the ethical permissibility of vaccine mandates and why any medical procedure imposed by coercion must be refused.

    1. Vaccine mandates imply that all humans are born in a defective, inherently harmful state that must be biotechnologically augmented to allow their unrestricted participation in society, and this constitutes discrimination on the basis of healthy, innate characteristics of the human race. (This point derives from my paper published here: https://jme.bmj.com/content/48/4/240).

    2. Medical consent must be free – not coerced – in order to be valid. Any discrimination against the unvaccinated is economic or social opportunity coercion, precluding the possibility of valid medical consent. The right to free, uncoerced medical consent is not negotiable, under any circumstances, because without it we have no rights at all; every other right can be subverted by medical coercion. Crucially, by accepting any medical treatment imposed by coercion we would be acquiescing to the taking away of the right to free medical consent not just from ourselves but from our children and from futur...

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    Conflict of Interest:
    None declared.