Sunday, April 19, 2009

Moral Obligation to the Public

When deciding whether or not to vaccinate their children, parents must consider the possible impact their choice has on their community. Vaccination is not simply a personal choice in which only the individual will benefit or suffer from. Parents not only have an obligation to keep their children safe from deadly diseases, they have an obligation to protect other people from being harmed by these diseases.

If your child is not vaccinated they may pass the disease onto other members of the community who are not vaccinated.

Some people may not be able to receive vaccines because of medical reasons; these people are reliant on herd immunity. Herd immunity cannot be established if many members of a community are not vaccinated. For example, the influenza vaccine is not recommended for pregnant women and children under 6 months.

A couple of people deciding not to get vaccinated in a low risk community is not the present issue. The issue comes when too many people decide not to get vaccinated and the risk of disease in the community increases. Of course, it is not fair to force some into getting vaccinated while letting others decide for themselves. The only way to for this to be fair is for all healthy, able people to become vaccinated.

Is the moral obligation so strong that parents ought to be legally liable when their unvaccinated children spread disease?

Arguments justifying this:
  • Their children are a direct cause of injury in another person. The other person is harmed unfairly and of no fault of their own.
  • This would increase rates of vaccination because people would be motivated to avoid unnecessary legal trouble.
  • Follows with negligence claims-- harm, duty, breach of duty and causation.
  • We need to protect those that cannot be vaccinated.

Arguments against this:
  • Extremely difficult to trace a disease back to someone.
  • There are medical risks (even if they are very unlikely) to getting vaccinated.
  • Could create panic, especially those that truly do not believe in vaccinations.
  • Vaccine policies need to maintain the most amount of personal liberty possible.

Also, there is no way to draw definitive lines, there are simply too many holes that might allow for abuse of the law. For example, what about an unvaccinated child giving a disease to another unvaccinated child? I believe that both parents are at fault for this and one should not be legally responsible for making the same decision the other made.

I found the Michigan Law Review to be a really source for this, they had a lot of articles looking at the legal and ethical side of vaccine liability.

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