Why Mandatory Vaccination Is a Very Bad Idea
Everyone has the right to respect for his or her physical and mental integrity. The principle of bodily integrity sums up the right of each human being to autonomy and self-determination. Unconsented physical intrusion is a human rights violation. Practices that violate your bodily integrity include all forms of physical violence, ranging from corporal punishment to forced medical treatment. With regard to forced vaccination, this can be through making it direct mandatory, but it can also be forced indirectly by demanding vaccination if you want to fly or go to a football match, for example. I will discuss some aspects considering the problems concerning direct and indirect mandatory vaccination.
Human rights in health care
The concept of human rights in health care derive from human dignity and neutrally applies universal, legally recognized human rights principles, protecting both patients and providers and admitting of limitations that can be justified by human rights norms. It recognizes the interrelation between patient and provider rights, particularly in contexts where providers face simultaneous obligations to patients and the state (`dual loyalty´) and may be pressured to incite human rights violations. A provider is not allowed to use medical skills or expertise on behalf of the state to inflict pain or physical or psychological harm that is not a legitimate part of medical treatment.
Informed consent is another pillar of patient rights in health care. In most countries, informed consent is mandatory before someone receives a medical procedure. The patient has a right to receive, and a medical provider has an obligation to provide, all necessary information to make an informed decision about treatment. This information includes benefits and risks like possible complications, adverse effects, and composition of a vaccine. If this information is not available or not given, there can be no informed consent. If this information is provided, the patient can decide to take or not to take treatment.
Positive and negative rights
Relating to mandatory vaccination, one of the arguments is that people should take the vaccine to protect other people. So if it is not for their benefit, they should do it for the benefit of someone else. The mistake in this reasoning is that I am not responsible for other people’s health, and I don´t have to take medical risks for another person´s health. This is related to negative rights (oblige inaction) and positive rights (oblige action). A negative right is a right not to be subjected to an action of another person or group. A positive right is a right to be subjected to an action of another person or group. If you have a negative right to life against me, then I am required to refrain from killing you. If you have a positive right to life against me, then I am required to act as necessary to preserve your life. You can see that these are two different things.
Rights considered negative rights include civil and political rights such as freedom of speech, life, private property, freedom from violent crime, freedom of religion, a fair trial, and freedom from slavery. Rights considered positive rights include other civil and political rights such as police protection of person and property and the right to counsel, as well as economic, social and cultural rights such as food, housing, public education, employment, national security, military, health care, social security, internet access, and a minimum standard of living.
Concerning health, there is a positive right for health care, but there is not a positive right that I am obliged to provide you with health. There is a right for health care, but not for health. I am not obliged to take action for your health. There is a negative right: I am not allowed to put your health in danger, I may not poison you, or bring you in contact with dangerous things. This is a negative right because it is an obligation which requires inaction. So you have a right to be morbid obese and develop diabetes because you don´t want to follow a healthy life style (no one will force you to do that, negative right), but that doesn´t make that you can force me to have a vaccination (positive right) because you are in a risk group now. This difference between inactive and active obligations has led ethicists to agree in a general way that positive obligations are usually junior to negative obligations because they are not reliably at first sight. Some critics of positive rights implicitly suggest that because positive obligations are not reliably at first sight they must always be agreed to through contract. What does that mean practically? The positive rights of patients can conflict with the negative rights of physicians in controversial areas such as abortion or assisted suicide. The negative right of the doctor prevails the positive right of the patient. This is also the case with mandatory vaccination, the positive right of people who are afraid of a disease conflict with my negative right not to take a vaccine. As in the case of the doctor, the negative right prevails over the positive right. What if we posit that vaccination should be mandatory. This means that a positive obligation prevails a negative one. This could lead to the government forbidding you to drink too much alcohol (negative right) and obliging you to drink one liter of carrot juice if the government thinks this is healthy (positive right). Making positive rights prevail over negative rights allows the government to force you to do things actively. What that can lead to will be discussed in the next chapter.
Principle of bodily integrity
Why is this principle so important, and what can it lead to if we don´t respect the right to bodily integrity? Karl Marx rejected the idea of rights, and he considered rights to be egoistic. The rejection of natural rights has far-reaching negative consequences. If there are no undeniable rights, then the state may do as they please with the individual and exploit and punish them for their own interests. There is no safeguard from the violation of fundamental freedoms and liberties. Hitler had an organic view of the state; he saw the state as the living organism of a nationality. Many of the Third Reich activities can be categorized as the assembling, preserving, and bringing to dominance of the Aryan race. Rudolf Hess declared National Socialism to be nothing but applied biology. This extreme organic view ensured the total breakdown of the dividing line between individuals and their state. During Nazism, there was an obsession for order and regularity (Ordnung muss sein), which translated to `social hygiene` and finally to `race hygiene.` Who could oppose the need for order and hygiene…? The medical and health bureaucracy did not hesitate to free society from `racially undesired`, `elements which are unhealthy for the population` or `socially unaccepted.` Doctors needed no persuasion; they were fully convinced this was the right thing to do. Programs were run for mandatory sterilization and eugenetics. People accepted this; it was all for the greater good, and who would oppose a healthier life? It did not end here; it led to euthanasia on a big scale of disabled children and psychiatric patients. People were shot or killed in mobile gas chambers on trucks. The bureaucratic name for it was `grace death` (Gnade Tod).
If a government denies the right to bodily integrity, there is no end to far-reaching consequences. Nazism is a very clear example of where this can lead us to. Mandatory vaccination would be the first step of denying the right to bodily integrity. If you need to vaccinated to be able to travel, why not mandate that you donate a kidney before you are allowed to buy a house?
Interesting link:
Ausweis Bitte!!! (Pass, please!!!) Do We Really Want to Go Back There With the COVID-19 or Green Pass?