Am 11.08.2013 00:08, schrieb Warp:
> clipka <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:
>> I tell you something sick:
>
>> Here in Germany, some decades ago there was a huge campaign pro Iodine:
>> To fight hypothyreosis, people were encouraged to use salt with added
>> Iodine, companies were encouraged to add Iodine to their food products,
>> and farmers were encouraged to add Iodine to the food of their
>> livestock. All for the good of the people, especially (but not limited
>> to) those suffering from undiagnosed hypothyreosis.
>
> Surely you can now point out how the polio vaccine is likewise dangerous,
> and should therefore not be administered worldwide?

It should /not/ be administered to people who are unwilling to accept 
that procedure; first of all I doubt that /any/ vaccination is without 
risk - if only because in the course of production of the vaccine 
something might go wrong, causing people to be infected with polio 
rather than vaccinated against it. How many polio victims are you 
willing to risk in order to protect others?

And second, here's the opening of that can of ugly worms I was refering 
to in my previous post: How many people will you be willing to sacrifice 
in the next, possibly more dangerous world-wide vaccination? And how 
about a scheme to eradicate some hereditary disease?

You can answer those questions with mathematical formulae, but those 
formulae are cold and cruel, as they completely ignore the individuals 
they sacrifice.

> Do you see your "thing X is dangerous, therefore thing Y probably is too"
> fallacy here?

No, because that's absolutely not my point. My point is "thing X is 
dangerous, and thing Y flattens an important moral barrier to X, thus Y 
/is/ dangerous".

And yes, it has been /proven/ in practice that the sort of moral that 
calls for polio to be eliminated by a /forced/ programme, if taken too 
far, will deliberately /kill/ for that higher good.

What you're totally ignoring is that diseases can also be effectively 
pushed back by /voluntary/ vaccination programmes. No, of course those 
don't eradicate the virus entirely; but don't tell me that smallpox is 
entirely dead - you will surely still find it in some secret labs.

>> Sacrificing people's freedom to reject some medical procedure, in order
>> to try achieving some greater medical benefit for all, opens up a can of
>> particularly ugly worms we've seen crawling across Europe before.
>
> There's a big difference between your iodine example and things like
> smallpox and polio: These latter things are contagious, and by not
> taking a vaccine, you are potentially spreading the disease to others.
> You are, thus, not responsible only for your own wellbeing, but of other
> people as well.

Obviously an unvaccinated person can only spread the disease to other 
unvaccinated people. An unvaccinated person is thus responsible for 
getting the disease in the first place, but he/she is /not/ responsible 
for other people getting the disease, because it would have been the 
responsibility of those others to get vaccinated in order to protect 
themselves.

> There's another difference: Smallpox and polio can be completely
> eradicated. Once they are gone, they will are gone for good, and nobody
> ever will have to suffer from them or need any further vaccinations for
> them.

While that may sound all good and nice, it totally ignores the moral 
fallout of a forced vaccination scheme, and also totally neglects the 
possibility of a longer-lasting, more expensive but entirely voluntary 
programme, which will come without that fallout.

What would you have prefered to end WW2 in the Pacific - a conventional 
bombardment of Japan that might have led to more immediate casualties on 
both sides, or the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs that ended the war in a 
single flash, but (besides causing unimaginable suffering among those 
people who survived) caused moral fallout that the world is still 
chewing on today?

Your answer to this question might be different from the one I would 
give, but I'm sure you will acknowledge that it is difficult to answer, 
and that each person should be entitled the right to their own answer, 
no matter what facts and numbers are presented.

While you may not see the moral implications of a forced polio 
vaccination scheme, they are there, and they are - I think - of similar 
severity as in the Hiroshima/Nakasaki boms question, so each observer 
(and consequently each person on this forum) should be entitled to their 
own opinion on this matter, without polemic attempts to invalidate their 
opinion, like the following:

> By not removing those diseases from the Earth when we have the means to,
> we are responsible for all the lives that are lost or ruined. Many of
> them will be people who would most certainly have wanted to live and be
> healthy. The blood is in our hands if we allow people to suffer and die
> when we are sitting on the cure because of our moral sensibilities.

I'll ignore this last paragraph of yours, and especially that "blood is 
[on] our hands" part, because I don't think that you have the right to 
invoke this kind of polemics in this discussion.

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