Defending on Opp's Argument 1

1. First of all, the opposition understands from the beginning that the case is set in the US and limited to death-penalized prisoners for pandemic vaccines. What we are trying to show is that the plan not only hurts the legal rights of prisoners but also the justice of a civilized society, while the proposition didn't address anything in their first argument why legally or morally this model stands. All they tried to convey in their first point is that medical vaccine is important and urgent for possible pandemic outbreak. We say by just stating the urgency of the need of vaccine(which we don't deny) doesn't give any direct legal justification about why the prisoners should be targetted as the subjects, and especially, when this could done without their consent. It is worth emphasizing that that the opposition never argue that prisoners should be totally excluded in the medical experiment, what we concern and believe is the key issue here is that why the state has the absolute right to force them doing so without their consent. We don't think the propositon mentioned this point at all in their opening phrase. 2. Also, we don't quite understand when the proposition side said and I quote here: "we are glad that the oppositon side stands at our side for the first time." As much as we share the same compassion of medical research for pandemic disease, we at no time agrees that the extra cruel and unusual punishment should be imposed on death-row prisoners. We stand for a civilized society with the rule of justice and law, that even in death penalty, which occurs in rarest cases, should be conducted in a compassionate way, while the proposition seems to assume that the government automatically have the right to do so no matter what. But seeing the rebuttal we are very glad that the proposition side for the first time listed out the right of prisoners, a point we pleasantly take as now understood by both sides: prisoner DO have rights. This is a good place to start. The difference is that prop trying to seperate the rights of innocent than convicts, but a more important question to answer here is not that do the convicts different from the innocent? but do we have the right to make them different? In other words, could we deprive people's natural right just because they are convicted? Certain rights are born with that nobody or nothing can take it away. They are so basic that cease to be utalitarian. The prop side trying to infringe the natural right of the death-row prisoners using the absolute state power, the opp firmly against it as it not only bladently discriminate equal born right but also imposing cruel punishment. In the case of the medical experiment, it's the basic right of the convicts to have informed consent. They should be informed about the potential harm and risk, and have the final say for whether to sacrifice their personal autonomy over body or health for the experiment. If they agrees to do so then it's fine but if they don't agree, there's no legal ground to impose a government action. Otherwise it's called cruel and unusual punishemnt that does not fly with the justice system. The government can end their life by a bullet or wheelchair through legal procesure, but can not randomly inject unknown substance to their body which might lead to unknown result. We firmly believe such a basic right of consent for experiment can not be taken away for all citizens, innocent or convicts. Like mentioned, basic rights are natural that they stop to be utalitarian. We can not infringe people's basic human rights for the so called-greater good, whether it's small or big group, majority or minority, rich or poor, warm-hearted volunteers or death-row prisoners--no one or nothing could make the right different. 3. Plus, we understand that you are focusing on death-row prisoners. However, by talking about other prisoners or the whole society doesn't ignore the notion of the debate. What we wanna to talk about is the impact to justice system and society from a big picture. It's quite relevant to consider how other stakeholders like other prisoners or the society would be influenced by the policy you proposed. The impact is that this further people's antagonism to criminals, not just death-row prisoners but all prisoners as a whole, or even worse the antaganism between society and criminals, because a society that allow the death-row prisoners to be experimented like rabbits or guinea pigs clear don't carry out much thought about their rights. Further discrimination from the public might deepen and criminals would be further marginalized by this policy. This would decrease the rehabilitative function of justice, meaning prisoners as a whole would be harder to be reformed or accepted by society when having a chance to go back to society. Yet rehabilitation is a key principle justice should seek to uphold. As civilization develops, our society should move beyond the form of retributive justice, having less violent to violent punishment but aiming to reforming more and more people. Unfortunately, the prop's model wouldn't achieve these goals of real justice at all because it aims at infringing prisoner's rights and bring more backlash to the justice system. A society with the "great good" achieved in this way would not go far, and not a civilized one to be praised for. Besides, the prop failed to address the principle of retributive justice. A basic rule is that the punishment need to fit for crime. For death-penalized prisoners, the death itself is already the punishment. In fact, the death punishment is considered as a cruel and unusual punishment in some cases. There's no compelling case to further punish them to pay their "debt" to society in any other way.