Public health concerns justify compulsory immunization.

This will be a LD style debate. Due to my case being too long for this website ill have to split up my Constructive into two parts. Hence why I made the debate have more rounds, however i will adhere to the rules and abstain from bringing up any new arguments. Resolved: Public health concerns justify compulsory immunization. V: Justice VC: Reducing Human Suffering Concerns- to relate to; be connected with; be of interest or importance to; affect or pertaining to affairs Just- done or made according to principle; based on right OBSV1: Religious objections are not valid. Though these groups don't intend to harm others they do insofar that refusing immunizations cause greater harms to more than just their own communities. They reduce the effective immunization level in their neighborhoods, schools, and churches. In addition to endangering their own children, these infected persons mix with members of the larger community; they will expose those who are susceptible to contagion (LSU Law Center for Medical and Public Health). Though this is not a U.S specific topic I will address the argument of it violating a "constitutional right" under freedom of religion. This is not the law today, nor has it ever been the law in the United States. The U.S. Supreme Court, in Jacobson v. Massachusetts,207 held that an individual could not refuse smallpox vaccination. The Court's decision read, "We are not prepared to hold that a minority, residing or remaining in any city or town where smallpox is prevalent, and enjoying the general protection afforded by an organized local government, may thus defy the will of its constituted authorities, acting in good faith for all, under the legislative sanction of the State" (p. 37). The family itself is not beyond regulation in the public interest, as against a claim of religious liberty. And neither rights of religion nor rights of parenthood are beyond limitation. Acting to guard the general interest in youth's well being, the state as parens patriae may restrict the parent's control by requiring school attendance, regulating or prohibiting the child's labor and in many other ways. Its authority is not nullified merely because the parent grounds his claim to control the child's course of conduct on religion or conscience. Thus, he cannot claim freedom from compulsory vaccination for the child more than for himself on religious grounds. The right to practice religion freely does not include liberty to expose the community or the child to communicable disease or the latter to ill health or death. OBSV2: The Negative must prove injustice. The Negative simply cannot take an inactive standpoint in this debate; therefore the Negative has the burden of proof indicated by the resolution of proving compulsory immunizations due to public health concerns as UNJUST, if they fail to do so you have to vote for the Affirmative because the Negative has failed to reach its burden according to the resolution. OBSV3: Public Health Concerns are valid. The vary definition of concerns shows that these are NOT irrational fears or phobias held by the general populous, just to name a few of the immunizations that are deemed compulsory in order to reduce human suffering, Mumps, Measles, Rubella, Oral Polio, Diphtheria, Tetanus, and Hepatitis B. Protecting ourselves from such illnesses is in no way irrational, in fact they're a great precaution taken by our communities. The Affirmatives primary thesis is as follows, compulsory immunizations reduce human suffering which achieves justice. By showing that affirming reduces human suffering it does not matter the nature of the ethical system that informs that action is irrelevant. Furthermore, this approach avoids allowing the shortcomings of a particular agent to undermine efforts to prevent suffering from a certain situation. Our inability to prove why justice demands a certain action in abstract terms should never be a reason why we do not look to reduce suffering when the harm is real, urgent, and entirely preventable. C1: The State has legitimate and justifiable reason to exercise its right over the individual when in accordance with the Harm Principle. John Stuart Mill in On Liberty wrote that "The only purpose for which power can rightfully be exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant." John Locke agrees. This thesis has become known as the harm principle. The Affirmative interprets the harm principle, in accordance with compulsory immunizations, are justifiable when without them: • An individual's decision could place others health in jeopardy • The state's economic interests could be threatened by the costs of care for vaccine preventable illness, related disability or death and for the cost of managing vaccine preventable disease outbreaks • The state's duty of educating children could be compromised C2: School closings and missed in-school time causes suffering. Since in recent times various forms of influenza have damaged the educational opportunities of children attending school and by in large society as a whole, not making immunizations compulsory causes' citizen's harms that are largely preventable and to not reduce human suffering when there is a viable option is unjust. Damaging a child's ability to attain an education subjects them to much potential harm however we'll talk about one large one, poverty (Every Child Counts, London): When one is subjected to poverty the harms are as follows: •No voice in policies or in the delivery of livestock services •Limited access to education, resulting in reduced literacy rates •Limited access to health services •Limited access to land and water, or insecure rights of access to these resources •Poor access to credit facilities, extension services and agricultural services •Premature birth, and or birth defects due to fact that poor women in effect have poor prenatal care •Limited or difficult access to markets •Low household incomes, related to generally high levels of unemployment or under-employment. Iskra Beleva- "The larger and longer the unemployment, the deeper and more complicated are the social and economic problems it causes in society. The existence of stable long-term unemployment extracts a segment out of the labour force and isolates it economically and socially. Long exemptions from labour life and labour environment lead to losses of professional qualification. For society this means a loss of economic and social gains and no return of investments made. Reintegration of unemployed into working life requires new investments. Moreover, unemployed people represent a vulnerable economic and social group. In their struggle to survive, they are inclined to join the shadow economy and to conduct criminal and violent behaviour. Many consequences of unemployment are manifest in psychological and behavioural deformations of personality." Long-term unemployment turns into psychological and behavioural deformations this is because people look for outlooks to survive whether or not they're legal. Again subjecting citizens to suffering is unjust. •Lastly, crime which is quite possibly the most harmful. George Winslow writes- "the reality is that crime is largely a product of poverty. Street crime is most rampant in poor neighborhoods, and crime rates rise and fall in proportion to how the national economy is doing". Well-paying jobs, concludes Winslow, are far more effective than police or prisons in reducing crime. C3: Inefficient use of tax money causes suffering. You'd be hard pressed to find a citizen who doesn't find taxes oppressive already, how much more difficult would it be to find an individual who is happy not only to pay taxes, but for them to be used inefficiently? Since students were not mandated to receive vaccines and in turn large parts o