Pick your topic : Team Debate

Many thanks to Mikal and Whiteflame for their opening arguments! This round, we will be putting forth our own case against the resolution. Our burden of proof is to demonstrate that the US government should *not* make the MMR vaccine mandatory. C1) Bioethics In Western medicine, the personal autonomy of patients is of paramount importance, and rightfully so. When a patient undergoes a treatment or procedure from a medical professional, he has to place absolute trust in the competence and character of that professional, as the fate of his well-being and sometimes even his life is completely dependent on the outcome of the treatment/procedure. Given that, it is only fair that the patient be allowed to *choose* whether or not he wishes to place that kind of trust in somebody else"s hands; he has the right to know every detail of what is going to be done to his body, and subsequently choose whether or not he is okay with it being done. Vaccination is no different; it is a medical procedure which involves the purposeful injection of pathogens into a person"s body, and if they do not feel safe having such a procedure done, then they should have the right to abstain from it. Furthermore, there is ample ethical justification for granting people an absolute right to bodily autonomy. The only factor which truly distinguishes human beings from the rest of the amoral universe is their characteristic of self-ownership -- in other words, their ability to exert conscious and deliberate control over their own actions and have complete jurisdiction over their own bodies. Without self-ownership, human beings would more or less be inanimate objects, functioning like highly advanced computers and moving about only by virtue of the deterministic processes governing the rest of the universe. Such a mechanistic view of reality leaves no room for prescriptive claims about what "should" or "should not" be done, and thus the resolution presumes that all human beings posses self-ownership -- which, in turn, necessarily entails that all humans also have a right to bodily autonomy. The implications of all this on a policy like mandatory vaccination are clear. The government simply does not have the right to force a person to undergo a medical procedure, which is enough to negate the resolution all on its own. Not only that, but violations of autonomy by the government and the medical community are also harmful in that they create an endless pretext for *further* violations down the road for the sake of the "greater good" -- mandatory organ donation, childbirth limitations, and eugenics programs, for example. All things considered, allowing the government to violate peoples" bodily autonomy through policies like mandatory vaccination is untenable. C2) Counter-Plan We propose that rather than violate the fundamental tenets of bioethics and make the MMR mandatory, the US government should instead opt to educate people to voluntarily vaccinate themselves and their families. There are a variety of ways in which this could be accomplished, some of which barely even involve the government. The American Medical Association could create an initiative among physicians to specifically target and inform patients who are averse to getting vaccinated, or the CDC could launch a publicity campaign encouraging vaccination (as it has already done a few times before for different causes). The government could even just force people who opted out of vaccination to take a class debunking the myths surrounding vaccination. This sort of targeted public education *does* work, as can be seen from previous public health campaigns [1] and efforts to boost recycling rates [2]. Obviously, our CP wouldn't produce 100% immunization rates, but it would certainly boost rates up to the optimal threshold for herd immunity. With the means and efficacy of the education approach established, we can go on to demonstrate that there are numerous advantages which our counter-plan has over mandatory vaccination. First and foremost, our plan costs less. Pro says that their mandatory vaccination plan will subsidize vaccinations on an "as-needed basis", which means only low income people can get vaccinations for free. However, there are about 160 million people in the US who fall into that category [3][4], and an MMR vaccine costs about $19 [5], which amounts to a total of $3 billion in expenses. Meanwhile, out of the potential methods of education listed, two of them don't actually cost the government *any* extra money because they either aren"t government organizations (AMA) or they would simply be using funds which are already allocated to them by the government in the status quo (CDC). Only the required-class option would really cost any money, and not much of it either, considering that just 7% of children in the US aren"t vaccinated against MMR [6]. Since the total number of households in the US is 115,000,000, and the percentage of households with children is 46% (and assuming that only one parent per household needs to be educated), we're looking at 3.7 million people who would need to be educated. If it costs $200 to send each person to class, then the total expense of our proposal would be a bit less than $750 million. Obviously, these are very rough estimates, but it is nonetheless quite apparent that our CP is much cheaper. Secondly, whereas Pro's plan can only force people to vaccinate themselves against MMR, our plan educates people on why *all* vaccines are safe. In other words, people who are convinced through education are likely to go ahead and vaccinate themselves against other diseases as well, such as influenza, tetanus, pertussis, pneumonia, hepatitis A, and diphtheria. Most of these diseases have even higher mortality rates than MMR and drastically lower rates of vaccination [7]. Therefore, educating people on vaccines in general has far greater, more all-encompassing benefits for public health than just making MMR vaccines mandatory does. Our plan is also far better than mandatory vaccinations in terms of public relations between the government and the populace. Most of the people who avoid vaccination avoid it because they genuinely fear the supposed side-effects of vaccines. Violating their bodily autonomy and forcing them and their children to undergo the very procedures they so desperately fear is simply going to be perceived as tyranny; it will only generate embitterment, resentment, and mistrust in the long run. Considering that we're talking about at least 3.7 million people here, that is rather concerning. Fostering anti-government sentiments among a significant portion of the population is dangerous and socially unhealthy, hence making our CP the safer long-term strategy. . == Conclusion == The resolution is negated: (1) Mandatory vaccinations are a violation of a fundamental tenet of bioethics, which have defined the doctor-patient relationship for centuries; depriving individuals of their right to bodily autonomy is immoral, and a grave over-extension of government power. (2) Educating people to voluntarily vaccinate is a viable and sufficiently effective alternative approach to containing disease spread; it is preferable to Pro's proposed policy because (i) it is more than 3 times cheaper, (ii) it provides the additional benefit of encouraging other more important types of vaccinations, and (iii) it is sounder in the long-term due to the inevitable minority backlash and socio-political tension in response to mandatory vaccinations. With that, we hand the debate back over to our opponents! . [1] http://www.cdc.gov... [2] http://americancityandcounty.com... [3] http://www.census.gov... [4] http://www.cbsnews.com... [5] http://www.cdc.gov... [6] http://www.cdc.gov... [7] http://www.foxnews.com...