Public Health Concerns Justify Compulsory Immunization

Good luck to PRO. I'm done debating this topic, but I guess I'll give it one more go. ============== Negative Constructive ============== I negate the resolution because affirming devalues human life. The Value is morality, or the judgment of right and wrong, because the term 'justify' asks us the question of right and wrong. The Criterion is respecting human agency. Agency is the capacity of humans to make rational decisions. This is the standard for 3 reasons. (1) One, agency is what separates humans from inanimate objects. The ability to discern and rationalize our choices is what makes us uniquely human, so that aspect of our lives must be respected. Otherwise, morality would become self-defeating in that it would no longer respect those it is intended to protect. (2) Two, respect for agency is a prerequisite to any conception of morality. That is, if humans did not have agency, then morality would not exist because we would not be able to formulate our own ideas about ethics. More simply, to evaluate morality, we must respect a human's ability to choose between right and wrong in acting, i.e. exerting agency. (3) Three, if morality were to allow society to strip the autonomy of even a small group of people, then ethics would be undesirable as we would be able to justify the worst atrocities imaginable. Society could treat those people as if they were dispensable objects, whose concerns can legitimately be excluded, justifying horrors such as slavery, eugenics, or holocaust. Giorgio Agamben contends: "In both contexts the particular status of the Versuchspersonen (human guinea pigs) was decisive; they were persons sentenced to death or detained in a camp, the entry into which meant the definitive exclusion from the political community. Precisely because these human guinea pigs are lacking almost all the rights and expectations that we customarily attribute to human existence, and yet are still biologically alive, they came to be situated in a limit zone between life and death, inside and outside, in which they are no longer anything but bare life. Those who are sentenced to death and those who dwelt in the camps are thus in some way unconsciously [They are] assimilated to homines sacres, to a life that may be killed without the commission of homicide. Like the fence of the camp, the interval between death sentence and execution delimits a extratemporal and extraterritorial threshold in which the human body is separated from its normal political status and abandoned, in a state of exception, to the most extreme misfortunes." It will therefore be my burden to prove that affirming shows disrespect for human agency. My sole contention is that: Comparing people as units of life and health disrespects human agency. Human unpredictability makes our value incomparable. Agamben continues "If human beings were or had to be considered as this or that substance, this or that destiny, no ethical experience would be possible... This means, however, that humans are not, and do not have to be, [a certain unit], but therefore can freely decide whether to be or not to be, to adopt or not to adopt this or that destiny." It is this ability of humans to be rational agents that Agamben contends prevents them from being quantifiable. If I were to kick a desk, it would probably slide back some and come to a stop. It would stay there until someone else moved it. If, instead of kicking the desk, I simply let it rest, I know for certain that it isn't going to move or change on its own. The desk is predictable; it can be evaluated. Humans, however, are not predictable. If I kick PRO, I have no idea how he will act. If I had time, I'd give you a demonstration of that. If I leave my opponent where he is, he might stay there like the desk would; he might not. He might do anything. I have no idea what his future actions will be, because he has the ability to exert agency, or make his own decisions. It is this particular property of human life that makes us incomparable in terms of numbers. We can put prices on inanimate objects because we can be certain of how they will function in the future, that they will not make their own decisions. We can compare one desk to another or one piece of paper to another, because we know for certain that they will function exactly the same. We cannot calculate any sort of future value of living because it is impossible to determine the future actions of a rational agent. A rational agent has the free choice to act any which way, and as such, his future value in life cannot be determined or quantified. Trying to do so ignores and disrespects human agency. ============== Rebuttal to Affirmative ============== "the resolution is focusing on the welfare of the public population in general and whether the government should protect it." The resolution asks: Is public health sufficient warrant for compulsion? If this debate were just 'vaccines are good for your health' it wouldn't even be debatable. Rather, the resolution is of whether those health benefits actually justify immunization. It makes no sense, then, for PRO's only justification for his entire framework to be the resolution, because the resolution in no way presupposes that public health is the value. Just the opposite: it questions whether public health can legitimately valued at all! This is sufficient to win me the round because PRO's entire case is based upon a completely unsubstantiated value and criterion of public health through protecting public health (circular much?) so without a legit V/VC his contentions have no real impact.