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CPLB Dilemma #7: ethical reasons against COVID vaccine mandates

The seventh edition of CPLB Dilemmas is now online. This edition asks: are there ethical (as opposed to pragmatic) reasons not to mandate COVID vaccination?

After an overview of the dilemma by CPLB director Nir Eyal, Simon Clarke of the British University in Egypt offers the strongest argument, in his view, against requiring vaccination. Jessica Flanigan if the University of Richmond makes the case that private mandates may make government mandates unnecessary, and CPLB's Bridget Williams argues that risks are a reason not to mandate vaccination for children, but mandates are justified for adults. CPLB's Nir Eyal closes the debate with the case for mandatory vaccination.

Dilemmas is a section of the CPLB website devoted to conversations on pressing normative questions of health policy and population health. Dilemmas will bring together contributions from a diversity of disciplinary perspectives, including those of population-level bioethics, medicine, epidemiology, economics, health policy, philosophy, law, and others. Rather than attempting to converge on a consensus, the goal is to think together about a hard question relating to ethics and health.