The Morality of Vaccination
Moral Maze
BBC
4.5 • 609 Ratings
🗓️ 30 November 2020
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It’s hard to remember what normal life feels like, but for the first time since the start of the pandemic, there are reasons to be optimistic about when we might return to it. It looks increasingly likely that by the New Year at least one highly-effective Covid vaccine will be available. Despite this promising news, any new vaccines will be rationed, cost money and carry some degree of risk. This prompts a number of ethical and moral considerations. For some, this as a matter of global justice; they believe it would be immoral and counterproductive to distribute a vaccine on the basis of whichever countries have the biggest pockets. Others think it’s perfectly reasonable for any state to prioritise the health of its own citizens, particularly the vulnerable. There are those who have concerns about the speed of the vaccine trials, and believe that if we’re going to inoculate billions of people, many of whom are asymptomatic or unaffected, we’ve got to make sure we’re not cutting corners and causing harm. While, for others, normal rules shouldn’t apply during a crisis, and the faster you can get the vaccines out, the better. And what about those who refuse a Covid jab? There have been calls for emergency laws to stamp out anti-vaccine misinformation and conspiracy theories online. Last year, NHS chief Simon Stevens warned that large numbers of parents rejecting vaccines for their children was a "growing public health time bomb". Is there a moral case for compulsory vaccination? Or is it an unjustifiable infringement on civil liberties and parental rights? With Prof Helen Bedford, Matthew Lynn, Dr Julian Sheather and Prof Tom Solomon.
Producer: Dan Tierney.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Good evening, and with one jab we'll be free. Actually, billions of jabs in a worldwide medical mobilisation, |
| 0:07.0 | and the jury is still out on if, let alone when, we can get on top of the coronavirus. |
| 0:12.4 | But news this week that a second vaccine had proved effective has lit what the health secretary |
| 0:17.2 | cautiously called a candle of hope. The medical problem, developing the vaccine, |
| 0:22.4 | may have been solved. The ethical problems are only just beginning. For a start, who gets it? |
| 0:27.2 | The answer in national term seems to be the rich. Some 82% of the stocks of the Pfizer vaccine have |
| 0:33.0 | reportedly already been bought up by governments representing just 14% of the planet's population. |
| 0:39.0 | The way of the world, perhaps, but there are those who say it is epidemiologically inefficient, |
| 0:44.0 | as well as globally unjust. Second, what do we do about those who refuse the vaccines |
| 0:49.6 | because of their religious beliefs, their conspiracy theories, or their concerns that the |
| 0:53.7 | warp speed rush to develop them has cut corners and they're not convinced they're safe. |
| 0:59.5 | Social media are full of their theories and anti-vaccine scares have already had a serious impact on immunisation programmes against other diseases. |
| 1:07.8 | Last year, the head of the NHS said parents refusing to have their children vaccinated |
| 1:11.7 | was a public health time bomb. The exercise of their individual liberty may threaten the safety |
| 1:19.1 | of the rest of us. So should there be a crackdown on fake news about the coronavirus? Indeed, |
| 1:24.8 | should these vaccines be made compulsory? Salvation, freedom and justice, the |
| 1:29.3 | morality of vaccination. And our moral maze tonight. The panel, Anne McElvoy, senior editor at |
| 1:35.0 | The Economist, Mona Siddiqui, Professor of Islamic and Interreligious Studies at Edinburgh |
| 1:39.5 | University, the chief executive of the RSA Matthew Taylor and the historian Tim Stanley. |
| 1:46.0 | Mona Siddiqui, it's inevitable, isn't it, the people who get it first are the people who paid for it? |
| 1:51.2 | That's a very commodity way of looking at a vaccine. |
| 1:54.9 | And a vaccine, especially for most of us who the first time we're going through something like this, |
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