It is my personal opinion that because of the extremely high potential for abuse, all delivery mechanisms should be designed to require the host's consent. I would also have to agree that bodily autonomy is a fundamental human right.
"Most researchers agree that self-spreading vaccines could never be applied to human populations, because universal informed consent would never be achieved."
I wonder if these researchers are able to imagine a government mandating that all citizens must receive a vaccine.
even if the vaccine is medically inappropriate, or even contraindicated for millions? the comatose on life support? mandates it for foreign travellers in transit who got stuck in your country? mandates for the foreign diplomatic staff? mandates for military, which has their own medical corps and medical decision-making?
What is all?
We've already crossed the Rubicon on this, and countries will justify infringing the rights of millions if a policy has a potential of saving millions more. Fortunately I can't think of a situation where a contagious human virus would be the only or the best way to save millions, but governments have no trouble making the ethically-questionable decision that some groups of people should die through lockdowns in order that other (generally older) groups of people should survive.
> mandates it for foreign travellers in transit who got stuck in your country? mandates for the foreign diplomatic staff?
A government could announce the policy well in advance, to give people a chance to leave, although the distinction between at home and abroad is moot if the contagion can spread outside the country, which of course it will. Again, sadly, there are plenty of countries that take the view that citizens of other countries have effectively no moral weight and the government has no duty to protect their rights.
Yes, people were "nudged" to get vaccinated to by restricting travel and ability to work, aka denial of food and shelter, but not quite physical force yet.
However, I don't recall any civilized government using physical force to pin down their subjects and force-vaccinate them.
Austria may have backed down on their plan to mandate vaccination, but Indonesia went ahead with it[0]. Hopefully you don't view that country as uncivilized. It's true that they "only" went as far as fining people who refused, but I'm sure if you refused to pay the fine there would eventually be some arm of the government willing to use force against you.
[0] https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/indonesia-makes-co...
1) they will of course mutate and jump to humans at some point.
2) we will be told it’s a matter of public health to release ones for humans.
Insofar as legal mandates we've been mandating that school children be vaccinated for various things for a very long time. I don't see any problem with not allowing a single person to opt to subject the entire rest of society to sickness and death. That seems like a morally dubious sort of freedom.
There are millions of people with primary (1 in 1000), some more acquired, and hundreds of millions of immunosuppressed globally. "not a single person" just sounds laughable in this context.
500,000,000 vs 1.
Is that science? or is it hysteria?
> I don't see any problem with not allowing a single person to opt to subject the entire rest of society to sickness and death.
That is I don't think its OK to allow individuals to opt out of vaccination because that ignorant minority can not only spread their contagion to vulnerable individuals but also potentially act as a lab for the creation of entirely new variant that bypass existing immunity. Every unnecessary infection is a dice roll with the rest of the human race.
Nobody said anything at all about immunosuppressed individuals. Few of them are incidentally entirely without an immune system else they would soon be dead outside of a clean room. This is to say that their decreased immune systems results in them being at a vastly increased risk compared to the general population and it is more critical not less to vaccinate them even though it doesn't wholly ameliorate their greater risk. I am well aware of this due to my own research my wife's doctors advice.
Lastly 500M would be 1 in 16 not 1 in 1000. In further communication please review the post you are replying to so that it at least makes contextual sense and double check math so as to ensure you aren't wasting the other readers time with trivial errors instead of substantial discussion.
Fluoride is naturally occurring in water, some places add more, some places remove some to get to the desired level.
The earth should distill all water for my consumption.
Iodine in table salt is probably a better example.
Humankind has neither the coordination nor the process to reach a consensus on almost anything, and certainly not on the ethics of changes to the natural world. And meanwhile, we continuously make such changes, whether intentionally, unintentionally, or on the boundary between the two that is "we're doing this and we know we're doing it but we lack the coordination to stop".
We should be able to make decisions on a scale of "should we eliminate all mosquitos in the world, would that be a net win or a net loss when taking all side effects into account". I expect that would in fact be a net win, even taking all side effects into account, because disease as a factor will outweigh other considerations. But in practice, I don't think we have the means of making such decisions in any coordinated fashion. And I don't think that means we should refuse to ever make such decisions at all.
I think the proposal in the article is a risky one. The rewards may outweigh the risks. But right now we have no process to evaluate that. Writing articles and provoking public opinion is not a process, it's one small step in an otherwise non-existent process.
Which could then be added to tap water, soft drinks, added as a fortifying agent in flour and bread.
That would surely be the response from conspiracy theorists, except of course that they would replace could then be with already is.
Imo it must be considered extremely taboo. Moreso than just contagious vaccines.