I wrote a letter to the editor about an article that noted that Catholics have a duty to vaccinate for the common good. This is important as some Catholics falsely claim Catholics should skip vaccines or that vaccine mandates are automatically immoral. Both views of vaccines are directly contrary to Catholic social doctrine.
In 2023, Steven M. A. Bow wrote “When Does Catholic Social Teaching Imply a Duty to be Vaccinated for the Common Good?” for The New Bioethics. In this piece, he gives 12 criteria for this duty.
- The pathogen is communicable between humans
- The agent is pathogenic
- Individual vaccination will contribute to herd protection
- The vaccine was developed and distributed in an ethical manner
- Vaccination carries no risk of harm
- The vaccine effectively enhances the body’s immune response to the pathogen
- The vaccinee is at risk of exposure
- The vaccinee is susceptible to infection
- The individual, if infected, would be at risk of disease
- The costs borne by the vaccinee are low
- The vaccine is not scarce
- There is no alternative option
These are a reasonable set of criteria, except for number 5 (emphasized), which is too narrow to be realistic.
Thus, I wrote a letter to the editor (institutional access / ResearchGate) on the fifth criterion above. Here are the key excerpts:
In the paragraphs discussing this criterion, Bow cites sources that indicate a low risk of harm, not no risk, including specific medical situations where the risk would be higher and the vaccine contraindicated. No vaccine has zero risk of harm to anyone, but many vaccines have sufficiently small risks that one has a duty even with that small risk. A small risk alone does not negate an otherwise existing duty. There is a small risk anyone driving to work will die in a car crash but in ordinary circumstances this does not negate the duty to go to work. Likewise, any food might make one sick, but a duty not to starve oneself means some food should be eaten. At the very least, this criterion should be changed to ‘Vaccination carries minimal risk of harm.’
However, when we are looking at risk from vaccination, it is not just an absolutely low risk but the risk in proportion to the risk of the disease if unvaccinated. For example, if two respiratory conditions had similar transmission rates and similar vaccine effectiveness but one was five times as deadly, taking on several times as much risk of adverse reactions for the vaccine against the deadlier disease seems reasonable.. .Thus, an even less strict criteria might be proposed here: ‘Vaccination carries a proportionally small risk of harm.’
Hopefully, this helps with the discussion on the moral obligation of Catholics to receive recommended vaccines.
(Note: I welcome comments, but we must assume the overwhelming scientific consensus on vaccines.)
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The problem with vaccines is that they rely on humans. For example, in 2009, Pandemrix released a Flu vaccine that caused Narcolepsy in a much larger than usual group of people. It took 6 years to prove the government and the vax manufacturer had taken shortcuts, 8 years to hypothesize what went wrong, and a full 10 years to prove that the vaccine caused the immune system to attack the part of the brain that influences sleep. With this one example, it proves that vaccines are not “fully” tested, and any issues will take up to a decade just to find out why they failed.
The Covid vax is another example where the vax manufacturers and governments colluded to skip animal trials, publish false information on efficacy, and literally attack the unvaccinated for killing people that had been vaccinated (think about that idea for a moment – how can an unvaccinated person hurt a vaccinated person unless the vaccine proves to enhance the virility of the disease). In addition, those negatively affected by the vax were under-represented and literally cancelled on the media and social media stage. We are only now beginning to understand the repercussions of DNA modifying vaccines. I would humbly suggest that DNA modification should be anathema to the church.
When governments and vaccine manufacturers collude to artificially inflate your number 3 and skip your number 4, we the people have no obligation to comply.
By that logic, I should never buy groceries as there have been food poisonings of groceries. I should also never drive on the road as automobile accidents are a major cause of death in this country.
I give these two examples as the logic of your argument: you should not do X as there might be some issue if humans in charge of safety don’t do their job makes living in society almost impossible.