Values and Vaccine Refusal

Hard Questions in Ethics, Epistemology, and Health Care

Mark Navin (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

240 Seiten

2015
Routledge (Verlag)
978-1-138-79065-0 (ISBN)

Artikel merken

Parents in the US and other societies are increasingly refusing to vaccinate their children, even though popular anti-vaccine myths – e.g. ‘vaccines cause autism’ – have been debunked. This book explains the epistemic and moral failures that lead some parents to refuse to vaccinate their children. First, some parents have good reasons not to defer to the expertise of physicians, and to rely instead upon their own judgments about how to care for their children. Unfortunately, epistemic self-reliance systematically distorts beliefs in areas of inquiry in which expertise is required (like vaccine immunology). Second, vaccine refusers and mainstream medical authorities are often committed to different values surrounding health and safety. For example, while vaccine advocates stress that vaccines have low rates of serious complications, vaccine refusers often resist vaccination because it is ‘unnatural’ and because they view vaccine-preventable diseases as a ‘natural’ part of childhood. Finally, parents who refuse vaccines rightly resist the utilitarian moral arguments – ‘for the greater good’ – that vaccine advocates sometimes make. Unfortunately, vaccine refusers also sometimes embrace a pernicious hyper-individualism that sanctions free-riding on herd immunity and that cultivates indifference to the interpersonal and social harms that unvaccinated persons may cause.

Mark Navin is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Oakland University (Rochester, MI). His research focuses on ethical issues in law and public policy. In addition to his work on vaccine refusal, he has published on topics including human rights, inequality, conscientious objection, international development assistance, social segregation, and food justice.

Preface, Acknowledgments, Introduction, Chapter One: Gender, Vaccine Denialism, and Resistant Epistemic Communities, Chapter Two: Bias and the ‘Irrationality’ of Vaccine Refusal, Chapter Three: Values and Vaccine Safety, Chapter Four: Parental Prerogatives and the Morality of Vaccination, Chapter Five: Coercive Vaccination, Chapter Six: Vaccine Exemptions, Conclusion

Verlagsort	London
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Gewicht	476 g
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Erkenntnistheorie / Wissenschaftstheorie
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Ethik
	Medizin / Pharmazie ► Medizinische Fachgebiete ► Medizinethik
	Medizin / Pharmazie ► Medizinische Fachgebiete ► Pharmakologie / Pharmakotherapie
	Studium ► Querschnittsbereiche ► Geschichte / Ethik der Medizin
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
ISBN-10	1-138-79065-6 / 1138790656
ISBN-13	978-1-138-79065-0 / 9781138790650
Zustand	Neuware