Validity of vaccine mandates is exclusively an ethical issue, not a medical issue, not a scientific issue; the mandates would be just as unacceptable even if the vaccines were fully approved and fully prevented transmission. Scientific arguments against the mandates imply, falsely, that medical mandates would be acceptable under some empirical conditions. Any scientific argument disputing the efficacy and safety of vaccines must not make the claim that the mandates are ‘therefore’ unacceptable (this would be an equivocation between utility and ethics, ultimately serving the utilitarian agenda).
100%. I have argued this throughout my book Neither Safe Nor Effective. Even if the vaccines were wonderfully safe and effective, any mandate, any coercion is antithetical to human liberty, and therefore unacceptable anywhere. I write several medical exemptions per week, never refusing to do so, because this principle is so fundamental.
Hi Dr. Colleen - were you aware that there was a book put out in 1899 called Vaccines: Not Safe and Not Effective? - It was aimed at stopping the mandatory smallpox injections that had been in force in the British Empire since the 1853 Vaccination Act? Ended 1899.
I might have it stored on an external hard-drive which is at home - we are away for the weekend. I can't see it on the Internet Archive - but here's another one the same era published in 1900: Vaccination A Menace and Threat to Liberty - do you have it?
"Vaccine mandates imply that all humans are born in a defective, inherently harmful state that must be biotechnologically augmented to allow our unrestricted participation in society, which amounts to discrimination on the basis of healthy, innate characteristics of the human race. This devaluation of the innate human constitution is not only universally dehumanising, but it perverts the very concept of human rights; discrimination against the unvaccinated implies that being born human is no longer a guarantee of full human rights."
Might I also add a new perspective: Since Intellectual Property Rights are Patented for some of the ingredients; I have argued that Informed Consent cannot be established.
If you can't research what the secret ingredients might do (because you don't know what ALL ingredients are in them to understand interactions), then information is lacking to be able to make an informed decision.
"Informed Consent: I am informed of the risks and benefits of this medical procedure..."
I understand this article focuses -Also- on coercion for work, society and economics; but I was struck immediately by the informed consent on risks and benefits as primary to my human right to direct my own health.
It is the innate human unspoiled condition with autonomy and human rights that is paramount to me. The social shunning as well as economics of coercion for a job is not where my focus is when stating that Informed Consent is not possible. Also, I do not place ultimate authority on data sets and corrupted journals and officials, which are easily manipulated. I feel so strongly about knowing what is good and bad for me, to choose what I put in my body and how to feed my soul; that this article really brought that out. Thank you, Michael.
My spiritual nature understands that 'Intellectual Property' are things hidden to me; and that sets off a whole line of questions as to what the hidden things are, what they might do, and why. There are many in humanity who have such insights outlining the why: the past few years have been a historical and spiritual inquiry that has made sense of what is happening in the world for me. I am more whole because of all who have contributed their expertise and points of view.
It is the corruption of body and soul that I care about, and my point is discernment of the hidden that must be what we shine the light on. With President Biden's Biotechnology Executive Order here in the US; it is clear the direction is to put hidden biotechnology in all kinds of things. There is no Informed Consent to know what is in food, air, water, clothing, building materials, commodities. We are on our own, and Discernment is where I will put my energy for self-autonomy.
Succinct, lucid and to the point. It's how I learned it. Yet, ethicists seem to have absconded these basic tenets and principles of medical autonomy and informed consent. Next to epidemiologists, ethicists have been disappointing. It appears ethics is only as strong as the fear that grips a society. It was not able to stand up to hysteria. Too many condoned unethical responses and not enough spoke out.
The reason it appears that ethicists have been disappointing is because only mediocre ethicists are given voice by the leading alternative media profiteers and the rebel doctor ‘movement’. Their counter-narrative does not seem to want any clear cut, rational answers, no civil solutions, only a revolution.
Nov 11, 2022·edited Nov 11, 2022Liked by Michael Kowalik
Very good arguments. I've been preaching since the beginning of Covid that we can argue against the measures just on a philosophical level, without even getting into the data.
My argument followed the Kantian idea of autonomous moral agents (as, by the way, does the German Basic Law):
1) The intrinsic value of the human being is derived from his status as an autonomous moral agent capable of moral insight.
2) The intrinsic value of a human being is the reason why we should save individual lives (otherwise we could just sacrifice them for the greater good, say for the economy).
3) Forcing people into lockdowns etc. means we deny their status as autonomous moral agents capable of moral insight, and therefore their intrinsic value, from which their right to life in the Basic Law is derived.
4) Therefore, lockdowns etc. imply a negation of the right to life, and therefore undercut the very reason for saving individual lives in the first place, which leads to a contradiction.
This is a good argument. It obviously applies to vaccine mandates (which alter our innate constitution) but not obviously to lockdowns, and may need more elaboration in that regard. Vaccine mandates imply that all humans are born in a defective, inherently harmful state that must be biotechnologically augmented to allow our unrestricted participation in society, and this constitutes discrimination on the basis of healthy, innate characteristics of the human race. This devaluation of the innate human constitution is not only universally dehumanising, but it perverts the very concept of human rights; discrimination against the unvaccinated implies that our innate human constitution is no longer a guarantee of full human rights. But lockdowns do not alter our human constitution but impose limits on what we do. Some may compare lockdowns to the laws requiring us to wear seatbelts while driving, which is a false comparison, but not obviously so. The difference is precisely that lockdowns presuppose that ‘all humans are born in a defective, inherently harmful state’ that must be managed by preventing direct human, face to face interaction (which devalues humanity and pervert the very concept of human rights, as above). Kantian reasoning underpins the concept of human rights and universal ethics, and prior to Kant we even had no clear idea of what makes one Human.
I like your formulation because it gets a better hold of the distinction between minor boundaries of freedom rights (such as seat belts) and dehumanizing radical infringements. But I think the way I put it, the argument, at the very least, establishes an absolute principle of "minimal force" when it comes to boundaries of freedom rights, and that's how German legal philosophy (which is Kantian through and through) has always understood it pre-Covid. You can debate about the seat belt (personally I think that's already too much and establishes a slippery slope, but I can see how someone would see it differently), but you cannot debate about all-out depriving people of absolutely crucial moral choices specific to their situation, and condense their whole existence to the single dimension of a potential virus spreader.
I agree on the absolute principle. My suggestion is only that point 3 in your argument would not be convincing to most people, because there are many logical steps behind it. They could object that it implies that no restrictions on freedom are permissible, so it would help to elaborate how lockdowns are different from laws agains drunk driving or speeding etc. The fact that lockdowns devalue humanity in its essence, implying that human agency is a liability rather than the foundation for all laws aimed to defend humanity, shows that the justification for lockdowns contains a contradiction, and is therefore false. So between 2 and 3 I would put an additional point to that effect, or something similar.
Hi Michael, I just discovered your work today via a repost of a note of yours by Michael Ginsburg.
And I just quickly scanned this article, and realized that you have a GREAT TALENT for extremely CLEAR THINKING, and the thoughts you've outline above a great rebuttals to the insanity of the fascist "vaccine" mandates imposed on humanity since at least 1853 with the British Vaccination Act that forcibly injected people with smallpox "vaccines" down to babies 6 months old for the next 46 years, throughout the British Empire until 1899, when the madness finally stopped. But it was rebooted in the USA under the Rockefeller regime. It is the favorite business model of the British globalists 'Profits From Harms.' Looking forward to reading some of your articles, your work deserves a lot greater exposure. Keep it up.
"2. Medical consent must be free – not coerced – in order to be valid. Any discrimination against the unvaccinated is economic or social opportunity coercion, precluding the possibility of valid medical consent. The right to free, uncoerced medical consent is not negotiable, under any circumstances, because without it we have no rights at all; every other right can be subverted by medical coercion. Crucially, by accepting any medical treatment imposed by coercion we would be acquiescing to the taking away of the right to free medical consent not only from ourselves but from our children and from future generations, and we do not have the right to do this. Acquiescence to medical coercion is always unethical, even if the mandated intervention were a placebo."
People might object that no one held a gun to our heads and instead everyone *voluntarily* lined up for the prick and hence gave their consent. Of course, you and I agree that there exist other ways of coercion than the threat of imminent bodily harm, and many of those were employed in the pandemic. But I think the violation of consent was much more severe than even the soft-coercion and psychological manipulation tactics would entail. Specifically, it is impossible to give consent to something of which someone doesn't know what it is. In the case of the vaccines, the public was sold a bill of goods that substantially misrepresented the actual product both in respect to its safety and its efficacy. In a situation like this, it is incoherent to think most people could have given their consent, even if they appeared to give it.
All judges are frauds, so let the frauds do their pretence to justice, but I am content with the only real justice dished out by the Universe itself. Crimes against humanity are also crimes against the structure of being, and the consequences are inescapable.
Validity of vaccine mandates is exclusively an ethical issue, not a medical issue, not a scientific issue; the mandates would be just as unacceptable even if the vaccines were fully approved and fully prevented transmission. Scientific arguments against the mandates imply, falsely, that medical mandates would be acceptable under some empirical conditions. Any scientific argument disputing the efficacy and safety of vaccines must not make the claim that the mandates are ‘therefore’ unacceptable (this would be an equivocation between utility and ethics, ultimately serving the utilitarian agenda).
Couldn't agree more. A crisp and clear argument. Humans do not default to a vaccinated state.
100%. I have argued this throughout my book Neither Safe Nor Effective. Even if the vaccines were wonderfully safe and effective, any mandate, any coercion is antithetical to human liberty, and therefore unacceptable anywhere. I write several medical exemptions per week, never refusing to do so, because this principle is so fundamental.
If only more physicians were like you.
Hi Dr. Colleen - were you aware that there was a book put out in 1899 called Vaccines: Not Safe and Not Effective? - It was aimed at stopping the mandatory smallpox injections that had been in force in the British Empire since the 1853 Vaccination Act? Ended 1899.
Thank you for letting me know. I looked for that on Amazon, and have not seen it yet. So if you know where it might be for sale, please let me know.
I might have it stored on an external hard-drive which is at home - we are away for the weekend. I can't see it on the Internet Archive - but here's another one the same era published in 1900: Vaccination A Menace and Threat to Liberty - do you have it?
https://dn720409.ca.archive.org/0/items/vaccinationcurse00peeb/vaccinationcurse00peeb.pdf
Elegant!
#1 has been my #1 also:
"Vaccine mandates imply that all humans are born in a defective, inherently harmful state that must be biotechnologically augmented to allow our unrestricted participation in society, which amounts to discrimination on the basis of healthy, innate characteristics of the human race. This devaluation of the innate human constitution is not only universally dehumanising, but it perverts the very concept of human rights; discrimination against the unvaccinated implies that being born human is no longer a guarantee of full human rights."
Might I also add a new perspective: Since Intellectual Property Rights are Patented for some of the ingredients; I have argued that Informed Consent cannot be established.
If you can't research what the secret ingredients might do (because you don't know what ALL ingredients are in them to understand interactions), then information is lacking to be able to make an informed decision.
"Informed Consent: I am informed of the risks and benefits of this medical procedure..."
I understand this article focuses -Also- on coercion for work, society and economics; but I was struck immediately by the informed consent on risks and benefits as primary to my human right to direct my own health.
It is the innate human unspoiled condition with autonomy and human rights that is paramount to me. The social shunning as well as economics of coercion for a job is not where my focus is when stating that Informed Consent is not possible. Also, I do not place ultimate authority on data sets and corrupted journals and officials, which are easily manipulated. I feel so strongly about knowing what is good and bad for me, to choose what I put in my body and how to feed my soul; that this article really brought that out. Thank you, Michael.
My spiritual nature understands that 'Intellectual Property' are things hidden to me; and that sets off a whole line of questions as to what the hidden things are, what they might do, and why. There are many in humanity who have such insights outlining the why: the past few years have been a historical and spiritual inquiry that has made sense of what is happening in the world for me. I am more whole because of all who have contributed their expertise and points of view.
It is the corruption of body and soul that I care about, and my point is discernment of the hidden that must be what we shine the light on. With President Biden's Biotechnology Executive Order here in the US; it is clear the direction is to put hidden biotechnology in all kinds of things. There is no Informed Consent to know what is in food, air, water, clothing, building materials, commodities. We are on our own, and Discernment is where I will put my energy for self-autonomy.
This is simply put Andrea but BRILLIANT.
Thank you for bringing it to all of our attention.
The GREATEST TRUTHS are often the simplest.
Some excellent clear thinking exhibited in this article, Michael; thank you for your work.
I might as well shamelessly plug my piece about the spectacular failure of philosophy during COVID (Michael here was one of the very few exceptions): https://luctalks.substack.com/p/covid-and-the-strange-death-of-philosophy
Succinct, lucid and to the point. It's how I learned it. Yet, ethicists seem to have absconded these basic tenets and principles of medical autonomy and informed consent. Next to epidemiologists, ethicists have been disappointing. It appears ethics is only as strong as the fear that grips a society. It was not able to stand up to hysteria. Too many condoned unethical responses and not enough spoke out.
The reason it appears that ethicists have been disappointing is because only mediocre ethicists are given voice by the leading alternative media profiteers and the rebel doctor ‘movement’. Their counter-narrative does not seem to want any clear cut, rational answers, no civil solutions, only a revolution.
That is a good point. Arthur Caplan comes to mind. This just came to me months later. Lol.
Very good arguments. I've been preaching since the beginning of Covid that we can argue against the measures just on a philosophical level, without even getting into the data.
My argument followed the Kantian idea of autonomous moral agents (as, by the way, does the German Basic Law):
1) The intrinsic value of the human being is derived from his status as an autonomous moral agent capable of moral insight.
2) The intrinsic value of a human being is the reason why we should save individual lives (otherwise we could just sacrifice them for the greater good, say for the economy).
3) Forcing people into lockdowns etc. means we deny their status as autonomous moral agents capable of moral insight, and therefore their intrinsic value, from which their right to life in the Basic Law is derived.
4) Therefore, lockdowns etc. imply a negation of the right to life, and therefore undercut the very reason for saving individual lives in the first place, which leads to a contradiction.
This is a good argument. It obviously applies to vaccine mandates (which alter our innate constitution) but not obviously to lockdowns, and may need more elaboration in that regard. Vaccine mandates imply that all humans are born in a defective, inherently harmful state that must be biotechnologically augmented to allow our unrestricted participation in society, and this constitutes discrimination on the basis of healthy, innate characteristics of the human race. This devaluation of the innate human constitution is not only universally dehumanising, but it perverts the very concept of human rights; discrimination against the unvaccinated implies that our innate human constitution is no longer a guarantee of full human rights. But lockdowns do not alter our human constitution but impose limits on what we do. Some may compare lockdowns to the laws requiring us to wear seatbelts while driving, which is a false comparison, but not obviously so. The difference is precisely that lockdowns presuppose that ‘all humans are born in a defective, inherently harmful state’ that must be managed by preventing direct human, face to face interaction (which devalues humanity and pervert the very concept of human rights, as above). Kantian reasoning underpins the concept of human rights and universal ethics, and prior to Kant we even had no clear idea of what makes one Human.
I like your formulation because it gets a better hold of the distinction between minor boundaries of freedom rights (such as seat belts) and dehumanizing radical infringements. But I think the way I put it, the argument, at the very least, establishes an absolute principle of "minimal force" when it comes to boundaries of freedom rights, and that's how German legal philosophy (which is Kantian through and through) has always understood it pre-Covid. You can debate about the seat belt (personally I think that's already too much and establishes a slippery slope, but I can see how someone would see it differently), but you cannot debate about all-out depriving people of absolutely crucial moral choices specific to their situation, and condense their whole existence to the single dimension of a potential virus spreader.
I agree on the absolute principle. My suggestion is only that point 3 in your argument would not be convincing to most people, because there are many logical steps behind it. They could object that it implies that no restrictions on freedom are permissible, so it would help to elaborate how lockdowns are different from laws agains drunk driving or speeding etc. The fact that lockdowns devalue humanity in its essence, implying that human agency is a liability rather than the foundation for all laws aimed to defend humanity, shows that the justification for lockdowns contains a contradiction, and is therefore false. So between 2 and 3 I would put an additional point to that effect, or something similar.
Hi Michael, I just discovered your work today via a repost of a note of yours by Michael Ginsburg.
And I just quickly scanned this article, and realized that you have a GREAT TALENT for extremely CLEAR THINKING, and the thoughts you've outline above a great rebuttals to the insanity of the fascist "vaccine" mandates imposed on humanity since at least 1853 with the British Vaccination Act that forcibly injected people with smallpox "vaccines" down to babies 6 months old for the next 46 years, throughout the British Empire until 1899, when the madness finally stopped. But it was rebooted in the USA under the Rockefeller regime. It is the favorite business model of the British globalists 'Profits From Harms.' Looking forward to reading some of your articles, your work deserves a lot greater exposure. Keep it up.
This is just excellent. Thank you. Oh, and the mRNA injections aren’t actually a vaccine.
"2. Medical consent must be free – not coerced – in order to be valid. Any discrimination against the unvaccinated is economic or social opportunity coercion, precluding the possibility of valid medical consent. The right to free, uncoerced medical consent is not negotiable, under any circumstances, because without it we have no rights at all; every other right can be subverted by medical coercion. Crucially, by accepting any medical treatment imposed by coercion we would be acquiescing to the taking away of the right to free medical consent not only from ourselves but from our children and from future generations, and we do not have the right to do this. Acquiescence to medical coercion is always unethical, even if the mandated intervention were a placebo."
People might object that no one held a gun to our heads and instead everyone *voluntarily* lined up for the prick and hence gave their consent. Of course, you and I agree that there exist other ways of coercion than the threat of imminent bodily harm, and many of those were employed in the pandemic. But I think the violation of consent was much more severe than even the soft-coercion and psychological manipulation tactics would entail. Specifically, it is impossible to give consent to something of which someone doesn't know what it is. In the case of the vaccines, the public was sold a bill of goods that substantially misrepresented the actual product both in respect to its safety and its efficacy. In a situation like this, it is incoherent to think most people could have given their consent, even if they appeared to give it.
Doesn't unvaccinated mean' Removed'? Technically you cannot unvaccinate oneself! Not an arguement, just a question. 😊
https://timothywiney.substack.com/p/the-constitutionality-of-the-draft
All judges are frauds, so let the frauds do their pretence to justice, but I am content with the only real justice dished out by the Universe itself. Crimes against humanity are also crimes against the structure of being, and the consequences are inescapable.
I believe this too, Michael.