Vaccination Should be Compulsory

I thank my opponent for the challenge in this debate and wish them good luck.

Contention 1: Utilitarianism and the Ethic of Care

This contentions will be devided into two seperate sections and I shall choose to over over Utilitarianism first.

Utilitarianism

For this case of Utilitarianism I will be focusing on John Stuart Mill's case of Utility here. We have to look at the Greatest Happiness for the Greatest Number of Sentient Beings. This means that we have to look at the needs of the whole vs. a few individuals. Another key thing we have to look at from Mill is Net Pleasure. If the vaccinations create a greater net pleasure than pain then it must be implamented for the betterment of soceity. [1] Before my opponent comes in and argues that shots hurt, Mill goes and argues that short term pain and pleasure are irrelevant and long term pleasure and pain is what should be looked at in general.

Throughout history the human race has been ravaged by illnesses. After the beginning of the Age of Reason science advancement has launched into the field of medical science and illnesses have begun to be cured. Under the status quo they have found that these children vaccinations have cured 90-99% of these diseases. [2] This is something that is already pushing towards the betterment of soceity and is something that will factor in to the over all status of the soceity as a whole. The United Nations have found that these vaccinations save 2.5 million children a year and over 285 children are saved every hour. [3] Another key thing is that the CDC estimates that 322 million cases of childhood illnesses were prevented throughout the United States as 732,000 children were saved, which once again helps our soceity by increasing future developement. [12]

The next key area of analysis is that of Herd immunity. This is the method of greater amounts of immunization reduces the possibilites of a disease. With the infection rate be driven down this, once again, moves the disease to a possible erradication. [4] This has been shown time and time again that when this threshold for this level of Herd immunity is not met then the likelihood of a break out increases. The greatest example of this occured in 2011, when 49 states failed to meet the Herd immunity level and the greatest outbreak of Whooping Cough had broken out since 1955. [5] This outright shows that there is a gargantuan demand to meet this level of Herd Immunity or we will begin massive breakouts of diseases again. The same occured in 2009, when the people who had failed to have their children vacinated had to have their children quarentined due to the lack of vaccinations had caused the 48 children to contract the measles. [6] Thus right off the bat we can see that there's a dire need for the manditory vaccinations in order to protect the soceity from disease and death.

We can see that this argument has a massive impact in todays debat to the point of if this plan isn't implamented by the US Federal Government then we will see a detteroation of the very fabric of soceity that we have fought so hard to defend and build up in order to create a stable soceity. With the detteroation of the soceity then there will be a massive break down to the microlevel, which I'll get into next, and it will break the very foundations of soceity.

Ethic of Care

The Ethic of Care, or also known as the feminism argument, revolves around the protection of special relationships. The Utilitarian argument reguards the improtance of the protection of the soceity and this argument will get down to the individual level. The Ethic of Care values special relationships like that of family, but as well as the relationships between generations as the Eco-feminism argument pushes for the preservation of future genreations. [7] In order to win this argument I must show that the manditory protects and preserves future generations.

Doctors today even recommend pregnant women to get vaccinations again in order to protect their children from pre-mature deaths. This is a key issue that is needed to protec the unborn as they are an immidate generation that is being saved from death. In the 1960's before the vaccination for ruebella, also known as Germany Measles, there was 20,000 child premature deaths which was and increase from the previous 11,000. [8] Mothers who get these vaccinations not only save their children, but have a higher chance of preventing birth defects. This again is a key argument here as we can see that the saving of future generations have helped saved people and a long chain of further generations. If this plan isn't implamented then we will see the breakdown of the family unit and a cause of harm at a microlevel which will harm soceity as a whole at the macrolevel. This will have a ripple affect with a great deal of ramifications and if this plan isn't passed.

Contention 2: Economic Impact

Now that I have already shown that doing this is ethically justifiable, I will now move to why this is economically sound and is benefitical for the United States Federal Government to implament this plan.

The CDC has shown that in the past 20 years the US has saved $1.38 Trillion in costs that would have occured each year. This means that the savings would have been well over $20 Trillion! [9] Though this maybe true another key factor that we would have to look at is how effective is the industry itself. They have found that for every $1 we have put into the DTaP vaccination we $27 and as for the MMR vaccination, though it may be smaller, for every dollar that we put into the vaccination we save $13 in total costs. This is already showing that we can save economic strength and increase the American powerhouse economy if this plan is implamented. In the case in California that I had described earlier it had major costs. Over $120,000 out of the economy due to the lack of working from the parents and other issues that arrose out of the issue. [6]

When it comes to simple illensses like the flu the CDC states that it does it's toll on the parental units is that of it costing anywhere from $222 to $1,456 which is extremely harmful in today's economy for the average family and this even isn't accounting for the additional $300 to $4,000 in medical expsenses which just continue to destroy the family unit by digging them deeper and deeper into debt. [10] Under the current Affordable Care Act it is possible to get vaccinations even without copay as those poor families who didn't have the ability to get these vaccinations before will have a greater amount of vaccinations which would not only increase the amount of economic effiecentcy, but will also lead to an increase and betterment of the individual as they will save a massive amount of money from getting these vaccinations. [11]


Sources
1. (http://tinyurl.com/gostzgg)
2. American Academy of Pediatrics, "Vaccine Safety: The Facts," www.aap.org, 2008
3. Shot@Life, "The Solution: Vaccines," www.shotatlife.org (accessed June 4, 2014)
4. US Department of Health and Human Services, "Community Immunity ('Herd Immunity')," www.vaccines.gov (accessed June 5, 2014)
5. Mark Fishetti, "Too Many Children Go Unvaccinated," www.scientificamerican.com, May 14, 2013
6. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20308208
7. MacGregor, Sherilyn (2006).Beyond mothering earth: ecological citizenship and the politics of care. Vancouver: UBC Press. p. 286
8. CDC, "About Rubella," www.cdc.gov, Apr. 29, 2011
9. Bahar Gholipour, "Vaccination Has Saved 732,000 Children's Lives Since 1994, Says Report," www.huffingtonpost.com, Apr. 25, 2014
10. CDC, "CDC Study: Treating Children's Flu Illness Costly," www.cdc.gov, May 21, 2012
11. US Department of Health and Human Services, "The Affordable Care Act and Immunization," www.hhs.gov, Jan. 20, 2012
12. Bahar Gholipour, "Vaccination Has Saved 732,000 Children's Lives Since 1994, Says Report," www.huffingtonpost.com, Apr. 25, 2014

My opponent here seems to run the most purposterous arguments here. We could easily look at their sources just to see how bias they all are. Two of them are anti-vaccines by name and the last is a single account. None of these are from credible actual sources. Throw them out of the debate due to complete bias and lack of valid evidence in this debate. My opponent uses an outdated example of Autism, yet the CDC has proven time and time again that it doesn't cause autism [1]. My opponent acts as if we are injecting our children with a virus that will cause the "I am Legend" movie scenario. Even if we do see these deaths and take my opponent's bias sources as true, I ask, so what? The aspect of Utilitarianism and Ethic of Care were dropped showing that we still see more benefit than harm. By the very aspect of these arguments I win the debate by default.

1. http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/vaccines/mmrv-vaccine.html