Letter to Dr William Bay (08.08.2022)
qldpeoplesprotest @ gmail . com
Subject: Anti-Mandate Protest - Ethical Defence
Dear Dr Bay,
I am a philosopher/ethicist and the leading voice in the academic debate against the ethical permissibility of vaccine mandates. I recently published a paper on this topic in the BMJ Journal of Medical Ethics.
I am aware of your situation and may be able to assist you in strengthening your defence strategy in the confrontation with AHPRA, by furnishing some powerful ethical objections to vaccine mandates. While some of your empirical claims may be strongly contested by AHPRA (on the basis of the opinion of ‘experts’), fundamental ethical arguments are not vulnerable to disagreements about empirical facts.
Summary of the three strongest arguments against the ethical permissibility of vaccine mandates and why any medical procedure imposed by coercion must be refused.
1. Vaccine mandates imply that all humans are born in a defective, inherently harmful state that must be biotechnologically augmented to allow their unrestricted participation in society, and this constitutes discrimination on the basis of healthy, innate characteristics of the human race. By refusing to acquiesce to vaccine mandates we take an ethical stance against discrimination on the basis of innate characteristics of the human race. (This point derives from my paper published here: https://jme.bmj.com/content/48/4/240).
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 mandated medical treatment imposed by coercion we would be acquiescing to the taking away of the right to free medical consent not just 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.
3. Vaccines are known to occasionally cause deaths of healthy people. When an employee is required to receive vaccination as a condition of employment, that employee is economically coerced to participate in an activity where some percentage of employees are expected to die ‘in the course of employment’ as a direct result of the mandated activity. This goes against the fundamental principles of medical ethics and workplace safety. It may be objected that infectious pathogens also kill people, but these two categories of deaths are not ethically equivalent. Infection with a pathogen for which there exists a vaccine is not mandated, whereas deaths resulting from mandatory vaccination are mandated deaths, a legalised killing of some people for the prospective benefit of the majority. Critically, any discrimination against the unvaccinated (or a privileged treatment of the vaccinated) amounts to a violation of the right to life, because a small percentage of the targeted population are expected to die as a result of this coercive treatment. By refusing to accept mandated vaccines we take an ethical stance in defence of the right to life.
An earlier version of these arguments were formally submitted to the Inquiry into Public Health Amendment Bill 2021 (No 2) ACT and subsequently published here: https://jme.bmj.com/content/early/2022/04/26/medethics-2022-108229.responses#fundamental-values-are-not-defeated-by-utilitarian-calculus
If you think this would be helpful to your case, I am happy to assist.
Best wishes,
Michael Kowalik
Academic: https://philpeople.org/profiles/michael-kowalik
My Telegram channel: https://news.1rj.ru/str/NormalParty
qldpeoplesprotest @ gmail . com
Subject: Anti-Mandate Protest - Ethical Defence
Dear Dr Bay,
I am a philosopher/ethicist and the leading voice in the academic debate against the ethical permissibility of vaccine mandates. I recently published a paper on this topic in the BMJ Journal of Medical Ethics.
I am aware of your situation and may be able to assist you in strengthening your defence strategy in the confrontation with AHPRA, by furnishing some powerful ethical objections to vaccine mandates. While some of your empirical claims may be strongly contested by AHPRA (on the basis of the opinion of ‘experts’), fundamental ethical arguments are not vulnerable to disagreements about empirical facts.
Summary of the three strongest arguments against the ethical permissibility of vaccine mandates and why any medical procedure imposed by coercion must be refused.
1. Vaccine mandates imply that all humans are born in a defective, inherently harmful state that must be biotechnologically augmented to allow their unrestricted participation in society, and this constitutes discrimination on the basis of healthy, innate characteristics of the human race. By refusing to acquiesce to vaccine mandates we take an ethical stance against discrimination on the basis of innate characteristics of the human race. (This point derives from my paper published here: https://jme.bmj.com/content/48/4/240).
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 mandated medical treatment imposed by coercion we would be acquiescing to the taking away of the right to free medical consent not just 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.
3. Vaccines are known to occasionally cause deaths of healthy people. When an employee is required to receive vaccination as a condition of employment, that employee is economically coerced to participate in an activity where some percentage of employees are expected to die ‘in the course of employment’ as a direct result of the mandated activity. This goes against the fundamental principles of medical ethics and workplace safety. It may be objected that infectious pathogens also kill people, but these two categories of deaths are not ethically equivalent. Infection with a pathogen for which there exists a vaccine is not mandated, whereas deaths resulting from mandatory vaccination are mandated deaths, a legalised killing of some people for the prospective benefit of the majority. Critically, any discrimination against the unvaccinated (or a privileged treatment of the vaccinated) amounts to a violation of the right to life, because a small percentage of the targeted population are expected to die as a result of this coercive treatment. By refusing to accept mandated vaccines we take an ethical stance in defence of the right to life.
An earlier version of these arguments were formally submitted to the Inquiry into Public Health Amendment Bill 2021 (No 2) ACT and subsequently published here: https://jme.bmj.com/content/early/2022/04/26/medethics-2022-108229.responses#fundamental-values-are-not-defeated-by-utilitarian-calculus
If you think this would be helpful to your case, I am happy to assist.
Best wishes,
Michael Kowalik
Academic: https://philpeople.org/profiles/michael-kowalik
My Telegram channel: https://news.1rj.ru/str/NormalParty
Simple ethical arguments against public health policy are the most powerful, not only because the hired medical experts are powerless against them but because they also reveal those experts as unethical and possibly criminally liable.
Good news. The office of Senator Antic has responded that he “may be able to raise these questions at the next Senate Estimates hearing”. See here for the details: https://news.1rj.ru/str/NormalParty/1747
The Vaccine Lottery
Vaccine mandates are like coercing people to participate in a lottery, where some innocent individuals are expected to die on the basis of bad luck (arbitrary selection) for the benefit of others.
There is evidence that a percentage of people died from Covid vaccines. This fact is officially accepted, therefore any further mandating of the vaccines amounts to mandating a number of deaths. There is incriminating knowledge among the legislators that the ‘mechanism’ of the mandate causes deaths.
When the killing of some innocent people is mandated for the benefit of the majority, because individual lives do not have absolute value vis-a-vis the interest of others, then the lives of the majority also do not have absolute value vis-a-vis the interest of the innocent people in question, who therefore have an equal right to kill the majority for their own benefit, but this is absurd. An absurd law is not law but nonsense; it dictates nothing. (Longer version: https://michaelkowalik.substack.com/p/the-vaccine-lottery)
Vaccine mandates are like coercing people to participate in a lottery, where some innocent individuals are expected to die on the basis of bad luck (arbitrary selection) for the benefit of others.
There is evidence that a percentage of people died from Covid vaccines. This fact is officially accepted, therefore any further mandating of the vaccines amounts to mandating a number of deaths. There is incriminating knowledge among the legislators that the ‘mechanism’ of the mandate causes deaths.
When the killing of some innocent people is mandated for the benefit of the majority, because individual lives do not have absolute value vis-a-vis the interest of others, then the lives of the majority also do not have absolute value vis-a-vis the interest of the innocent people in question, who therefore have an equal right to kill the majority for their own benefit, but this is absurd. An absurd law is not law but nonsense; it dictates nothing. (Longer version: https://michaelkowalik.substack.com/p/the-vaccine-lottery)
Substack
The Vaccine Lottery
How logic and ethics defeat the authority of experts
Forwarded from CL
Your "lottery" point is weighty. It hadn't before occurred to me. It's weighty in a legal sense. If it is, and can be known, by positive evidence, that x number of non-consensual vaccinees (a number produced by reference to a statistically-significant population cohort), are statistically likely to die or suffer "grievous" harm as a result of mandated "vaccination", then an authority which mandates such "vaccination" is knowingly reckless as to whether any particular non-consenting person will or won't die or be severely harmed. A policy which mandates such an act irrespective of such known scope for recklessness is arguably "arbitrary and capricious", and thus legally vitiated.
Vaccine mandates require us to trust, with our lives, a historically fallible, democidal institution. The right to free medical consent is not an optional security feature but a sanity check, an existentially indispensable condition of agreeing to be governed in the first place.
By reducing humans from rational agents, whose capacity to bestow worth on things and actions by virtue of rationally choosing them is the source of all value, to the status of beneficiaries of interests dictated by others, without regard for the individual being the source of the value of those interests, the entire edifice of utilitarian ethics commits to a contradiction. It negates the normative source of its own value judgement, and is therefore a priori false. Without absolute values there is no objective measure of benefits and costs, therefore no rational basis for the judgement of proportionality. https://news.1rj.ru/str/NormalParty/1717
I have started a free Newsletter on Substack: https://michaelkowalik.substack.com
Substack
Meaning and Being (Philosophy Journal) | Michael Kowalik | Substack
Original essays, letters and notes in cutting-edge philosophical research. Click to read Meaning and Being (Philosophy Journal), by Michael Kowalik, a Substack publication with hundreds of subscribers.
The Face of Society
Modern political systems, in particular democracy and socialism, are based on the premise that all humans within the systemic jurisdiction are qualitatively the same, value the same fundamental things and have the same fundamental needs. The problem with this assumption is that individuals can disagree about what values and needs are fundamental. While we are all limited by qualitatively the same physical needs, we generally do not derive meaning from the satisfaction of those needs. Unlike the animal world, the needs and values that sustain the society are always qualitatively different from the existential minimum. For example, an individual who values safety above all else (apart from the bare existential needs) may forgo all creative freedom for the sake of safety, but the order of preferences may be opposite for another individual, who is willing to forgo all guarantees of safety for the sake of creative freedom. Disagreements about preferences and values are inescapable even in groups centred on the same ideology, which ultimately result in a schism. We must therefore understand society as something non-homogenous in the socially-relevant qualities. The only qualitatively universal property in any society is the capacity for rational thought, for making sense and communicating this sense to others, which in turn generates common meaning. This and this alone is the basis of society, the glue that holds us together. Any political system or government that limits the freedom to communicate and therefore the capacity to generate meaning, is on the path of self-destruction.
In addition to verbal and written communication, facial expression is the most intuitive mode of meaning-exchange. It allows for mutual recognition as sensible beings and making sense of one another as one-who-is-alike, which is in turn the phenomenological foundation of moral equivalence. Without this equivalence all the higher, more abstract modes of communication lose their sense, their justification, because there is no one ‘like-me’ left to talk to. This kind of silencing, of defacement - the censorship of facial expression, is therefore the most inhuman and destructive. https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3840787
Modern political systems, in particular democracy and socialism, are based on the premise that all humans within the systemic jurisdiction are qualitatively the same, value the same fundamental things and have the same fundamental needs. The problem with this assumption is that individuals can disagree about what values and needs are fundamental. While we are all limited by qualitatively the same physical needs, we generally do not derive meaning from the satisfaction of those needs. Unlike the animal world, the needs and values that sustain the society are always qualitatively different from the existential minimum. For example, an individual who values safety above all else (apart from the bare existential needs) may forgo all creative freedom for the sake of safety, but the order of preferences may be opposite for another individual, who is willing to forgo all guarantees of safety for the sake of creative freedom. Disagreements about preferences and values are inescapable even in groups centred on the same ideology, which ultimately result in a schism. We must therefore understand society as something non-homogenous in the socially-relevant qualities. The only qualitatively universal property in any society is the capacity for rational thought, for making sense and communicating this sense to others, which in turn generates common meaning. This and this alone is the basis of society, the glue that holds us together. Any political system or government that limits the freedom to communicate and therefore the capacity to generate meaning, is on the path of self-destruction.
In addition to verbal and written communication, facial expression is the most intuitive mode of meaning-exchange. It allows for mutual recognition as sensible beings and making sense of one another as one-who-is-alike, which is in turn the phenomenological foundation of moral equivalence. Without this equivalence all the higher, more abstract modes of communication lose their sense, their justification, because there is no one ‘like-me’ left to talk to. This kind of silencing, of defacement - the censorship of facial expression, is therefore the most inhuman and destructive. https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3840787
Ssrn
An Ontological Argument against Mandatory Face-Masks
Face-coverings were widely mandated during the Covid-19 pandemic, on the assumption that they limit the spread of respiratory viruses and are therefore likely t
A simple, intuitively appealing ethical argument is terrifying to the deceivers because they cannot dismiss it as ‘fake news’.
Mass media love when people make claims about medical facts. They can just call in the ‘experts’ to ‘debunk’ your claims, or just call it ‘fake news’. The general public only needs reassurance to continue believing the experts, they don't care about evidence. On the other hand, a simple, intuitively appealing ethical argument is terrifying to the experts because they cannot dismiss it as ‘fake news’. Ethics is not a question of empirical facts but something we all already know, it is part of the collective unconscious, which cannot be deceived.
What kind of disinformation is a problem
National governments and the mass media assert, without argument, that online misinformation and disinformation by citizens is a ‘problem’ that ought to be fixed. I do not think it is a problem; little people always believed a lot of nonsense, and they still do, but they do not have sufficient control over the flow of information to have a meaningful propaganda effect, not unless WEF and our governments want to promote a specific, false point of view for propaganda purposes. On the other hand, governments and their media outlets have an effective monopoly on the flow of information, so the only misinformation and disinformation that troubles me is when it comes from these ‘authoritative’ sources, from government ‘experts’ and the mass media. The only disinformation that is ever a problem is state propaganda, which includes the idea that little people speaking nonsense requires state censorship.
National governments and the mass media assert, without argument, that online misinformation and disinformation by citizens is a ‘problem’ that ought to be fixed. I do not think it is a problem; little people always believed a lot of nonsense, and they still do, but they do not have sufficient control over the flow of information to have a meaningful propaganda effect, not unless WEF and our governments want to promote a specific, false point of view for propaganda purposes. On the other hand, governments and their media outlets have an effective monopoly on the flow of information, so the only misinformation and disinformation that troubles me is when it comes from these ‘authoritative’ sources, from government ‘experts’ and the mass media. The only disinformation that is ever a problem is state propaganda, which includes the idea that little people speaking nonsense requires state censorship.
I have substantially re-written my article on face masks to integrate some new ideas. https://michaelkowalik.substack.com/p/the-face-of-humanity
Just as Communism has failed, because leaders of the party did not (privately) believe in it, so will medical tyranny and stakeholder capitalism, because the managerial class does not (privately) believe in it.
The following article examines the views of the Russian government on the issue of vaccine coercion. https://edwardslavsquat.substack.com/p/putin-and-compulsory-vaccination
Edward Slavsquat
Putin & compulsory vaccination
What is the Russian president's stance on coercive injections? It's complicated.
Why do Doctors argue Science rather than Ethics?
I get the impression that doctors and medical associations who oppose Covid vaccine mandates are not particularly interested in fundamental ethical objections to all forms of medical coercion. The arguments I have formulated implicitly challenge not just Covid related mandates but all forms of discrimination against the unvaccinated, for any vaccine, and this may not sit right with them. Most doctors who oppose Covid vaccine mandates are probably supportive of other vaccine mandates, or would change their mind if Covid were ‘bad enough and vaccines a little safer and more effective’. This would explain why they prefer to argue Science - safety and efficacy - and not fundamental ethical principles. Doctors notoriously think in simplistic utilitarian terms, seeing their work as a string of Trolley Problems (‘whom do you save: this one child or those two old people? You have one minute to decide who lives or dies.’) This is part of their crude ideological conditioning in (industrial) medical schools. They are also possibly afraid, due their own past actions, inactions and endorsements of non-Covid vaccine coercion, of incriminating themselves. I know there are exceptions, but they are few.
I get the impression that doctors and medical associations who oppose Covid vaccine mandates are not particularly interested in fundamental ethical objections to all forms of medical coercion. The arguments I have formulated implicitly challenge not just Covid related mandates but all forms of discrimination against the unvaccinated, for any vaccine, and this may not sit right with them. Most doctors who oppose Covid vaccine mandates are probably supportive of other vaccine mandates, or would change their mind if Covid were ‘bad enough and vaccines a little safer and more effective’. This would explain why they prefer to argue Science - safety and efficacy - and not fundamental ethical principles. Doctors notoriously think in simplistic utilitarian terms, seeing their work as a string of Trolley Problems (‘whom do you save: this one child or those two old people? You have one minute to decide who lives or dies.’) This is part of their crude ideological conditioning in (industrial) medical schools. They are also possibly afraid, due their own past actions, inactions and endorsements of non-Covid vaccine coercion, of incriminating themselves. I know there are exceptions, but they are few.
This is a minor issue but being a philosopher it irks me: the phrase “your truth”, which is an oxymoron. Truth, by definition, is not individual property but something to which our individual points of view, our preferences and thoughts, are subject to and can be defeated by. It is something held in common, not individually. Truth is One for All. “My truth” is therefore nonsense, a return to the postmodernist commitment to radical subjectivism. A deeper problem with the phrase “my truth” is that it implies that ‘other truths’, even if they are opposite to mine, are equally valid, so if the government have their own truth then you lose, because you do not have a claim of being objectively, unequivocally right. I see this phrase gaining traction on TM, so I felt the need to address it. I wrote more on this here: https://culturalanalysisnet.wordpress.com/2018/03/16/how-be-rational-about-being-right/
Cultural Analysis & Philosophy
How to be Rational about being Right
Lord (2017) has rigorously demonstrated that what we are rationally required to do is just what we Ought to do. This conclusion nonetheless begs the question as to what exactly counts as Rationalit…
Arguing medical science with the medical practitioner regulatory authority is about as hopeful as arguing religion with God. A simple argument from ethical principles is the only reasonable line of defence for disagreeing with regulatory diktats, because experts do not have authority over moral conscience.
Fundamental ethical arguments still missing. Where is he right to FREE medical consent, where is the right to life, where is the right not to be discriminated against on the basis of innate biological characteristics? Acquiescence to medical coercion would be wrong even if they were giving us placebo. https://amps.redunion.com.au/healthreformdeclaration
amps.redunion.com.au
Health Reform Declaration
Government gag orders imposed by AHPRA and National Boards mean Australian Health Professionals cannot debate evidence-based Science if it goes against the State-imposed narrative without the threat of investigation and disciplinary action.
Remember, doctors were indemnified from being liable for killing their patients with Covid vaccines “to provide further assurance and confidence to patients […] in the COVID-19 vaccine rollout.” ‘This is for your safety’. Makes sense? https://www.health.gov.au/ministers/the-hon-greg-hunt-mp/media/covid-19-indemnity-scheme-to-protect-health-professionals-and-patients
Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care
COVID-19 indemnity scheme to protect health professionals and patients
The Australian Government is establishing a COVID-19 Vaccine Claim Scheme to provide further assurance and confidence to patients and health professionals in the COVID-19 vaccine rollout.