Key Ethical Issues Related to Covid 19 Vaccination: Personal Choice vs Greater Public Welfare and Informed Consent
Keywords:
Personal choice, Public welfare, Informed Consent, Law & Individual PrivacyAbstract
This paper explores the ethical issue of informed consent in the context of the contest between personal choice and the greater public welfare. It also refers to a number of low, middle- and high-income countries where vaccine hesitancy, and to a lesser extent refusal, has been fed by misinformation on a scale not previously observed but made possible by the proliferation of modern technology. This ‘campaign of ignorance’ has further undermined trust in governmental health bodies and their attempts to implement quarantine and other measures such as vaccination that had already been damaged by early variations and vacillation in governmental approaches around the globe due in part to a reluctance by some governments to take actions that would have economic repercussions but also by the necessary evolution of their approaches as more became known about the disease and its variants. The paper examines the historical background and the current situation and finds that more must be done to restore or increase trust levels between citizens and governmental authorities, including the dissemination of high-quality accurate information in a form relevant to readers/viewers. While potential side-efects of vaccines must be disclosed to ensure informed consent, their incidence should also be clearly communicated (e.g., in vaccine information statements) so that clients/patients are aware that a risk is 1 in 100 or 1 in 1000 or 1 in 2 million etc.
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