Immorally produced vaccines

smacl wrote: »

The more complete text there is



The same document also states the following



Your presumption would appear to be that the Vatican can acquire the vaccine of their choosing from those available, a choice unavailable to most countries, notably less well off Catholic majority countries who could be consider the constituents of the Vatican in some sense. Were that the case, to my mind it is ethically dubious, specifically in the context of the WHO's concerns with the world's poorest counties being trampled in the vaccine race. One feels that rather than looking after their own (ethical?) best interests they should be favouring whatever vaccine is most likely to be broadly available and affordable to all.

Well this is from the organization that hoards vast wealth in art in it's Italian enclave and is one of the biggest landowners in the world yet bleats on about ending world hunger and poverty.

The Catholic church requires inequality to function

I’m not following your argument here, I admit.

I think we can assume that, at least in the short term, the supply of all approved vaccines is limited, and insufficient to meet demand. If the Vatican buys X number of doses to treat its workforce, that’s X doses fewer that are available to treat the rest of the world. But this is true regardless of which particular vaccine the Vatican buys. That might be an argument that the Vatican shouldn’t vaccinate any of its people at all until everyone can be vaccinated, but that’s not the argument you’re making, I think.

If the Vatican buys X doses of morally-unimpeachable vaccine, that’s X doses less of MUV available for the rest of the world. But, given the nature of the moral concern we are discussing, it’s likely that the rest of the world is, on average, less concerned about this particular issue than the workforce of the Vatican is likely to be. So in terms of maximising the number of people who care about getting the MUV actually getting it, this is a positive step. Basically, all other things being equal, the MUV should be offered in priority to people who attach particular significance to its moral unimpeachability.

Finally, in the real world the Vatican probably doesn’t have unconstrained freedom here. It doesn’t run a national health service and it won’t be buying vaccine on a scale that will give it any priority or favourable treatment from pharmaceutical companies. Odds are that it’s piggy-backing on the Italian vaccination programme, which so far has overwhelmingly employed the (morally unimpeachable) Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Plus, AstraZenica isn’t approved in Italy for anyone over 65 which, given the demographic profile of the Vatican workforce . . . .

So, I think even if the Vatican had no moral preferences at all in this area, they’d likely end up with the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine. Plus, if you think that or Moderna is morally preferable, and should be offered to people, then I don’t think it’s morally dubious to offer it to your own people. If anything, not doing so would be.