A doctor, a physician, has decided that the drug Profital™ if taken prophylactically will prevent the Screaming Willies most of the time, and that the drug’s side effects won’t scar many.
Ought government mandate that all citizens, or perhaps only children, take this medicine? If so, what penalties ought to be levied for failure to obey? Should they be the same penalties for adults and children?
Suppose it’s not just this doctor, but most of them making the claims. Same questions.
Suppose it’s most doctors, but now the malady is covid, and Profital™ is billed as a vaccine. Same questions.
Wait! Don’t just answer glibly or unthinkingly. Answer scientifically. That is, using only science, derive the answers. Show your math.
Since we are restricting ourselves to science, you may not start with or include the premise “Health is good” (or “a” good). That is not a proposition of science, but morals. Science can only observe that why life begins and how it dies. You may therefore not use any premises derived from “Health is good”, such as “Death is bad”, or “Pain is to be avoided”, “It is good not to be diseased” and similar propositions. None of these are scientific. Science can barely manage to say “This entity is alive” or even say what is “healthy”: definitions of life and health have to be provided to it.
It is not scientific to say “Life is preferred over death”. What moral judgment can science make when a wolf kills a deer? There is life and death simultaneously. There is no science in “What about the children!?” There is only science in “Here is what makes a child.” And so forth.
Let’s see where science is helpful.
There is some science in the doctor, or doctors’, assessment of Profital’s™ curative powers. We don’t need precise numbers, so let’s say the doctors’ claim the vaccine will prevent X% of cases (though even here will have to be careful about that exactly means), and that it causes side effects of such-and-such a kind in Y%. Note that these are both premised on definitions of disease, health, and side effect. So we’re already on dicey ground, but let that pass.
The penalties for failure to comply, assuming they can be quantified, discussed below, are denoted by Z.
Now, using only science, for what values of X, Y, and Z—but wait! We forgot a factor.
Allowing the government to mandate this drug, and levying whatever penalties, changes the behavior of those who are forced to take the drug, those tasked to create the mandates, and the doctors emboldened by their efforts in pushing the drug. I mean things like Will the doctors’ success in making this drug mandatory encourage them to call for future drugs to be made mandatory, will it increase fear and servility in the general population, and so on. Call all this very large groups of effects, supposing it can be quantified, W.
We’re ready: using only science, for what values of X, Y, Z and W, ought a drug to be made mandatory?
And now solve the same equation for each drug and malady.
The answer is this: there are no such values X, Y, Z, and W. Science cannot answer this question.
Science cannot define an X or a Y that is “best”, because science cannot say anything about Z and W. It’s likely impossible to even put quantities to these numbers, but even it were possible, there is no “best” or “worst” or whatever values that are in any way scientifically defined.
Science is mute on all moral and ethical judgements. Which I think a plain statement of fact, but which many, perhaps the majority, cannot grasp. It is not that moral and ethical judgements about X, Y, Z and W cannot be made: of course they can. But they cannot be made using science.
My proof that many, maybe most, fail to grasp this comes in three parts.
First, the covid panic, in which a frenzied mob, desperate for “Safety First!”, forced masks and medicines on people. “Follow the Science!” was their mad cheer.
Second, the NYT put out a tweet: “Breaking News: Rejecting decades of science, the chair of the federal panel that recommends vaccines for Americans said that shots against polio and measles — and perhaps all diseases — should be optional.”
I pointed out, “This is not rejecting ‘science’. For science cannot tell you what is right or wrong to do.” And, as you’d expect, the NYT readers took that well, seeing their scientism for what it is.
Of course not. They reacted as if science has been “denied”. There was no comprehension that science was powerless to say whether shots “against polio and measles — and perhaps all diseases” ought to be mandatory or voluntary. The administration made a moral judgement with which the “paper” did not agree, and falsely called this disagreement an attack on science.
Third was a tweet by Rick Wilson reacting in pretend horror to someone saying “Rejecting Decades of Science, Vaccine Panel Chair Says Polio and Other Shots Should Be Optional”. I doubted Wilson’s sincerity, and asked “Please tell us why it is bad to make medicine voluntary.”
His followers, expressing monumental emotional incontinence, reacted in great, effeminate horror. Uniformly, they claimed (in brief, and all including an insult) “Medicine saves lives!” Which was all they needed to imply that medicines ought to be made mandatory.
Even if if it true that “Medicines save lives!” it does not follow that they should be made mandatory. How could it? It is not that an argument for making a particular medicine in a definite situation cannot be made for coercing that medication. Of course one can. But science, as we have seen, will not provide the answer, even if it can provide some of the “data”.
Many who reacted had the same magical belief prominent in the covid panic. They somehow believed their vaccine, which they knew protected them, somehow failed when a vaccine skeptic hove into view. The unvaccined person was someone, magically, a danger to them.
Fear, raw effeminate terror, formed the base of their reasoning, then and now. They must be provided Safety. They have a “right” to health. They demand the government protect them from disease. So panicked were they, that they were happy people lost jobs (the penalty for not taking a coerced medication.
Not one person gave any argument except “Vaccines work”. Which is not sufficient. A former president reminded me of this excellent example. Unambiguously brushing your teeth is “good for you.” Our X = 100%, and Y = 0%, or close to these numbers not to matter. Ought therefore government coerce teeth brushing? Day and night? After every meal? Should you flash a smile before being allowed to hold a job?
Once again, it is not that an argument for coercing a medication can never be made, because it can. But that argument will not be scientific, and it cannot stop with the “medicine works.”
Any other belief is scientism.
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