There are a bunch of other actions that most people would consider perfectly ethical that fail this test too. Is going childless ethical? If everyone did that, we'd all die out. How about going to your favorite hamburger joint? If everyone did that, the line would be miles long, and nobody would get served.
The problems work in the other way too: there're some actions that people do consider unethical where there are no problems if everyone did it. Consider cheating (by a constant percentage) on your tax returns. If everyone did it, the government would just raise tax rates to compensate, everyone would end up paying the same taxes anyway, and nobody would be worse off (except perhaps having to throw an additional calculation in). Yet few people would say that cheating on your taxes is ethical.
Why is going childless considered okay, yet killing your infant considered abhorrent? They have the same effect on the world - in both case, there's no kid. They have the same effect on the world if everyone does them - in both cases, we all die out. And yet one is considered fine while the other is highly unethical.
The categorical imperative is a nice heuristic to determine whether some behavior will benefit the greater good, but it's also nothing more than that. There is nothing inherently 'ethically dubious' about deviating from a rule of thumb, firstly because the heuristic returns false positives and secondly because you may disagree whether something is a 'greater good'.
If you want to argue that this deviation from this rule of thumb is 'ethically dubious', you'll have to argue exactly that and not argue some blanket claim that everyone should disagree with.
The categorical imperative is not the only or best rule, but it is a good rule of thumb. It's a good test in this case because it clearly demonstrates the folly of going unvaccinated-- if everyone relies on "herd immunity" there will be no herd immunity.
It matters what we say. The mixed messages out there already are dangerous. Kottke put it best in TFA:
So get your kids (and yourselves) vaccinated and save them & their playmates from this whooping cough bullshit, which is actually killing actual kids and not, you know, magically infecting them with autism.
As long as only a small percentage rely on "herd immunity", we're fine. If only those who actually have severe reactions to vaccines rely on "herd immunity", we're fine. Even if a few nutjobs fear autism and a few others simply don't get around to it, we're fine.
The problem is that too many people are relying on it for foolish reasons (fear of autism) and not weighing the risks appropriately. Going unvaccinated without extremely good reason, in the present circumstance, is foolish, but don't overgeneralize.
As an entire country, you are correct (for many diseases, especially ones who have vaccines in the 85% effectiveness ranges). The range of the outbreaks will largely be limited to those 15% who didn't get immunity once vaccinated, and the remainder of those who aren't vaccinated due to their ignorance.
However for small groups, they GREATLY increase the chance of the disease hitting your population. By small groups, I mean circles of friends, co-workers, schoolmates, nurserymates, etc. You should IMMEDIATELY kick people from those groups, as they increase your and your children's chances of getting infected quite a bit. (Remember, you and your children have a 15-30% of the vaccine you DID take to not work).
Remember, you're not looking at just 15-30% from one disease. They have 0% immunity to EVERY disease.
Something people overlook is that the slippery slope fallacy is only a fallacy in a logical context. People aren't uniformly logical entities, and slippery-slope arguments are not always fallacious when applied to human actions.
At some point in any analysis of human behavior and ethics, philosophy is no longer the right tool for the job. You have to turn to psychology.
The US Constitution doesn't provide any mechanism for a public policy of vaccination (the existence of NIH, CDC, etc notwithstanding). While such a policy might be desirable, overstepping the extent of federal power granted by the Constitution would, in your Kant explanation, lead to a collapse of all Constitutional control [1]. That would be bad, so we can't allow the single transgression.
I'm in favor of getting vaccinated. I even ensure that I'm up-to-date on everything whenever I leave the country. However, our society is founded on individualist ideals. We are not communitarians or collectivists, and the fact that my action might not be optimal for the community as a whole does not constitute a rationale for controlling my behavior. This is why we tolerate free speech even from evil people; it's why we're willing to let some criminals go free in order to prevent punishing the innocent, etc.
[1] Not that this hasn't happened already.
If you want to do otherwise you will always have the freedom to do so. But according to the latest science, there is no publicly acceptable argument for going unvaccinated or for advocating against vaccinations.
I have a friend whose son is mentally handicapped, apparently [1] because, as an infant, his vaccination was both (a) done incorrectly and (b) massively overdosed.
I say this not to advocate against vaccination, but to remind that no medical procedure is without risk. Accidents happen, and there are also individual circumstances that would make some treatments unadvisable.
A statement as categorical and sweeping as yours is taking things too far.
[1] Nobody will ever be able to prove it, but the evidence is convincing to me.
UPDATE: forgot to mention about the (very small) inherent danger in using attenuated virus vaccines, such as the OPV (Sabin, not Salk) polio virus. It seems that in this case, it mutates and reverts to the virulent, paralyzing form in 1 / 750,000 cases [2]. This is tiny, but you can't categorically call it safe.
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polio_vaccine#Iatrogenic_.28vac...
Any time you stick a needle into someone, you risk giving them a brain embolism. Life is risk. However vaccines are CLEARLY in the make you much safer part of risk, like seatbelts and washing your hands.
Even if your near-baseless statement of risk is accurate, it is clear that a non-vaccinated world is much riskier for children than a vaccinated one.
In one case, yes, but the danger of malpractice is certainly well known.
In my other case (iatrogenic polio), it's a very well documented effect. Virtually all polio in the USA since the 'late 60s (give or take) has been the result of this.
But in both cases, the risk is vanishingly small.
My point was that a statement like "stop whining: it's perfectly safe" is not correct. In the end, such hyperbole only gives the tinfoil hat crowd a toehold.
And again, using the polio example, an understanding of the tiny risk of iatrogenic polio can help those at particular risk due to immune problems to avoid what is a non-trivial danger for them.
And you're right, the risk of an ill effect is non-zero. That doesn't mean it's not safe, though. If our definition of safe means absolutely zero risk, then almost nothing is safe. Relative to most medical procedures, vaccines are incredibly safe.
I'm going to continue telling everyone I know that they should vaccinate their children because that position is supported by the best available science, and because the alternative is definitely not safe.
Secondly, according to your interpretation of Kant's categorical imperative it's perfectly ethical for no one to get vaccinated because everyone can act in that way. You may not like the outcome, but your gedankenexperiment satisfies the categorical imperative because everyone holds the belief and thus it is ethical.
Kant's categorical imperative is merely a way for a large percentage of the population to force their ethics on others. Largely because the primary way it is used is to justify policies rather than have policies stem from it. Since not everyone can agree that everyone should be vaccinated policies to vaccinate everyone are unethical according to Kant.
Government doesn't (or shouldn't) have the power to force me to do this. But there's nothing wrong with each individual in the community attempting to persuade those who don't want it.
By analogy: the government doesn't have the authority to endorse any religion, but I'm certainly free to tell you about mine (if I had one).
Irrelevant. In reality, for a vaccine to be effective, public policy must target 100% vaccination.
(this isn't intended to be an endorsement of those who refuse to get vaccinated)
You may not be endorsing it, but it's important to point out that this argument is ethically dubious.
My favorite ethical test is Kant's categorical imperative, which is briefly that an act is ethical if everyone else can act the same way. For example, if you're wondering whether it's ok to slip onto the subway just as the doors are closing, delaying the train by just a second, you can ask: what if everyone boarded the train that way? Of course, the train would never depart, being constantly delayed by each as-the-doors-close boarder.
If everyone thought that vaccines are ok for others but not themselves, then no one would be vaccinated. Thus this argument is unethical. Let's go beyond "not endorsing" it-- let us all actively condemn it.