The Case for the Vaccine Passport

Authors

  • Jocelyn Maclure Department of Philosophy & Jarislowsky Chair in Human Nature and Technology, McGill University, Québec, Canada https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7620-821X
  • Keven Bisson Department of Philosophy, McGill University, Québec, Canada

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7202/1087211ar

Keywords:

vaccine passport, immunization proof,, Covid-19, equality, fairness, public health ethics

Language(s):

English

Abstract

In this critical commentary, we address the egalitarian critique according to which the use of a vaccine passport is unethical because it conflicts with the principle of equality, understood as requiring that citizens ought to be treated in the same way. We argue that this criticism is vulnerable to the levelling-down objection often addressed to some egalitarian theories. We add that the vaccine passport is morally justified if two minimal ethical conditions are satisfied: 1) it must be designed as a temporary and transitory public health restriction, and 2) the disparities of treatment it introduces ought to infringe as little as possible upon fundamental rights and should not negate access to essential public services.

(c) Han Han Li

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Published

2022-03-01

How to Cite

[1]
Maclure J, Bisson K. The Case for the Vaccine Passport. Can. J. Bioeth 2022;5:128-31. https://doi.org/10.7202/1087211ar.

Issue

Vol. 5 No. 1 (2022): Open Issue

Section

Critical commentaries

License

Copyright (c) 2022 Jocelyn Maclure, Keven Bisson

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

The Canadian Journal of Bioethics applies the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License to all its publications. Authors therefore retain copyright of their publication, e.g., they can reuse their publication, link to it on their home page or institutional website, deposit a PDF in a public repository. However, the authors allow anyone to download, reuse, reprint, modify, distribute, and/or copy their publication, so long as the original authors and source are cited.