Abstract

Smith and Mackie offer a conditional defence of vaccine mandates.1 Their argument is conditional, because it is based on Kiener’s interpersonal consenter-consentee account of consent.2 (Smith and Mackie do not defend this account of consent.) According to Kiener, whether an influence undermines consent depends not only on its effects, but on who exerts it (p372).2 If A coerces B, this would invalidate consent that B gives to A, but it does not invalidate consent that B gives to C. The fact of A’s coercion is irrelevant to the consent relationship between B and C, because A is a third party. Thus, a physician (consent-receiver) still acts permissibly when vaccinating a patient (consent-giver), even if the patient’s consent was involuntary because of some third-party mandate. One worry about this argument is whether the physician is sufficiently distanced from the coercion. Kiener notes that the patient’s consent …