Vaccination is one of the one of the most important public health breakthroughs of the past 5,000 years - perhaps on par with sewage systems. smallpox has been eradicated by vaccines - it no longer exists in the wild - saving approximately 5 million lives annually[1]. This was a "slow and painstaking process" [2]. Polio is next. This happens if the vaccination program is successful. Vaccination can then also be ended, saving the United States $270M per year.
If a woman came to me as a doctor and wanted to put her town, country, and world at risk by opting out of one of the miracles of modern science due to misinformation she received elsewhere I would have zero qualms about looking her in the eye and lying "I beieve the Pope issued a papal bull last August requiring every Catholic to be vaccinated." Even though it is a lie and although I start my sentence with "I believe..." in fact I don't believe the bogus fact I then state, which I make up.
This would be highly ethical of me to do, and has full plausible deniability as I could simply say I believed it, that I heard that somewhere. Even though I didn't. Even though I'd be lying to my patient.
The fact that there are four respondents here who think that the likely outcome doesn't matter, and "there is absolutely no way" that lying to achieve growth is ethical, and "I don't care how much benefit the app might bring me", means that we have nothing more to discuss.
Go read a few thousand pages of modern ethics. The respondent who mentions the technical terms of utilitarianism and deontology has the right idea.
Absolutely the outcome, benefit, and the fact that the author's friends are heavy users who love it matter.
[2] http://www.who.int/csr/disease/smallpox/faq/en/ "Smallpox no longer occurs naturally since it was totally eradicated by a lengthy and painstaking process, which identified all cases and their contacts and ensured that they were all vaccinated. Until then, smallpox killed many millions of people.
If a woman came to me as a doctor and wanted to put her town, country, and world at risk by opting out of one of the miracles of modern science due to misinformation she received elsewhere I would have zero qualms about looking her in the eye and lying "I beieve the Pope issued a papal bull last August requiring every Catholic to be vaccinated." Even though it is a lie and although I start my sentence with "I believe..." in fact I don't believe the bogus fact I then state, which I make up.
This would be highly ethical of me to do, and has full plausible deniability as I could simply say I believed it, that I heard that somewhere. Even though I didn't. Even though I'd be lying to my patient.
The fact that there are four respondents here who think that the likely outcome doesn't matter, and "there is absolutely no way" that lying to achieve growth is ethical, and "I don't care how much benefit the app might bring me", means that we have nothing more to discuss.
Go read a few thousand pages of modern ethics. The respondent who mentions the technical terms of utilitarianism and deontology has the right idea.
Absolutely the outcome, benefit, and the fact that the author's friends are heavy users who love it matter.
[1] http://www.unicef.org/pon96/hevaccin.htm
[2] http://www.who.int/csr/disease/smallpox/faq/en/ "Smallpox no longer occurs naturally since it was totally eradicated by a lengthy and painstaking process, which identified all cases and their contacts and ensured that they were all vaccinated. Until then, smallpox killed many millions of people.