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Abstract

Despite sharing the same theoretical framework of discussion with other papers, this paper addresses an ethical and legal issue that has received little attention in academic and public discourse: the duty of disclosure in the context of vaccinations. In particular, the paper addresses the question whether public health considerations provide a justification for restricting the duty of disclosure in the case of vaccination.

Delimitating the research question to the issue of disclosure has several implications. First, the decision to vaccinate the population with bOPV as describe above and the decision to adopt a voluntary vaccination policy are not the focus of this paper, and they will not be critically discussed. Therefore, both of these decisions are accepted as reasonable and valid. Second, whether parents’ right to make decisions regarding the health of their children—that is, their right for parental autonomy—prevails in the context of vaccinations will also not be addressed. Third, the paper addresses one aspect of the communication strategy adopted by the Israeli Ministry of Health: the nature and content of the information provided to the public. Other aspects of the communication strategy, while important, exceed the scope of the paper. Such aspects include the methods used to disseminate the information; the use of nonverbal techniques; the identity of the persons providing the information; and nature of persuasion efforts addressed to parents

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