Smith and Mackie’s feature article addresses the worry that vaccine mandates—for example, requiring employees to get the COVID-19 vaccine—constitute coercive threats that undermine the voluntariness of informed consent.
Smith and Mackie’s proposal is interesting, but in this commentary, I will caution against accepting it. My main worry is this: If we accept Smith and Mackie’s account of voluntary consent, we can no longer rely on the process of informed consent to help us fulfil our obligation to respect patient…