Western Standard - September 10, 2021


Ethics prof turfed after 20 years because of vaccine refusal

Topics
mandatory vaccinations ethics
Mentioned
COVID-19
The Cory Morgan Show： The People's Party and Personal Freedoms Kenney： 'I swear to God' Alberta is open for good – weeks before more COVID restrictions

Episode Stats


Length

4 minutes

Words per minute

124.77

Word count

620

Sentence count

51


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In the spirit of Socrates, who was executed for asking questions, this lesson will consist of only one question: Is it right or wrong to force someone to take a vaccine as a condition of their employment, or not?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 My name is Julie Panessi and this message is about mandatory vaccinations.
00:00:14.000 I am a professor of ethics at Huron College at the University of Western Ontario. It's one of
00:00:20.560 the largest universities in Canada. Today I'm going to teach you a short lesson on the universally
00:00:27.680 accepted ethics of coercing people into medical procedures. I'll be the example.
00:00:36.240 My employer has just mandated that I must get a vaccine for COVID-19. If I want to keep working
00:00:42.880 at my job as a professor, I have to take this vaccine. Here's my conundrum. My school employs me
00:00:51.760 to be an authority on the subject of ethics. I hold a PhD in ethics and ancient philosophy.
00:00:59.440 And I'm here to tell you it's ethically wrong to coerce someone to take a vaccine. If it happens
00:01:06.800 to you, you don't have to do it. If you don't want a COVID vaccine, don't take one. End of discussion.
00:01:14.880 It's your own business. But that is not the approach of the University of Western Ontario,
00:01:22.240 which has suddenly required that I be vaccinated immediately or not report for work.
00:01:29.680 So with the school year beginning in a few days, I am facing imminent dismissal after 20 years on the job.
00:01:37.200 I will not submit to having an experimental vaccine injected into my body. I've had plenty of vaccines
00:01:46.960 in my life, but I've never been forced to take one. It's always been my choice. I don't work in a high
00:01:55.200 risk environment. I'm not a doctor in an emergency room. I'm a teacher. I'm a university professor.
00:02:02.560 My job is to teach students how to think critically. To ask questions that might expose a false argument.
00:02:12.080 Questions like, says who? Who is the authority giving this order? Should I trust them with control over my body?
00:02:21.760 As a professor, I don't have to watch the news to find out if the COVID vaccines are safe.
00:02:27.280 I read medical journals and I consult my colleagues who are professors of science and medicine.
00:02:35.120 I've learned from doctors that there are serious questions about how safe these vaccines really are.
00:02:41.360 There are questions about how well they work. Nobody's promising that I won't get COVID
00:02:47.280 or transmit COVID if I get the vaccine. But ultimately, none of that matters to me.
00:02:53.920 Because I'm a professor of ethics, and I'm a Canadian. I'm entitled to make choices about what does and
00:03:02.560 does not enter my body, regardless of my reasons. If I'm allowed back into my university, it's my job
00:03:10.560 to teach my students that this is wrong. I'm hired to teach them that it is ethically wrong to impose an
00:03:18.000 experimental medical procedure as a condition of employment. This is my first and potentially my last
00:03:28.560 lesson of the year. Ethics 101. In the spirit of Socrates, who was executed for asking questions,
00:03:38.880 this lesson will consist of only one question. The answer is multiple choice. Please listen carefully.
00:03:48.240 When a person has done the same job to the satisfaction of her employer for 20 years,
00:03:54.720 is it right or is it wrong to suddenly demand that they submit to an unnecessary medical procedure in
00:04:03.680 order to keep their job? In this case, the procedure is an injection of a substance that has not been
00:04:11.200 fully tested for safety. It has not yet been shown to be effective. It is designed to prevent an illness
00:04:19.440 that poses little threat to the employee. The employee is not allowed to ask questions. She may only submit
00:04:27.920 to the procedure or be fired. To my first year students, is this right or is this wrong? I already know the answer.
00:04:39.680 I'm sorry.
00:04:46.000 That was amazing, Julie.
00:04:47.360 Sorry.
00:04:52.160 I'm sorry.