Many lives might be saved if inoculations against cow flu were routinely administered to all people in areas where the disease is detected. However, since there is a small possibility that a person will die as a result of the inoculations, we cannot permit inoculations against cow flu to be routinely administered.

There are three main questions whose answers would be key to evaluating this argument: is it possible to screen out individuals who might have a negative reaction towards the drug administered; And if such screening is not possible then how many lives might be saved and what is the probability of a person dying as a result of these routine inoculations against cow flu? If the number of lives to be saved by administering routine inoculations is very large relative to the odds of a person dying, then we should administer the inoculations in pursuit of saving more lives.

Nearly all drugs are lethal in high enough dosages. The dosage of the inoculations administered against cow flu may be too low to actually cause any person to die. Medical trials might even reveal that it is possible to screen out people whose bodies might have a negative reaction towards the inoculations. This screening could be done through administering lower dosages first or through other means. In this case, the argument clearly does not hold true because no lives need to be lost.

In the exceptional case when no screening for negative reactions first can be done, then estimating the number of lives that might be saved and the number of people who may die as a result of the inoculations should be done by medical trials carried out by medical professionals. If such trials are not possible, or produce unreliable results, then one cannot in good conscience recommend administering inoculations because there is not enough information.

It is perhaps ethically troubling to be be using numbers to weight a tradeoff like this when human lives are involved; However, this tradeoff is already done on a smaller scale when administering ordinary flu vaccination: some people may turn out to have allergies or adversarial reactions towards the vaccines but this is an accepted consequence of vaccination when we weigh it against the benefits to public health. If we believe in the moral principle of trying to maximize the benefit towards all of society, then this tradeoff should be extended to the case when administering vaccinations or inoculations may even lead to death for some people.