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 <i>5 million</i> lives annually[1]. This was a &quot;slow and painstaking process&quot; [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.<p>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 &quot;I beieve the Pope issued a papal bull last August requiring every Catholic to be vaccinated.&quot;  Even though it is a lie and although I start my sentence with &quot;I believe...&quot; in fact I don&#x27;t believe the bogus fact I then state, which I make up.<p>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&#x27;t.  Even though I&#x27;d be lying to my patient.<p>The fact that there are four respondents here who think that the likely outcome doesn&#x27;t matter, and &quot;there is absolutely no way&quot; that lying to achieve growth is ethical, and &quot;I don&#x27;t care how much benefit the app might bring me&quot;,  means that we have nothing more to discuss.<p>Go read a few thousand pages of modern ethics.  The respondent who mentions the technical terms of utilitarianism and deontology has the right idea.<p>Absolutely the outcome, benefit, and the fact that the author&#x27;s friends are heavy users who love it matter.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.unicef.org&#x2F;pon96&#x2F;hevaccin.htm" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.unicef.org&#x2F;pon96&#x2F;hevaccin.htm</a><p>[2] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.who.int&#x2F;csr&#x2F;disease&#x2F;smallpox&#x2F;faq&#x2F;en&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.who.int&#x2F;csr&#x2F;disease&#x2F;smallpox&#x2F;faq&#x2F;en&#x2F;</a> &quot;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.