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Through the Quarantine Looking Glass: Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis and Public Health Governance, Law, and Ethics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

David P. Fidler ,
Lawrence O. Gostin  and
Howard Markel
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Extract

Dramatic events involving dangerous microbes often focus attention on isolation and quarantine as policy instruments. The incident in May-June 2007 involving Andrew Speaker and drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) joins other communicable disease crises that have forced contemplation or actual application of quarantine powers. Implementation of quarantine powers, which encompasses authority for both isolation and quarantine actions, is important not only for the handling of a specific event but also because the use of such authority provides a window on broader issues of public health and the legal rules, ethical principles, and governance systems that support it. Debates about quarantine powers reflect political and social attitudes about public health that often tell us more about this policy endeavor than acts of isolation and quarantine themselves.

Type
Symposium
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 35 , Issue 4 , Winter 2007 , pp. 616 - 628
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 2007

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