The Model State Emergency Health Powers Act: Public Health and Civil Liberties in a Time of Terrorism

Bioterrorism or Avian Influenza: California, The Model State Emergency Health Powers Act, and Protecting Civil Liberties During a Public Health Emergency

Public health and civil liberties

The opinion pieces that constitute this month’s ‘Talking Point’ address the old conflict between the enforcement of public health measures and the inevitable infringements of individual rights and liberties that are the result. The task of the ‘neutral commentator’ is made difficult by the fact that the authors are not particularly at odds with each other. George Annas argues that compulsory en...

The politics of AIDS: compulsory state powers, public health, and civil liberties.

Civil liberties and public good: detention of tuberculous patients and the Public Health Act 1984.

On 30 August 1998, the Mail on Sunday, under the headline "TB refugee 'must be held in hospital"', described the case of a Somalian man who had been "ordered by a court to remain in hospital for six months to prevent him spreading a highly infectious deadly disease". That disease was tuberculosis and a court order had been issued "after the man had twice staggered into Northwick Park Hospital i...

Modernizing local responses to public health emergencies: bioterrorism, epidemics, and the model state emergency health powers act.