Question

Questions about individual freedoms have formed the foundation of controversies and long-running debates about public health in the USA; conflicts that have been animated by a deep-rooted mistrust of overreaching authorities, concerns about arbitrary exercises of power, and by the anti-authoritarian ethos that is a historically prominent feature of US politics and civic culture.

Is it appropriate for the federal or state government to impose restrictions on competent adults in order to protect them from harming themselves? People who do NOT think it is appropriate, claim that public health officials can educate and warn, but not compel. As these ideas have gained wide influence, advocates of public health often need to assert that they intervene because the social consequences or negative externalities of certain behaviors warrant intervention; thus, self-regarding harms are transformed into other-regarding harms. In any event, the government seeks to use its authority to change individual behavior.

Using an example from the semester (listed below), do you believe is it appropriate for the federal or state government to impose restrictions on competent adults in order to protect them from harming themselves and others?

Covid 19 virus

Tobacco

Alcohol

Motor vehicle laws

STD partner notification

Reproductive rights

Answer 1

For covid19 ,motor vehicle laws ,std partner notifications govt need some restrictions . public health officials who endorsed authoritarian attitudes in the name of public health; the often abysmal health situations in the rapidly growing cities of the USA and Europe required drastic measures, and public health officials were given the freedom to meet the problems with what, at times, were heavy-handed approaches. In turn, these provoked resistance to mandatory vaccination programmes, quarantines and surveillance. Efforts to control smallpox, which involved compulsory vaccination, acted as a rallying point for groups and individuals motivated both by anti-government ideology and concrete fears of the physical harm that sometimes resulted from the procedure. Anti-vaccine organizations throughout the USA were driven, among other things, by opponents of germ theory and groups generally opposed to government interference in their claims to privacy. In Milwaukee (WI, USA), for example, forceful application of the State's mandatory vaccination law sparked riots among the city's large German immigrant population in the 1890s. Health officers who went into neighbourhoods to vaccinate residents and remove sick individuals to quarantine hospitals were greeted by angry mobs throwing rocks (Colgrove, 2006).

In the state of Massachusetts (USA), a smallpox epidemic during the winter of 1901 provided the occasion for a legal challenge to the state's compulsory vaccination law. This led to a landmark ruling by the US Supreme Court in the case of Jacobson versus Commonwealth of Massachusetts, which established the government's right to use its ‘police powers' in order to control epidemic disease. In its seven-to-two decision, the Court affirmed the right of the people, through their elected representatives, to enact “health laws of every description to protect the common good” (Colgrove & Bayer, 2005).

Efforts to impose quarantines on those viewed as a threat to public health has involved the use of measures that look excessive and profoundly unfair from the perspective of less troubled times. On several occasions, the outbreak of diseases among disfavoured minority groups has led to harsh measures being used against them. As Howard Markel noted in his book, Quarantine!, “[i]mmigrants arriving in New York City in 1892, for example, could be isolated and kept in squalid conditions to prevent the spread of cholera and typhus. At a time of massive immigration and concomitant nativist sentiment, health officials faced little popular opposition to their efforts”