Tension sometimes develops between those advocating for public health measures and those advocating for individual rights. The sanitorium approach to reducing tuberculosis exposure of the general population, as discussed in the video, The Forgotten Plague, provides a clear historical example of a situation where community health and individual rights and freedoms came into conflict.
Read the following article: The continuing tensions between individual rights and public health. Reflect on the video and article by writing a paper that includes the following:
o If you’re not sure how to get started or what to discuss in your analysis,here are a few things you may want to consider:
Fairness of “incarcerating” people with a communicable disease and forcing the accepted treatments of the time on them
Problem faced by health officials of limiting exposure of healthy people to an airborne, incurable (at the time) communicable disease
Acceptability of placing the rights of healthy members of the community above the rights of individuals with TB
How you would have felt about personal rights and freedoms and the risk to other people’s health if you had been diagnosed with TB during the sanitorium era
How you would have felt about a TB patient’s personal rights and freedoms and the health of your family, friends, and self, if you were healthy and at risk of being exposed to people with TB during the sanitorium era
Given the way that the public’s perceptions and expectations regarding personal rights and freedoms have changed since the 1950s (end of the sanitorium era), do you think that such a system of case isolation would be accepted today if a new life-threatening,airborne, incurable, infectious disease were to appear in the US?
Why or why not?
Your paper should be between 500 and 800 words in length. You should have a reference at the end of your paper to the video and any other sources (like the additional paper above) you use for writing this iCTA.