Quarantine, isolation and the duty of easy rescue in public health.

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Ltd Country of Publication: England NLM ID: 101120122 Publication Model: Print-Electronic Cited Medium: Internet ISSN: 1471-8847 (Electronic) Linking ISSN: 14718731 NLM ISO Abbreviation: Dev World Bioeth Subsets: MEDLINE

Publication: 2014- : Abingdon : John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Original Publication: Oxford ; Malden, MA : Blackwell, c2001-

Coercion* ; Developing Countries* ; Emergencies* ; Government Regulation* ; Health Policy*; Public Health/*ethics ; Quarantine/*ethics; Ethical Theory ; Government ; Humans ; Moral Obligations

We address the issue of whether, why and under what conditions, quarantine and isolation are morally justified, with a particular focus on measures implemented in the developing world. We argue that the benefits of quarantine and isolation justify some level of coercion or compulsion by the state, but that the state should be able to provide the strongest justification possible for implementing such measures. While a constrained form of consequentialism might provide a justification for such public health interventions, we argue that a stronger justification is provided by a principle of State Enforced Easy Rescue: a state may permissibly compel individuals to engage in activities that entail a small cost to them but a large benefit to others, because individuals have a moral duty of easy rescue to engage in those activities. The principle of State Enforced Easy Rescue gives rise to an Obligation Enforcement Requirement: the state should create the conditions such that submitting to coercive or compulsive measures becomes a fundamental moral duty of individuals, i.e. a duty of easy rescue. When the state can create such conditions, it has the strongest justification possible for implementing coercive or compulsive measures, because individuals have a moral duty to temporarily relinquish the rights that such measures would infringe. Our argument has significant implications for how public health emergencies in the developing world should be tackled. Where isolation and quarantine measures are necessary, states or the international community have a moral obligation to provide certain benefits to those quarantined or isolated.
(© 2017 The Authors Developing World Bioethics Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Dev World Bioeth. 2018 Jun;18(2):182-189. (PMID: 28922559)

104848 United Kingdom WT_ Wellcome Trust; 104848/Z/14/Z United Kingdom WT_ Wellcome Trust

Keywords: easy rescue; isolation; public health; quarantine

Date Created: 20170919 Date Completed: 20190410 Latest Revision: 20220220

20240104

PMC6001516

10.1111/dewb.12165

28922559