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Friday, June 08, 2007

Law - More on: Legal issues raised by the TB quarantine story

Updating this ILB entry from June 1st, see this article today from the Fulton County Daily Report, headed "The Legal Questions Behind the TB Case: Incident highlights evolving government powers to prevent epidemics." Here is one quote from the comprehensive story:

Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, he said, the CDC has collaborated with Lawrence O. Gostin, who directs the Center for Law and the Public's Health at Johns Hopkins and Georgetown universities, to develop a model state public health law that will enable states to respond to a public health emergency.

He estimated that 44 states have updated their laws since. Georgia is one of them; in May 2002, then-Gov. Roy Barnes signed a bill on public health emergencies, Senate Bill 385.

Among other things, that legislation amended O.C.G.A. ยง 38-3-51, which deals with emergency powers of the governor. One of the amended subsections provides for various due process procedures -- including the right to counsel and means for appeal -- applicable to quarantine or vaccination programs instituted pursuant to a declaration of a public health emergency by the governor.

And some quotes from Gene W. Matthews:
"We're trying to change on the fly probably 50 years of sort of quiet inattention to this particular area of how private and public people conduct themselves," said Gene W. Matthews, formerly the CDC's chief lawyer, in an interview this week.

There could be a lot to change. While states have worked to update their laws in the wake of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, some old state statutes deal only with specific diseases like tuberculosis or yellow fever. As public health officials and lawmakers grapple with the fears of a pandemic like avian flu, they must do so in a culture more sensitive to issues of individual rights -- making future health care detentions trickier. * * *

The difficulty, said Matthews, is that in the mid-1950s, just as public health officials were developing the polio vaccine that would contain one of the last great contagious diseases, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), ushering in a rich history of protecting individual rights against government abuse. He likened the two phenomena as two ships passing in the night.

With the exceptions of AIDS and TB, said Matthews, the country only recently has had to grapple once again with a dangerous contagious disease. As the county deals with emerging, dangerous diseases, now it has to do so in the context of legal evolutions on individual rights, he explained.

"The reason this is a hot button issue ... is because in this country we have never, until recently, had to wire together the circuitry between individual liberties and public health control measures," said Matthews.

For Indiana statutes, see IC 16-41, "Public Health Measures for the Prevention and Control of Disease," and particularly IC 16-41-9, dealing with "Communicable Disease: Imposition of Restrictions on Individuals With Certain Communicable or Dangerous Communicable Diseases"

[More] The WSJBlog has an interesting entry this morning headed "TB Patient Litigates in the Worldwide Court of Public Opinion", commenting on a NY Times story today that includes quotes such as "Starting from a position of near universal condemnation, they have used persuasion, humility and the timely and selective release of bombshell evidence to portray Andrew and his family as victims of bumbling and disingenuous bureaucrats."

Posted by Marcia Oddi on June 8, 2007 07:45 AM
Posted to General Law Related | Indiana Law