Article explains the right granted to state public health agencies by the Supreme Court in Jacobson v Massachusetts to mandate vaccination in the presence of actual or threatened danger to the health of its residents from infectious disease.
Clinical case examines physicians’ duties and risks during an epidemic. Commentaries address physician’s rights vs patients’ rights. Does the duty to treat always override personal or family concerns?
A growing number of states is enacting laws to protect the right of health care workers to conscientiously object to perform certain services that are morally opposed to.
A physician attorney argues that the best way to ensure that physicians don't refuse to treat patients is to create a system in which their medical education is fully funded and they must repay a debt to society.
Drivers, physicians, and motor vehicle agencies all have some responsibility in reducing the number of fatal traffic accidents caused by driver sleepiness.
Suggests to medical students what forms of self-disclosure are acceptable during clinical encounters and when self-disclosure might be interpreted by patients as taking attention away from them.
Op-Ed article rebuts the notion that an avian flu pandemic is inevitable. Author goes on to say that the panic we induce today will come back to haunt us through public complacency if a monster epidemic does appear.
In “Allocating Scare Resources in a Pandemic,” Martin Strosberg calls attention to the need for preparedness planning including methods for rationing vaccines, antiviral medications, and intensive care unit beds and staff.
The Epidemic Intelligence Service, by Douglas H. Hamilton, traces the history of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Epidemic Intelligence Service, with details about the service’s response to actual and potential epidemic outbreaks.