Angela McLean – författare

The sudden appearance and rapid spread of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2002 served to alert the world to the fact that emerging infections are a global problem. Living in affluent societies with well developed health care systems does not necessarily protect people from the dangers posed by life-threatening infections. The SARS epidemic tested global preparedness for dealing with a new infectious agent and raised important questions: how did we do, and what did we learn? This book uses the SARS outbreak as a case study to enumerate the generic issues that must be considered when planning the control of emerging infections. Emerging infections are more than just a current biological fashion: the bitter ongoing experience of AIDS and the looming threat of pandemic influenza teach us that the control of infectious disease is a problem we have not yet solved. Scientists from a broad range of disciplines - biologists, physicians, and policy-makers - all need to prepare. But prepare for what? SARS: A Case Study in Emerging Infections provides an up-to-date and accessible overview of the tasks that must be addressed by a community that wishes to confront emerging infections. Each chapter is written by a world expert and offers an authoritative and timely overview of its subject. While focusing on SARS, the book addresses a whole range of pertinent considerations and issues, from the use of new mathematical models to account for the spread of infection across global airline networks, to a discussion of the ethics of quarantining individuals in order to protect communities. The book will be of interest to students, academics, and policy makers working in the fields of disease ecology, medicine, and public health.

Infectious disease ethics is one of the fastest growing—and increasingly being recognised as one of the most important—topics in bioethics and public health ethics. Paramount among ethical issues associated with infectious disease are those that arise with conflict between the goal to promote individual liberty, on the one hand, and the goal to promote other legitimate social goals such as (equality or) utility in the way of public health, on the other. Authored by world leading figures in philosophy, bioethics, law, public health and medicine, the papers in this volume focus on such conflicts and, inter alia, illustrate the diversity of ways in which such conflicts can arise and offer carefully argued, creative solutions for addressing them. They cover a broad range of topics including ethical issues associated with pandemic planning, health workers’ rights and duties, vaccination policy, coercion and compensation, opt-out HIV testing, public health surveillance, and bioterrorism.