![]() ![]() The strongest nation in the history of the world, we see ourselves besieged and overwhelmed” ( Zakaria, 2007). If you give up your freedom for security free#As Benjamin Franklin said, “hose who would give up an essential liberty to purchase temporary security deserve neither liberty nor security.” Why then did public health so eagerly embrace the national security model after the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon? Newsweek commentator Fareed Zakaria described the problem in June 2007: the USA has “become a nation consumed by fear, worried about terrorists and rogue nations, Muslims and Mexicans, foreign companies and free trade, immigrants and international organizations. ![]() Sacrificing human rights under the rubric of national security is almost always unnecessary and counterproductive in a free society. Safety and security are now apparently seen as more important public health goals than health itself, and ‘preparedness' for ‘emergencies' has become the new public health mantra The phrases “better safe than sorry”, “we must exercise an abundance of caution” and “err on the side of caution” are heard over and over again, as if these chants could ward off evil. Safety and security are now apparently seen as more important public health goals than health itself, and ‘preparedness' for ‘emergencies' has become the new public health mantra ( Mongoven, 2006). Its 2007 report, A Safer Future: Global Public Health Security in the 21 st Century, described the prospect of a pandemic flu as “the most feared security threat” in the world ( WHO, 2007). ![]() In August 2007, the World Health Organization (WHO Geneva, Switzerland) explicitly adopted a militarized security model for public health. And the federal government's new ‘Draft Guidance on Allocating and Targeting Pandemic Influenza Vaccine', released in late October 2007, gives top priority to allocate vaccines in short supply, not to pregnant women, infants, children or the elderly, or even to front-line emergency medical care providers or outpatient health care providers, but to military personnel who have “an essential role in national and homeland security” ( ).Įuropeans might be tempted to think that the militarized national security model of public health is confined to the USA, but that would be a mistake. Bush, for example, reacted to the threat of a bird flu pandemic in 2005 by suggesting that the US military should be used to quarantine “parts of the country” experiencing an “outbreak” ( Annas, 2005a). ![]() If ‘extreme' and ‘ruthless' measures are seen as reasonable, no one should be surprised that the military is often immediately brought to mind. Or, if there is any chance to limit the geographical spread of the disease, officials must have in place the legal power to take extreme quarantine measures” in the case of a flu pandemic ( Barry, 2004). …officials might decide to order mandatory vaccination. Barry, the author of The Great Influenza, put it, “ublic health officials will need the authority to enforce decisions, including ruthless ones. Just as national leaders have argued that the public should barter its civil liberties for safety from terrorist attacks, so public health officials have argued that health is best protected by adopting the national security metaphor 2001 is the excuse, but 1918 is the model.Īs John M. After the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, the myth emerged that public health should rely on the pre-First World War tactics of forced quarantine, mandatory physical examinations and vaccinations to be effective against a pandemic. ![]()
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