BIOE 5700 Public Health Ethics

When New York City passed a ban on the sale of large sugary drinks, critics denounced the law as an abuse of government power and an attack on personal freedom. “If people want to be fat, let them be fat,” protested one opponent of the law. Though the controversy surrounding the so-called “soda ban” garnered national attention, there is nothing unusual about policies that restrict or shape personal choice in the name of public health. From controls on the sale of certain drugs to healthy eating campaigns, governments regularly take measures to promote healthy behaviors and prevent people from engaging in actions that are harmful to themselves or others. What ethical values justify these sorts of public health inventions and how do they differ from the ethical values that inform clinical care? How far should governments go in limiting individual autonomy in order to achieve public health goals? How should governments and other actors prioritize different public health interventions? This course will explore these and other ethical questions in the context of case studies involving childhood vaccination, infectious disease monitoring and control, safe-injection sites, tobacco control, and other public health efforts.