Legal Rights and Communicable Disease: AIDS, the Police Power, and Individual Liberty
Wendy E. Parmet Northeastern University
The policy debate over AIDS has focused on how to balance therights of individuals who have the disease against the rightsof the public. This paper examines the nature of both sets ofrights by analyzing the development of public health law andits dominant visions today. The article argues that while oncepublic health rights implied a vast reserve of community authorityand obligation to prevent illness, today the rights of the publicand those of individuals are seen as being in opposition. Publichealth jurisprudence now presupposes that illness is primarilya matter of individual concern. In this view, the science ofmedicine mediates the relationship between the individual andthe public. This understanding of rights protects some of theinterests of infected individuals, but is inadequate for addressingmany of the major problems raised by the AIDS epidemic, particularlythe spread of infection among the uninfected.
