Infectious Liberty traces the origins of our contemporary concerns about public health, world population, climate change, global trade, and government regulation to a series of Romantic-era debates and their literary consequences. Through a series of careful readings, Robert Mitchell shows how a range of elements of modern literature, from character-systems to free indirect discourse, are closely intertwined with Romantic-era liberalism and biopolitics. Eighteenth- and early-nineteenth century theorists of liberalism such as Adam Smith and Thomas Malthus drew upon the new sciences of population to develop a liberal biopolitics that aimed to coordinate differences among individuals by means of the culling powers of the market. Infectious Liberty focuses on such authors as Mary Shelley and William Wordsworth, who drew upon the sciences of population to develop a biopolitics beyond liberalism. These authors attempted what Roberto Esposito describes as an “affirmative” biopolitics, which rejects the principle of establishing security by distinguishing between valued and unvalued lives, seeks to support even the most abject members of a population, and proposes new ways of living in common. Infectious Liberty expands our understandings of liberalism and biopolitics—and the relationship between them—while also helping us to understand better the ways creative literature facilitates the project of reimagining what the politics of life might consist of. Infectious Liberty is available from the publisher on an open-access basis.

Bioethics emerged at a time when infectious diseases were not a major concern. Thus bioethics never had to develop a normative framework sensitive to situations of disease transmission. The Patient as Victim and Vector explores how traditional and new issues in clinical medicine, research, public health, and health policy might look different in infectious disease were treated as central. The authors argue that both practice and policy must recognize that a patient with a communicable infectious disease is not only a victim of that disease, but also a potential vector- someone who may transmit an illness that will sicken or kill others. Bioethics has failed to see one part of this duality, they document, and public health the other: that the patient is both victim and vector at one and the same time. The Patient as Victim and Vector is jointly written by four authors at the University of Utah with expertise in bioethics, health law, and both clinical practice and public health policy concerning infectious disease. Part I shows how the patient-centered ethic that was developed by bioethics- especially the concept of autonomy- needs to change in the context of public health, and Part II develops a normative theory for doing so. Part III examines traditional and new issues involving infectious disease: the ethics of quarantine and isolation, research, disease screening, rapid testing, antibiotic use, and immunization, in contexts like multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis, syphilis, hepatitis, HIV/AIDS, and HPV. Part IV, beginning with a controversial thought experiment, considers constraint in the control of infectious disease, include pandemics, and Part V 'thinks big' about the global scope of infectious disease and efforts to prevent, treat, or eradicate it. This volume should have a major impact in the fields of bioethics and public health ethics. It will also interest philosophers, lawyers, health law experts, physicians, and policy makers, as well as those concerned with global health.

"Werner Troesken looks at the history of the United States with a focus on three diseases (smallpox, typhoid fever, and yellow fever) to show how constitutional rules and provisions that promoted individual liberty and economic prosperity also influenced, for good and for bad, the country's ability to eradicate infectious disease. Ranging from federalism under the Commerce Clause to the Contract Clause and the Fourteenth Amendment, Troesken argues persuasively that many institutions intended to promote desirable political or economic outcomes also hindered the provision of public health"--Dust jacket.

This book analyses and reconstructs the European Convention on Human Rights standard of application and execution of preventive deprivation of liberty. Acts of international law were drafted at a time when guarantees for the protection of the personal liberty of individuals were primarily associated with custodial sentences. However, the essence, nature, and purpose of preventive deprivation of liberty, which are fundamentally different from those of imprisonment, also require a different approach to the assessment of the minimum standard and guarantees for the protection of personal liberty and other rights and freedoms. This work determines the minimum guarantees for the protection of liberty and other rights and freedoms of a person in determining the legal basis and procedure for the application and execution of this measure. It presents guidelines on how the substantive prerequisites for preventive deprivation of liberty and the procedure for its application should be constructed in order to meet the European Convention on Human Rights standards. It also provides guidance on how the conditions and rules for preventive deprivation of liberty should be organised in order to protect individuals from inhuman or degrading treatment, or disproportionate restriction of their rights or freedoms. Finally, this work also discusses how the lawfulness of the imposition or continuation of a measure of preventive deprivation of liberty should be reviewed. This book will be of interest to academics, researchers, and policy‐makers working in the areas of Constitutional, Criminal, Medical, and Human Rights Law.

"The author argues that a demand for public solutions during smallpox epidemics of the eighteenth century, especially broad access to inoculation, influenced revolutionary politics and changed the way that Americans understood their health and governmental responsibilities to protect it"--